Tacit Knowledge in the Process of Innovation
Tacit Knowledge in the Process of Innovation

Summary/Abstract: A primary goal of innovation is to maintain and/or improve company’s revenue by increasing its competitiveness. Many organizational changes possess, however, a strong tendency to cause reductions in personnel. From short-term profitability calculations, a common practice of the externalisation of older em-ployees was developed and workers over fifty are often deprived of the opportu-nity for innovative behaviour. Frequently, they are considered a hindrance to technological and process-orientated changes within the company. Globalization and E-business are areas which are predominantly occupied by younger workers with operational innovation frequently seen as application of new techniques. Increasingly, however, enterprises are also confronted with the problems this youth-centred personnel development causes. For the further increasing the share of younger workers in the staff by new recruitment, there is insufficient person-nel. At the same time an additional problem ensues. The loss of experience is a substantial deficit which enterprises have to face and overcome [7]. The reali-zation that a stabilization of operational innovation ability does not inevitably require distancing the older generation begins to prevail - although somewhat hesitantly. The value of knowledge and experience in modern, flexible work structures increases. There are the employees, who generate with their (implicit) knowledge new understandings and create competitive advantages for the enter-prise using innovation [13, p. 1]. Thus, experience is increasingly recognized as a special and important human resource [9, p. 4]. The holders of know-how are predominantly older employees who play a special role regarding this aspect in the innovation process. When knowledge contains, in particular, know-how, potential and topicality, it guarantees thereby – especially for older employees – a certain position of power, too.

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