Competitive Advantage and Automated Sharing of Tacit Knowledge

In this chapter, the authors investigate how raw data, obtained from a variety of sources, can be processed into knowledge using automated techniques that will help organizations gain a competitive advantage. Firms have amassed so much data that only automated methods, such as data mining or converting existing knowledge into expert systems is possible to make any sense of it or to protect it from competitors. Further, the data that is processed may be considered tacit knowledge because it is hidden from people until it is processed. In this chapter, the authors discuss various sources of data that might help an organization achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. A firm can data mine its own production database for insight regarding its customers and markets that have previously been ignored. It might also mine social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), which has become a forum for individual preferences and activities from which the savvy organization could turn into competitive advantage. They also discuss how this knowledge can be protected from intrusion by competitors to sustain the competitive position it may achieve as a result of the discovery of knowledge from massive data sets.