Snow fell quietly the night before and the morning sun was shining brightly under the blue sky the next day. Looking out to the snow-white garden from a large w- dow, Sid Winter, one of the contributors to this book, was beaming with smile. It was such a nice and calm morning in the middle of December at a summer resort hotel one hour from Tokyo. That morning, he was going to present the last paper to our conference and to everyone's surprise, in the very same morning a praising book review of the Japanese translation of his famous book appeared in the major economic journal in Japan. Everyone congratulated him for the coincidence and it was such a happy ending to the three-day conference. The atmosphere of the conference, out of which this book grew, was very st- ulating and cordial at the same time. Without picking on the minor defects of the presented papers, every participant was trying to contribute by probing the issues presented deeper and trying suggestions to make the papers better. Among others, Bruce Kogut was responding fondly on Jiro Nonaka's comment on his paper and Dong-Sung Cho was trying to expand even more the already very broad conceptual framework that Hiro Itami presented. For sure, the dynamics of knowledge creation was at work in the conference room and the dining hall.

Snow fell quietly the night before and the morning sun was shining brightly under the blue sky the next day. Looking out to the snow-white garden from a large w- dow, Sid Winter, one of the contributors to this book, was beaming with smile. It was such a nice and calm morning in the middle of December at a summer resort hotel one hour from Tokyo. That morning, he was going to present the last paper to our conference and to everyone's surprise, in the very same morning a praising book review of the Japanese translation of his famous book appeared in the major economic journal in Japan. Everyone congratulated him for the coincidence and it was such a happy ending to the three-day conference. The atmosphere of the conference, out of which this book grew, was very st- ulating and cordial at the same time. Without picking on the minor defects of the presented papers, every participant was trying to contribute by probing the issues presented deeper and trying suggestions to make the papers better. Among others, Bruce Kogut was responding fondly on Jiro Nonaka's comment on his paper and Dong-Sung Cho was trying to expand even more the already very broad conceptual framework that Hiro Itami presented. For sure, the dynamics of knowledge creation was at work in the conference room and the dining hall.

Successful corporate strategies, says this leading professor of management, depend upon dynamic marshaling of a firm's "invisible assets"-information-based resources such as technological know-how, the visibility of a brand name, or knowledge of a customer base-as well as tangible assets such as people, goods, and money. Hiroyuki Itami emphasizes the ways strategy must fit the firm's external environment (customers, competitors, and ever-changing technology) and also the importance of internal fit within the organization. He uses invisible assets as a single organizing concept to discuss the appropriateness of strategy in each area. Strategy, Itami insists, must be adapted to rapidly changing conditions and must sometimes be prepared in advance of expected change. The most powerful strategy may often intentionally create imbalance in the short run in order to accumulate invisible assets and energize the organization. Itami examines successful strategies of Japanese firms, which have always operated in an environment of uncertainty and all-pervasive change. Sony and Honda are not the only examples, however-Itami also discusses IBM, Volkswagen, and the Swiss watch industry. The range of examples gives the book wide applicability and appeal to American business executives, who are now facing a similar situation of rapid change. The clarity and sound construction of Itami's argument will make it useful not only to MBAs and theorists of international business and comparative management, but also to "real world" planners and managers who are currently coping with just the sort of situations Itami describes.