Knowledge creation, business and art: exploring the contradictions and commonalities

Abstract

For over a decade, knowledge management (KM), a strand of strategic management, has studied the nature and role of knowledge in social groupings such as modern organizations. The result is a significant pool of insights, some useful, a few rhetorical, simplistic and shallow. This article examines four knowledge creation theories in KM and illustrates how some of the insights useful in business contexts could apply to the creative and practice-led disciplines (CPD), especially the arts and design. At first sight, the gap between these disciplines seems wide. However, they share many commonalities and interests, as strategic management field is also multi-disciplinary, practice-based and regards creativity as imperative. This article illustrates that KM could provide valuable insights on issues such as the processes of knowledge creation in complex contexts, and CPD could also inform strategic and KM discourse by offering unique approaches for tapping into, and vivid explications of communicating, tacit knowledge at individual or group level. Demonstrating these insights' potential value beyond the boundaries of their original disciplines indicates some degree of transdisciplinary significance, which will hopefully stimulate further thoughts and more in-depth studies amongst scholars of both camps.

Keywords:

• arts
• design
• knowledge creation
• knowledge management
• tacit knowledge