COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE FROM TACIT KNOWLEDGE? UNPACKING THE CONCEPT AND ITS STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS.

Competitive advantage grows from firm-specific knowledge. So theories relating strategy to knowledge require a typology, much as Polanyi distinguished tacit from objective knowledge. Ethnographic research suggests separating tacit knowledge into three sub-types: conscious, automatic and communal. Each has different strategic implication. EMI's experience of CAT scanning illustrates their interplay.