The SECI model comes out of research in “knowledge management,” which is related to “organizational learning,” “business administration,” and “information systems.” SECI stands for socialization, externalization, combination, internalization—a model of knowledge creation proposed by Ikujiro Nonaka [5]. (It’s interesting to note that Nonaka received his MBA (1968) and Ph.D. (1972) from UC Berkeley, when West Churchman was teaching in the business school and offering seminars that included design-methods pioneers Horst Rittel and Christopher Alexander, who were on the faculty of the UCB College of Environmental Design. The problem of managing knowledge created in the design process is described by Horst Rittel in his work on Issues Based Information Systems (IBIS), which helped spawn an area of research in computer science known as design rationale [6].)
Nonaka sees ongoing knowledge creation as the source of continuous innovation and continuous innovation as the source of sustained competitive advantage. “When organizations innovate, they do not simply process information, from the outside in, in order to solve existing problems and adapt to a changing environment. They actually create new knowledge and information, from the inside out, in order to redefine both problems and solutions and, in the process, to re-create their environment.”
Nonaka considers knowledge “as a dynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the ‘truth.’…This understanding emphasizes that knowledge is essentially related to human action….As a fundamental basis for the theory of organizational knowledge creation, we focus attention on the active, subjective nature of knowledge represented by such terms as commitment and belief that are deeply rooted in individuals’ value systems.” [7][Italics are from the original.]