Tacit Knowledge Sharing and Personal Branding: How to Derive Innovation From Project Teams?

Innovation, relationships, cooperation, and knowledge are key factors which determine a competitive advantage in the network economy. A network serves as a contemporary form of market process coordination. Network economy, according to the idea of prosumerism, is founded on collaboration of individual creators based on a network of values instead of hierarchical dependencies. Another feature of a network is that it imposes symmetry of advantages. In such conditions, a set of relationships of a company in an arrangement: "one to many" changes into a relationship "many to many" (networking), and creates a complete network of company values including: business partners and customers (external network), as well as the company's employees (internal network). The importance of knowledge and relationship in the process of network value creation by innovation is significant. In light of all the above, identifying valuable innovations takes place as a result of symmetrical co-creation and cooperation of members of a consciously configured value network. The objective of the study is to highlight that building a personal brand could be a natural motivator for knowledge workers to share the tacit knowledge they possess. This knowledge, next to explicit knowledge, innovation, relationship, and cooperation, is a key determinant of competitive advantage in the networked economy. Knowledge, as a source of innovation, determines an advantage of one network arrangement over another. This situation has completely changed the role of knowledge workers who now become independent knowledge producers. Modern companies are increasingly likely to work in a project management environment because it ensures their success in the implementation of innovation. Knowledge sharing and team cooperation encourage innovative solutions creation and consequently positively affect project performance. Bearing this fact in mind, the authors studied how tacit knowledge sharing affects the process of building a personal brand and project performance. For this purpose, the authors conducted a study among Polish professionals with different roles and experience in managing projects in various industries. The data collected during the study has been analysed using the equal structural modelling method. The results indicate that tacit knowledge sharing is used when developing a personal brand of knowledge workers. The intermediary role of personal branding in the relationship of tacit knowledge sharing and project performance points to a new context of tacit knowledge sharing as a key factor of knowledge management in learning organisations, which can be used for designing incentive schemes. A personal brand as a strong motivator for tacit knowledge sharing is a gain based not on financial benefits but on creating a perspective of future income whose foundation is a good reputation of one's strengthened brand. Tacit knowledge being a source of innovation stimulated by tailored incentive schemes enhances growth of successful innovation.