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Tacit Knowledge as a Source of
Competitive Advantage |
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Distinguishing between Data, Information, and Knowledge |
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Data
– symbols or facts out of context, and thus not directly nor
immediately meaningful
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Information – data placed within
some interpretive context, and thus acquiring meaning and value
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Knowledge – meaningfully
structured accumulation of information; information that is
relevant, actionable, and based at least partially on experience
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Distinguishing between Explicit and Tacit Knowledge1 |
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Explicit knowledge
– can be formally articulated or encoded; can be more easily
transferred or shared; is abstract and removed from direct
experience
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Tacit knowledge –
knowledge-in-practice; developed from direct experience and action;
highly pragmatic and situation specific; subconsciously understood
and applied; difficult to articulate; usually shared through highly
interactive conversation and shared experience.
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Barriers to the Sharing of Tacit
Knowledge2 |
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Hierarchies,
when they implicitly assume wisdom accrues to those with the most
impressive organizational titles
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Strong preferences for analysis over
intuition discouraging
employees to offer ideas without "hard facts" to back it up
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Penalties for
failure
discouraging
experimentation
Freedom To Fail
Noble Failure
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Strong preferences for a particular type of
communication within working groups
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Fear of failing to express the inexpressible
when trying to convert tacit knowledge into explicit one
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Inequality in status among the participants
is a strong inhibitor for tacit knowledge sharing, especially when
exacerbated by different frameworks for assessing information
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Uneasiness of expressing emotional life
experiences rather than intellectual disagreements
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Distance, both physical separation
and time
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Application of Tacit Knowledge in
Innovation2 |
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Problem solving
– experts, as opposite to novices, can
solve a problem
more readily as they have in mind a pattern born of experience,
which they can overlay on a particular problem and use to quickly
detect a solution
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Problem finding –
linking a general sense of intellectual or existential unease to
radical innovation: creative
problem framing allows the rejection of the "obvious" answer to a
problem in favor of asking a wholly different question. Intuitive
discovery is often not simply an answer to the specific problem but
an insight into its real nature.
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Tacit Knowledge as a Source
of Competitive Advantage
Tacit knowledge underlies many
competitive
capabilities.
The experience, stored as as tacit knowledge, often reaches consciousness in
the form of insights,
intuitions, and flashes of inspiration.
The marvelous capacity of your
mind to make sense of your previous collection of experiences and to connect
patterns from the past to the present and future is essential to the
innovation process. "The creativity necessary for
innovation derives not only from obvious
and visible expertise, but from invisible reservoirs of experience."1
The Jazz of Innovation: 11 Practice Tips
Tacit knowledge, or implicit knowledge, as opposite
to explicit knowledge, is far less tangible and is deeply embedded into an
organization's operating practices. It is often called ''organizational
culture'. "Tacit knowledge
includes relationships, norms, values, and standard operating procedures.
Because tacit knowledge is much harder to detail, copy, and distribute, it can
be a sustainable source of
competitive advantage...
What increasingly differentiates
success
and
failure is how well you locate, leverage, and blend available explicit
knowledge with internally generated tacit knowledge."3
9
Signs of a Losing Organization
Inaccessible from explicit expositions, tacit
knowledge is protected from competitors unless key individuals are hired away.
Managing Tacit Knowledge
Managing tacit knowledge is a significant
challenge in the business world – and it requires
more than mere awareness of barriers.
During the new idea generation
– divergent thinking
– phase, people create a wealth of possible solutions
to a problem. "Chaos succeeds in creating newness because it takes place in
a system that is non-linear".4 In a well-managed development
process, where a group of diverse individuals addresses a common challenge,
varying perspectives foster creative abrasion, intellectual conflict between
diverse viewpoints producing energy that is channeled into new ideas.1
Mechanisms by which collective tacit knowledge
is created and tapped include:
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Brainstorming
–
gathering together a set of experts with diverse skills, preferably
including client representatives. Main rules to be followed during the idea
generation phase: defer judgments; build on the ideas of others; one
conversation at one time; stay focused on the topic; and think outside the
box - encourage wild ideas. All ideas should be recorded and discussed
during the selection – convergent thinking
– phase.
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In large organizations that are conceived as a
collective of communities, separate community perspectives can be
amplified by interchanges in order to increase divergent thinking. "Out of
this friction of competing ideas can come the sort of improvisational sparks
necessary for igniting
organizational innovation".1
Managers and innovation
team leaders
can use tacit knowledge to aid convergent thinking by creating guiding
visions and concepts for teams involved in
innovation.
The Tao of Leadership
Innovation Process: Diversion
and Conversion of Ideas
"The process of innovation is a rhythm of search
and selection, exploration and synthesis, cycles of divergent thinking followed
by convergence".2
Loose-Tight Leadership
Divergence, or creative synthesis, is the
interlocking of previously unrelated skills, or matrices of thought. As soon as
a sufficient choice of innovative ideas has been generated, a solution
– convergence upon acceptable action
– needs to be defined and agreed upon. Confining the
discussion here to managing the tacit dimensions of knowledge three types of
tacit knowledge – overlapping specific, collective, and
guiding – need to be managed...
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