Unused knowledge. By Günter Abel
A fixation on maximum process efficiency and product marketability often leads to “innovations” that are only apparently new. If we are aiming for really sustainable renewal, we have to look more closely at two frequently neglected sources of innovation: creativity and tacit knowledge.
“Innovation” is the cry now on all sides, in science and technology, business and society. The sustainability of modern societies depends on it, they say. And so the search is on for the sources, mechanisms and resources of innovation. Searchers include practical users of knowledge as well as theoreticians and artists. Nevertheless, the quest has had little to show for itself so far. The riddle of innovation remains unresolved.
More than that: short-winded fixations on the finished product, efficiency and marketability threaten the search for the resources of innovation. If we concentrated instead on the processes by which creative innovations are generated, it could open our eyes to the sources of sustainable innovation: creativity and tacit knowledge.
Creativity as a source of innovation
To be creative means to bring something new into the world, not just something different. We can produce many things with a different, new value by combining elements that are already known. In radical creativity, however (for example, the work of path-breaking artists, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs), things are not just recombined within an existing system. Instead, new principles and rules come into effect. Material is reorganised. New processes, practices and artefacts are born. Famous examples are the copernican revolution, which said that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but the earth around the sun; the transition to non-euclidean geometry; the shift to the depiction of perspective in painting and architecture; and the development of computers and new technical systems. Creativity is the most important source of innovation. It is therefore illuminating to examine the characteristics of creative processes in the form of simple heuristics. In short-hand, these include the following:
1.Have the courage to try something new. 2. Give your love of experiment free rein. 3. Venture to combine problem-solving methods, practices and strategies in new ways. 4. Draw analogies between apparently widely separate fields. 5. Activate your imagination and free yourself for mental experiments. 6. Establish relationships between levels of observation. 7. Introduce new aspects and different levels of abstraction. 8. Think in a very problem-oriented way, and with less discipline-orientation. 9. Switch between different perspectives and descriptive systems. 10. and last but not least: Pay attention to your humour, because if you have no sense of humour, fun and play you are unlikely ever to be considered creative and innovative.
Tacit knoledge as a resource
There is more to knowledge than we know, and we know more than we can tell: skills, competences, contexts, backgrounds, attitudes, purposes, habits and much more. An example of explicit knowledge would be the above-mentioned scientific knowledge that the earth revolves around the sun. Such knowledge is in our conscious awareness, articulated, specific, communicable and inter-subjectively verifiable. An example of the tacit knowledge already used in that explicit area – which in contrast to the explicit knowledge is often not (no longer) consciously perceived – would be e.g. the knowledge of how to verify a hypothesis in physics and how to operate the measuring equipment to do it. In order to have explicit knowledge of something we need to draw on the tacit, i.e. even more unspecific and non-conscious, background knowledge which is more extensive than the explicit dimension.
where the debate on innovation issues is restricted to efficiency and growth, it is typically limited to the area of explicit knowledge. The network of tacit knowledge provides opportunities by its components’ capacity for flexible reorganisation, but these opportunities rarely come into view. one of the main reasons is a high risk of the centipede syndrome. In other words, automatic skills may be lost as soon as we examine them too closely: paralysis by analysis. Tennis or snooker players can tell you all about it. Their performance often declines sharply as soon as they try to become conscious of normally intuitive moves. Nevertheless, the ability to make creative improvements in their game chiefly depends on making changes in this dimension. Changes in emphasis and orientation within the tacit area are especially important for the generation of creative novelty. Opportunities for creative problem-solving lie dormant in the network of tacit knowledge.
The area of tacit knowledge can be defined in some detail. for theoretician Michael Polanyi, the structure of what he calls tacit knowing consists of a “proximal” and a “distal” zone. the proximal zone is so close to us and so taken for granted that we don’t even notice it, registering it subliminally if at all. In contrast, we focus our practical/ procedural attention (not our theoretical attention) on the distal zone. The latter comes into play, for example, when we are cycling and make sure we keep our balance by putting the right pressure on the handlebars. Distal tacit knowledge is a practice, not a theory. This practice is often forgotten when, with our theoretical bias, we try to think something new.
a particularly typical feature of tacit knowledge is that it is not easy to draw it into the explicit domain. However, the ability to make discoveries and generate innovations uses precisely the differences and explicitations between explicit and tacit knowledge and within tacit knowledge, in turn, between distal and proximal aspects that are involved in achieving the transition. Tacit knowledge can be understood here as an intermediate form between explicit knowledge and ignorance. If shifts occur in the relationship between explicit and tacit knowledge and/ or the proximal and the distal zone of the latter, creative innovations can be produced. The main issue is, therefore, to capture and make productive the relevance of background knowledge and automatic processes that are so taken for granted that one rarely notices them specifically. Pre-conscious knowledge has to be transformed into conscious knowledge, and as far as possible both have to be articulated and made productive in terms of problem-solving. A transformation of tacit knowledge of this nature is not a simple linear transaction, or indeed a simple one at all. The transformation can be divided up into three different types depending on the degree to which they are accessible to being articulated and transformed into explicit knowledge and into innovation.
