Acquiring and applying contextualised tacit knowledge

The acquisition and application of knowledge, in particular tacit knowledge, are seen as decisive competitive factors in the knowledge society of the twenty-first century. Despite much talk about the importance of knowledge transfer, little research shows how to identify and measure tacit knowledge, less research addresses how to transfer tacit knowledge between individuals and even fewer of these approaches offer any technology that can assist with transfer. The approach outlined in this paper, known as Ripple Down Rules (RDR), is not concerned with identifying who has tacit knowledge but with how to capture tacit knowledge from those identified by some means as experts. Unlike most knowledge acquisition approaches, the RDR knowledge acquisition technique does not rely on the expert to specify what they know. Instead, tacit knowledge becomes codified by the RDR system while the domain expert exercises his or her expertise. The knowledge may be transferred to another individual through our recent extensions to RDR which uses Formal Concept Analysis to retrospectively and automatically develop knowledge models that the user can explore. The high degree of participation, ownership and control afforded by the RDR technique together with the simplicity of the approach enables and encourages user satisfaction and utilisation of the system. Others within the organisation can apply that knowledge by executing the rules or they can automatically generate and compare models to internalise that knowledge. In either case, the result is that the knowledge stays in the organisation after the individual expert retires or leaves. This addresses two knowledge management challenges: utilisation and preservation of knowledge.