Abstract
At the dawn of a new millennium, the most valuable global commodity is knowledge, particularly new knowledge about technology that may give a culture, a company and/or a laboratory an advantage. This paper begins with examples of tacit technology transfer, including atomic weapons technology, whose development suggests that failure to preserve tacit knowledge could lead to uninvention. This discussion is followed by a taxonomy of knowledge, distinguishing between four types--information, skills, judgement and wisdom. These types are used to refine the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge, including their role in teams.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agre, P.E., 1997, Computation and Human Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Albright, J. and M. Kunstel, 1997, Bombshell, New York: Random House.
Anderson, J., 1983, The Architecture of Cognition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bechtel, W. and A. Abrahamsen, 1991, Connectionism and the Mind: An Introduction to Parallel Processing in Networks, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Bell, A.G., 1876, Experiments made by A. Graham Bell, Bell Family Papers, Library of Congress. I.
Bijker, W.E., 1987, 'The Social Construction of Bakelite: Toward a Social Theory of Invention', in W.E. Bjiker, T.P. Hughes, and T. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 159-187.
Bijker, W.E., 1995, Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bliss, M., 1982, The Discovery of Insulin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bradshaw, G., 1992, 'The Airplane and the Logic of Invention', in R.N. Giere (ed.), Cognitive Models of Science, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, vol. XV, pp. 239-250.
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid, 1991, 'Organizational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation,' Organizational Science 2 (1), 40-57.
Cameron, E.H., 1960, Samuel Slater: Father of American Manufacturers, Portland, MA: The Bond Wheelwright Company.
Carlson, W.B., 1994, 'Entrepreneurship in the early development of the telephone: How did William Orton and Gardiner Hubbard conceptualize this new technology?', Business and Economic History 23 (2), 161-192.
Carlson, W.B. and M.E. Gorman, 1989, 'Thinking and Doing at Menlo Park: Edison's Development of the Telephone, 1876-1878', in W. Pretzer (ed.), Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, Detroit: Wayne Stat University Press.
Carlson, W.B. and M.E. Gorman, 1990, 'Understanding Invention as a Cognitive Process: The Case of Thomas Edison and Early Motion Pictures, 1888-1891', Social Studies of Science 20, 387-430.
Chi, M.T.H., P.J. Feltovich, and R. Glaser, 1981, 'Categorization and Representation of Physics Problems by Experts and Novices', Cognitive Science 5, 121-152.
Collins, H.M., 1982, 'Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks', in B. Barnes and D. Edge (eds.), Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Crane, D., 1972, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Diamond, J., 1997, Guns, Germs and Steel, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Dienes, Z. and J. Perner, 1999, 'A Theory of Implicit and Explicit Knowledge', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5), 735-808.
Donald, M., 1991, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, Cambridge; UK: Harvard.
Dreyfus, H.L. and S.L. Dreyfus, 1986, Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer, New York: The Free Press.
Dunbar, K., 1997, 'How Scientists Think', in T.B. Ward, S.M. Smith, and J. Vaid (eds.), Creative Thought, Washington, D.C: American Psychological Association.
Ericsson, K.A. and N. Charness, 1994, 'Expert Performance: Its Structure and Acquisition', American Psychologist 49 (8), 725-747.
Ericsson, K.A. and H.A. Simon, 1984, Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Evans, J.S.B.T. and D.E. Over, 1999, 'Explicit Representations in Hypothetical Thinking', Behavioral & Brain Sciences 22, 763-764.
Gigerenzer, G., P. Todd, and ABC Research Group, 1999, Simple Heuristics that Make us Smart, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glisky, E.L. and D.L. Schachter, 1989, 'Extending the Limits of Complex Learning Organic Amnesia: Computer Training in a Vocational Domain', Neuropsychologia 27 (1), 107-120.
Gorman, M.E., 1992, Simulating Science: Heuristics, Mental Models and Technoscientific Thinking, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gorman, M.E., 1995, 'Confirmation, Disconfirmation and Invention: The Case of Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone', Thinking and Reasoning I (1), 31-53.
Gorman, M.E., 1997, 'Mind in the World: Cognition and Practice in the Invention of the Telephone', Social Studies of Science 27 (4), 583-624.
Gorman, M.E., 1998, Transforming Nature: Ethics, Invention and Design, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Gorman, M.E., M.M. Mehalik, W.B. Carlson, and M. Oblon, 1993, 'Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray and the Speaking Telegraph: A Cognitive Comparison', History of Technology 15, 1-56.
Gorman, M.E., M.M. Mehalik, and P.H. Werhane, 2000, Ethical and Environmental Challenges to Engineering, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Gusterson, H., 1996, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Harris, J., 1992, Essays in Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, Hampshire, UK: Variorum.
Henderson, K., 1998, 'The Role of Material Objects in the Design Process: A Comparison of Two Design Cultures and How They Contend with Automation', Science, Technology and Human Values 23 (2), 139-174.
Holton, G., 1973, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hughes, T.P., 1987, 'The Evolution of Large Technological Systems', in W.E. Bjiker, T.P. Hughes, and T.J. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 51-82.
Hughes, T.P., 1998, Rescuing Prometheus, New York: Pantheon Books.
Hutchins, E., 1995, Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Johnson-Laird, P.N., 1983, Mental Models, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kolodner, J.L., 1991, 'Improving Human Decision Making Through Case-Based Decision Aiding', AI Magazine (Summer), 52-68.
