Search

Article Information


The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation
Leonard, Dorothy , and Sylvia Sensiper
40/3  (Spring 1998): 112-132

The complexity of skills and processes needed in the development of today's products and services requires that managers attend to the role of tacit knowledge during innovation. Knowledge held in people's bodies and heads, our unarticulated knowledge, is the very basis of creativity and is not easily captured nor codified. The process of innovation is both an exploration and synthesis. This article examines ways in which managers can begin to deal with tacit knowledge; how to create an environment for a divergent process that includes a wide and healthy proliferation of ideas and a successful convergent process in which options are narrowed and a solution is decided upon and implemented.

 


California Management Review

Berkeley-Haas's Premier Management Journal

Published at the University of California for more than sixty years, California Management Review seeks to share knowledge that challenges convention and shows a better way of doing business.

Learn more
Follow Us