Newsletter of the Center for Strategic Development of Science and Technology , Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology ( JAIST )

As Prof. Wierzbicki said in his speech at JAIST Forum 2006, “we are living in times of an informational revolution and this revolution leads to a new civilization era, in which knowledge plays a more and more important role than just information. We might say a new knowledge civilization era is starting”. It is clear that, in order to keep sustaining competitive competencies, new knowledge and technologies appear to be faster required by individual, organizations, even nations in this new era. Along with knowledge creation and technical innovation, social innovation also takes place as either known or unknown ways. Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds and that extend and strengthen civil society. Thus, in the knowledge civilization era, we have to understand well how knowledge is created in hard sciences and technology, and its relationship and interaction with social innovation. For this purpose, we hold a forum on Knowledge Creation and Social Innovation at JAIST on Nov. 10-11, 2006. Prof. Andrzej P. Wierzbicki, Robert Kneller, Nico Stehr, Michael C. Jackson and Ikujiro Nonaka (listed in the speech order) were invited to present on the first day of forum papers on the topic of knowledge creation and social innovation. This was followed on the second day by discussions of detailed projects and recent developments of the COE Program. This issue represents the main content of the lectures on the forum, which are published here in the speech order, with one exception. Prof. Wierzbicki gave two presentations on these two days of the forum. Since the content of his first speech-“Knowledge Science and Nanatsudaki Model of Knowledge Creation Processes” -was already presented in previous COE Newsletter (Vol.2, No.4), here we publish his presentation from the second day.