This is the final version for KEST’2004. Computerized Support for Idea Generation during Knowledge Creating Process 1

Knowledge is regarded as the most important capital for organizations in the 21st century. And knowledge creation is as one of most effective methods to enhance industrial competitiveness especially along the global trend and increasing complexities in the socioeconomic development. In this paper, we combine an organizational knowledge creating model proposed by a Japanese social scientist I. Nonaka and framework of Hall for Workshop of Meta-synthetic Engineering proposed by Chinese system scientist Qian Xuesen (Tsien HsueShen) to explore how to effectively facilitate knowledge creating process using computerized supports, especially during group working context, where group discussion and debates are usual activities during idea/alternative generation and evaluations. We focus on one kind of group activities, group thinking, especially group brainstorming for idea generation, which is very basic and also convenient way to collect opinion and acquire knowledge for new alternatives or solutions towards difficult decision problems. A computerized support tool for idea generation has been developed and a simple example is demonstrated