1. Creating awareness of factual knowledge
Polanyi’s example of tacit knowing is well known: I hammer a nail into the wall. In this action, attention is focused distally on the nail and the hammer. I do not heed the many proximal components without which I could not perform the task: my hand movement, the position of the fingers, firmness of the pressure exerted by the hand and many others.
Let us assume we want to design a machine that will hammer nails into the wall for us. for this purpose, param- eters from the proximal zone of my tacit knowledge have to bemoved into focus and then converted into a mechanical design (e.g. the power of the machine’s stroke in relation to the material properties of the wall). In such cases, the zone of tacit knowledge that can be articulated in language and design rules is explicitated and translated into the design of an implement. As another example, consider experiments undertaken to teach robots humanoid perceptions and active skills. Here, too, more than explicit knowledge needs to be transferred. The tacit knowledge involved in perceptions and actions and, in turn, within this tacit knowledge both distal aspects and the proximal aspects that run inconspicuously in the background would have to be made explicit and fed into the robot by way of a transfer of “natural intelligence”. In short, the robot would have to be programmed with background knowledge that follows not only the “formal artificial intelligence” but also the “non-algorithmic natural intelligence” of human beings, includ- ing tacit knowledge.
2. Identifying behaviour patterns
Let us assume we want to take an innovative approach to improving our legal system and social institutions. As a rule, we operate in social institutions using simple, successful heuristics, i.e. actions that are performed quasi-intuitively on the basis of experience. We act in accordance with the institutional practices and our own preferences. Tacit knowledge anchored in custom is also always at work in these actions. Its mechanisms are made up primarily of procedural, process-related and practical/normative compo-nents of morality and the law, for example, whose smooth operation is based on a knowledge of how something is done, but not on theoretical knowledge. Unless we activate this practical type of tacit knowledge, we cannot grasp what can be considered a norm in an ambiguous system of law or society or understand how to establish norms and rules explicitly.
3. Articulating underlying values and philosophies
We were able to move the types of tacit knowledge cited in points 1 and 2 into the focus of explicit attention. Explicitations of the tacit become more difficult, however, as we get closer to the dimensions of pre-intentional, pre-reflexive, pre-theoretical and pre-linguistic assumptions, processes and attitudes. this is where we encounter the intimate fundamentals on which our relationships with the world, ourselves and other people are founded.
Let us assume we would like to promote a culture of interpersonal trust. In order to get this “innovation” under way it is not enough to derive theoretical insights from tacit knowledge or extrapolate practical, instrumental behaviour. Instead, we need to reveal the unquestioning level on which we deal with ourselves and others and make it productive. Innovative measures to anchor our culture of trust only become possible when this type of tacit knowledge is incorporated, and only then can they accumulate the energy that will allow attitudes and actions to be guided.
The example also shows the cardinal importance of tacit knowledge for the dialogue between cultures. To conduct it means to incorporate the different dimensions of tacit knowledge that make up the true vital nerve of a culture, underlying the explicit articulations of knowledge of the living environment, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, religion and/or ritual. Much of what we initially fail to understand about an alien culture is due to the fact that we have not yet gained access to the wider setting of this different culture’s tacit forms of knowledge.
Explicit knowledge has a different profile from tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is tacit knowledge with new elements added, including increased attention, cognitive specification and a bias towards practical solutions. An understanding of the interaction between the tacit and the explicit and between the proximal and distal aspects of tacit knowledge is first required to help us understand what is actually going on when new knowledge is generated in a creative way. In addition to broadening the attention and shifting it from explicit to tacit knowledge, and within tacit knowledge from the distal to the proximal components, it is particularly important to apply those heuristics that were mentioned above under the heading of creativity as a source of innovation.
Günter Abel is a professor of theoretical philosophy and the Director of the international Innovationszentrum Wissensforschung (IZW)/Berlin Center for Knowledge Research at the Technical University of Berlin. His main interests include the philosophy of language and sign and knowledge research. Among other roles, Abel has been Vice-President of the Technical University of Berlin and President of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie (German Philosophical Society) and has held several guest professorships, including one at the ETH Zurich. He is a Member of the Board of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) and a permanent member of the Institut International de Philosophie (IIP).
