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.

Perspectives

Organization Accumulates and Market Utilizes: A Framework of Knowledge-Corporate System-Innovation Dynamics
Boundaries of Innovation and Social Consensus Building: Challenges for Japanese Firms
Redefining Innovation as System Re-Definition
Knowledge, Information, Rules, and Structures
The Replication Perspective on Productive Knowledge
Issues
Organizational Deadweight and the Internal Functioning of Japanese Firms: An Explorative Analysis of Organizational Dysfunction
Reasons for Innovation: Legitimizing Resource Mobilization for Innovation in the Cases of the Okochi Memorial Prize Winners
Category Innovation
Moore's Law Increasing Complexity, and the Limits of Organization: The Modern Significance of Japanese Chipmakers' Commodity DRAM Business
M&As and Corporate Performance in Japan: Transferring vs. Sharing of Control Right
International Comparison of Profitability Dispersion
International Comparison of Intangible Assets' Disclosure and Investment Behavior
Japanese Company in the Post-Japanese System: Hoya 1985-1996
An Entrepreneurial Approach to Service Innovations: Leading Changing Lifestyles in Japan.