Acquiring Collective Phronesis in the Era of Convergence

Building communities for sustainable innovation is the biggest issue facing corporate management in the twenty-first century. Rather than operate in markets with an emphasis on the relative values of Porter’s competitive strategy theory, innovation communities achieve sustainable innovation in knowledge ecosystems of communities of individuals, organizations, companies, and customers that influence corporate activities. Leading companies are embedded in the broader dynamic relationships of society as a whole—relationships that include a wide range of stakeholders outside themselves—and continually generate new knowledge by converging their own knowledge with external knowledge. The critical issue for innovation communities that globally mobilize knowledge in these ecosystems and sustainably bring about new knowledge is how to mobilize the “collective phronesis” of the leading people and communities in knowledge ecosystems spanning organizations, companies, and industries. This chapter will serialize the concept of collective phronesis.