Tacit Knowledge
/ˈtæsɪt ˈnɒlɪdʒ/
Definition
Knowledge gained through experience, intuition, and hands-on skill that is hard to fully put into words or formulas — in contrast to "explicit knowledge," which can be written down and shared easily.
Examples
- • A master craftsman's feel for the work is classic tacit knowledge — a manual alone can't transfer it.
- • You have to turn the team's tacit knowledge into docs and checklists so newcomers can catch up fast.
Origin
Coined by philosopher Michael Polanyi in his 1966 book "The Tacit Dimension," where he wrote, "we can know more than we can tell." It later spread through knowledge management via Ikujiro Nonaka's SECI model.
Description
Tacit knowledge is what you know through body and experience but cannot fully explain — like riding a bike, recognizing a face, or making a skilled, intuitive judgment. Its opposite, explicit knowledge, can be stated clearly in language, formulas, and documents.
Management scholar Ikujiro Nonaka described how the two continually convert into each other in his SECI model of organizational knowledge creation:
- Socialization: tacit → tacit (shared through joint experience)
- Externalization: tacit → explicit (captured as concepts and docs)
- Combination: explicit → explicit (combining existing knowledge)
- Internalization: explicit → tacit (absorbed through learning)
Turning individual and organizational know-how into documents, rules, and automation — that is, making tacit knowledge explicit — is a central challenge in both knowledge management and engineering.