Knowledge system transformation for climate change innovation

This paper advances a conceptual critique of dominant knowledge creation models by drawing on Heidegger’s analysis of Gestell, alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome. It argues that contemporary knowledge systems are shaped by a metaphysical orientation – Gestell – that frames Being as a resource, constraining imagination and innovation. Through a critical examination of organizational knowledge creation literature, the paper shows how both stock-based and practice-based approaches remain entangled in this logic – reducing knowledge to a context-producing representation, turning codified abstractions into epistemic authorities that ‘legitimate’ knowing. As an alternative, the study proposes reconceptualizing knowledge creation through technē as bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis and the rhizomatic model, which emphasizes emergence, multiplicity, and embodiment. By incorporating the self-transcending knowledge, this framework moves beyond the tacit-explicit binary models and opens space for the embodied ways of knowing. The paper concludes by discussing propositions and outlining the implications for future empirical research.