Enterprise Architecting for Tacit Knowledge Transfer: Sustaining Competitive Advantage:

Abstract

Tacit knowledge forms the bulk of a firm’s unique knowledge asset, and it is the main source of a firm’s competitive advantage. Up to 90% of organization knowledge exists in tacit form and is embedded deep within the employee’s mind; it is intuitive, unarticulated, and cannot be codified into explicit form. The tacit nature of such knowledge prevents it from being extracted, formalized, and transferred easily. This presents a concern for enterprises as this knowledge must be captured, stored, and made easily accessible within the organization to sustain the competitive advantage. An architecting framework is developed to help users design end-to-end tacit knowledge transfer solutions in enterprises. Solutions generated with the framework consider the amount and type of tacit knowledge to be transferred, transfer pathways, transfer process appraisal, modes of transfer, and overall transfer performance evaluation. Finally, the framework is qualitatively evaluated through an R&D lab case study. The architecting framework is implemented on the R&D lab transformation project for tacit knowledge transfer, guided by the broader Architecting Innovative Enterprise Strategy (ARIES) framework.