CONCEPT
The SECI Spiral
Nonaka and Takeuchi's foundational model describing how organizational knowledge is created through four modes of conversion between tacit and explicit knowing — Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization — spiraling upward through each cycle into increasingly sophisticated understanding.
Introduced in The Knowledge-Creating Company (1995), the SECI model describes organizational knowledge creation as a dynamic, recursive process rather than a static resource. The four modes — Socialization (tacit to tacit, through shared experience), Externalization (tacit to explicit, through metaphor and articulation), Combination (explicit to explicit, through systematic recombination), and Internalization (explicit to tacit, through embodied practice) — do not operate as alternatives but as phases in a continuous ascending spiral. Each mode depends on the others for its inputs and the organizational value of its outputs. The framework treats knowledge as a living process requiring the full conversion cycle to produce genuinely new understanding, as distinguished from mere processing of existing information. Its central diagnostic claim: accelerate one mode while the others atrophy, and the spiral does not become faster — it deforms.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The SECI model emerged from Nonaka's systematic observation of Japanese companies that outperformed Western competitors in