Tacit and Explicit Knowledge?

In order to understand the Knowledge Management, we need to understand the two main components or pillars of knowledge, Implicit or Tacit and Explicit Knowledge.

Tacit knowledge is more commonly used term for implicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is what the expert knows, which is derived from experience and embodies beliefs and values. It is the root or base of generation of new knowledge. The most important aspect of knowledge management is ability to convert the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is represented as document, content which is created with sole purpose of sharing or communicating with another person. It is knowledge which is coded and stored in some form of repository. The most common form of explicit knowledge are documents, files, images, audios and videos.

Both forms of knowledge are important from knowledge management's perspective and effectiveness.

We will discuss key functional areas of Knowledge Management in subsequent posts. After discussing key functional areas of Knowledge Management, we will come back to the "ability to convert the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge".