"We know that knowledge starts as tacit, and has to be used while tacit. in other words, people learn as individuals, and have to internalise knowledge before they can use it again. Also we know that knowledge is very difficult to externalise, and to turn from tacit to explicit. So perhaps the temptation is to leave knowledge in tacit mode. Why bother to try externalising, or capturing, knowledge? Why not leave it in people's memories, and connect up the people? That's partly the idea behind communities of practice, knowledge-focused social networks and crowdsourcing. Keep the knowledge tacit - connect up the people - leave the knowledge in the brains." - Stephen Dale from Bookmarklet