Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract, and thus more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This can include personal wisdom, experience, insight, and intuition.
For example, knowing that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge; it can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. In contrast, the ability to speak a language, ride a bicycle, knead dough, play a musical instrument, or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge which is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other people.
Bibliography
Backlinks
- Blub studies
- Cedric Chin | Copying Better: How To Acquire The Tacit Knowledge of Experts
- Cedric Chin | Expertise Is ‘Just’ Pattern Matching
- Cedric Chin | The Tacit Knowledge Series
- Cedric Chin | The Tricky Thing About Creating Training Programs
- Cedric Chin | Why Tacit Knowledge Is More Important Than Deliberate Practice
- Explicit knowledge
- How to become an expert
- Isaac Wilks | It’s Time to Build for Good
- Metis
- Paul Graham | When People Are Naturally Good at Something
- Scott Alexander | Book Review: Seeing Like A State
- Todos
- Zach Tellman | Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers