When you look at the price of this book and its subject area its easy to ask what gives? After all there are plenty of business books on issues like knowledge management for one third the price. Yes but while those books are valuable, they are worth about 1/10th the value of Managing Flow -- particularly for real students of knowledge management and the knowledge based firm
Nonaka, Toyama and Hirata provide a well through out and clearly written book that describes advanced thinking in knowledge management. The book is academic in its nature and its intended audience is targeted more to professors and graduate students, but the ideas in this book concerning how people create knowledge, the types of knowledge that matter and the approaches for managing knowledge are appliable to all.
Managing flow takes on issues of advanced knowledge, enteprise, and business management with the right blend of intellectual frameworks and worked examples.
This book is not for the faint of heart as its detailed, dense and thought provoking. Its not airplane reading and I have had to find a quiet room and quiet time when reading it. However that investment has paid off, as the authors look at knowledge not as a process of aggregating data, or capturing what sits between peoples ears, but as a process of Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization.
For people who 'know' these subject areas, this book has the deep insight and discussion of meaty issues you need to help figure out what is next for you and your company.
Make no mistake, this is an academic book, but written with a deep sense of making advanced ideas clear and more accessible. If you have lost your appetite for reading graduate level texts, then you will find this book hard to get going and a labor to read. If not, then you can gain much from this well crafted work.
I do not expect this book to become a business best seller -- its not written for that purpose. However, I hope that if you are reading this review and you have a deep interest in this subject area you would consider making the investment as there is much in this book.