Kuhn, T.S., 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kulkarni, D. and H.A. Simon, 1988, 'The Processes of Scientific Discovery: The Strategies of Experimentation', Cognitive Science 12, 139-175.
Levine, J.M. and R.L. Moreland, in Press, 'Knowledge Transmission in Work Groups: Helping Newcomers to Succeed', in L. Thompson, D. Messick, and J. Levine (eds.), Shared Knowledge in Organizations, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Liang, D.W., R. Moreland, and L. Argote, 1995, 'Group Versus Individual Training and Group Performance: The Mediating Role of Transactive Memory', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (4), 384-393.
Mackenzie, D. and G. Spinardi, 1995, 'Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons', American Journal of Sociology 101 (1), 44-99.
Mathews, R.C. and L.G. Roussel, 1997, 'Abstractness of Implicit Knowledge: A Cognitive Evolutionary Perspective', in D.C. Berry (ed.), How Implicit is Implicit Learning? Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 13-47.
Mehalik, M.M., 2000, 'Technical and Design Tools: The Integration of ISO 14001, Life Cycle Development, Environmental Design and Cost Accounting', in R. Hillary (ed.), ISO 14001 Case Studies and Practical Experience, London: Greenleaf: tba.
Milgram, S., 1974, Obedience to Authority, New York: Harper & Row.
Neisser, U., 1982, Memory Observed, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman.
Nonaka, I. and H. Takeuchi, 1995, The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, New York: Oxford University Press.
Norman, D.A., 1993, Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, New York: Addison Wesley.
Okada, T. and H.A. Simon, 1997, 'Collaborative Discovery in a Scientific Domain', Cognitive Science 21 (2), 109-146.
Patel, V.L., J.F. Arocha, and D.R. Kaufman, 1999, 'Expertise and Tacit Knowledge in Medicine', in R.J. Sternberg and J.A. Horvath (eds.), Tacit Knowledge in Professional Practice: Researcher and Practitioner Perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; pp. 75-99.
Perkins, D.N., 1992, 'The Topography of Invention', in R.J. Weber and D.N. Perkins (eds.), Inventive Minds, New York: Oxford University Press; pp. 238-250.
Piaget, J. and R. Garcia, 1989, Psychogenesis and the History of Science, New York: Columbia University Press.
Rabinow, P., 1996, Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Reber, A.S., 1993, Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge: An Essay on the Cognitive Unconscious, New York: Oxford University Press.
Rhodes, R., 1995, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Riordan, M. and L. Hoddeson, 1997, Crystal Fire, New York: W.W. Norton.
Rogers, E.M. and J.K. Larsen, 1984, Silicon Valley Fever, New York: Basic Books.
Root-Bernstein, R.S., 1989, Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Human Knowledge, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ryle, G., 1949, The concept of Mind, New York: Barnes & Noble.
Schachter, D.L., 1998, 'Memory and Awareness', Science 280, 59-60.
Schrage, M., 1990, Shared Minds, New York: Random House.
Shelp, R.K., 1984, 'The Role of Service Technology in Development', in R.K. Shelp, J.C. Stephenson, N.S. Truitt, and B. Wasow (eds.), Service Industries and Economic Development: Case Studies in Technology Transfer, New York: Praeger, pp. 1-18.
Shrager, J. and P. Langley, 1990, Computational Models of Scientific Discovery and Theory Formation, San Mateor, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
Smith, K.A., 1998, 'The Academic Bookshelf', Journal of Engineering Education 87 (4), 339-341.
Sorensen, K.H. and N. Levold, 1992, 'Tacit Networks, Heterogeneous Engineers, and Embodied Technology', Science, Technology & Human Values 17 (1), 13-35.
Squire, L.R. 1992, 'Declarative and Nondeclarative Memory: Multiple Brain Systems Supporting Learning and Memory', Cognitive Neuroscience 4 (3), 232-243.
Sternberg, R.J. and J.A. Horvath (eds.), 1999, Tacit Knowledge in Professional Practice: Researcher and Practitioner Perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Truitt, N.S., 1984, 'Mass Merchandising and Economic Development: Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Mexico and Peru', in R.K. Shelp, J.C. Stephenson, N.S. Truitt and B. Wasow (eds.), Service Industries and Economic Development: Case Studies in Technology Transfer, New York, Praeger, pp. 49-103.
Vaughan, D., 1996, The Challenger Launch Decision, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Volpe, C.E., J.A. Cannon-Bowers, and E. Salas, 1996, 'The Impact of Cross-Training on Team Functioning: An Empirical Investigation', Human Factors 38 (1), 87-100.
Wegner, D.M., 1986, 'Transactive Memory: A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind', in B. Mullen and G.R. Goethals (eds.), Theories of Group Behavior, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 185-208.
Wegner, D.M., 1995, 'A Computer Model of Human Transactive Memory', Social Cognition 13 (3), 319-339.
Werhane, P.H., 1991, 'Engineers and Management: The Challenge of the Challenger Incident', Journal of Business Ethics 10, 605-616.
Werhane, P.H., 1994, 'A Note on Five Traditional Theories of Moral Reasoning', Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia.
Westrum, R. and H.A. Wilcox, 1989, 'Sidewinder', Invention & Technology (Fall), 57-63.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gorman, M.E. Types of Knowledge and Their Roles in Technology Transfer. The Journal of Technology Transfer 27, 219–231 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015672119590
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015672119590