Tacit Knowledge: The Hidden Engine of True Innovation  

Tacit Knowledge: The Hidden Engine of True Innovation

"Wee can know more than we can tell" - Michael Polanyi

...and more than we can be aware of knowing

Tacit knowledge is based on personal wisdom, insights, intuition and experience. It is dynamically created, continuously enriched and ever new, of enormous value, unique, surprisingly contextualized and current. Unlike explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge is difficult to express and thus more difficult to transfer to others. Often, people are unaware of their knowledge or how it can be valuable to others.

In a perfectly compatible and complementary way, tacit knowledge connects us to others and the events around us; it is based on information not consciously acquired and elaborated, which, according to a ‘mysterious’ process, exactly answers specific requests and questions in a given moment.

What is the role of tacit knowledge in innovation?

Well, tacit knowledge is precisely the source of innovation that can be considered as such; thus, new, complex, integrable and implementable, and not just a creative and self-centered product of our imagination, disconnected from context. Innovation arises from a non-rational process, but it simply occurs, as a light bulb suddenly turning on after an unaware integration and combination of different inputs and stimuli, filtered and elaborated from our uniqueness; it is a package of well-supported and well-argued ideas, visions, methods, concepts, stories and previsions, respondent to the present time and surprisingly in immediate resonance with what surrounds us.