How to Create New Business Knowledge Through Multi-Disciplinary Discussion

Abstract

Generating innovative high-tech business in the DX (digital transformation) era requires the formation of multi-disciplinary teams, which include engineers and business experts or large companies and technology ventures. However, each team member tends to focus on certain objectives: Engineers aim to develop highly advanced technology, believing it will be in high demand, whereas business experts want engineers to follow their marketing strategies. The knowledge that is deemed necessary for generating innovative products or services differs between these groups. Thus, generating new business knowledge requires that members of multi-disciplinary teams disrupt their conventional ways of thinking, understand each other, exchange knowledge, and ultimately generate new knowledge. Previous literature on knowledge creation mainly discusses the generation of new knowledge within or between organizations that have relatively the same goals and organizational values, such as how to build trusting relationships for knowledge creation and exchange. However, as modern society comprises various fields of experts and numerous values, the discussion of knowledge exchange and creation needs to include knowledge creation among experts who have previously focused on different goals and values. Furthermore, generating innovative business requires individuals to disrupt their conventional ways of thinking, but previous studies on knowledge creation rarely mention how to do so in order to create innovative knowledge. Thus, this study aims to explore the impediments to new knowledge creation and proposes a new model that overcomes these impediments through multi-disciplinary discussions.