The really important aspect of tacit learning, as any apprentice will tell you, is that it’s almost a process of osmosis. You gain more insight from simply being around someone, and sharing experiences with them, than you would do by explicit instruction. There’s nothing new in this revelation: it was, after all, Confucius who said “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand”. Tacit knowledge is gained most frequently through ‘action learning’, working with others on problems, acting and then reflecting on those actions.
