Create shared capital from tacit knowledge
Organizations have vast amounts of valuable information that often remains underutilized. This tacit knowledge – experiences, practices, and insights – is in employees' heads or scattered across different systems.
What is tacit knowledge?
Tacit knowledge is expertise and understanding that is difficult to document or transfer to others. It develops through experience and includes:
- Practical experiences and learning from mistakes
- Customer knowledge and relationships
- Process expertise and best practices
- Problem-solving skills and innovative approaches
Challenge: Knowledge remains underutilized
Traditionally, sharing tacit knowledge has been challenging:
- Information is difficult to find when needed
- Experts don't have time to document everything
- Knowledge disappears with employees
- New employees have to learn everything from scratch
Solution: AI as a harnesser of tacit knowledge
Modern AI offers new opportunities for utilizing tacit knowledge:
1. Automatic documentation
- AI can identify and store valuable conversations
- Meetings automatically generate summaries and action items
- Essential information is captured from customer encounters
2. Intelligent search functions
- AI understands context and purpose
- Information is found quickly by asking in natural language
- Similar cases and solutions emerge
3. Proactive knowledge provision
- The system recognizes situations where certain information would be useful
- Relevant experience and expertise is brought forward automatically
- New employees get support immediately when needed
Practical benefits for the organization
Effective utilization of tacit knowledge brings concrete advantages:
- Faster problem-solving based on previous experiences
- Better customer service through deeper understanding
- More efficient onboarding for new employees
- Innovation emergence as knowledge from different areas combines
Steps towards shared capital
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Identify your organization's tacit knowledge
- Which processes depend on individual expertise?
- When is information needed but not easily found?
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Choose the right tools
- AI-based knowledge management system
- Automatic documentation tools
- Intelligent search functions
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Create a culture of knowledge sharing
- Encourage employees to share their experiences
- Make knowledge storage easy and rewarding
- Show concrete benefits
Future possibilities
As AI develops, the utilization of tacit knowledge will become increasingly sophisticated:
- Predictive analysis identifies future needs
- Personalized learning paths accelerate skill development
- Real-time decision support improves quality
Tacit knowledge is an organization's goldmine. With AI, it can be transformed into shared capital accessible to everyone, growing the entire organization's expertise and performance.
