5Â Knowledge Management Trends Defining 2026
Content Ops
What is Explicit Knowledge?
Break down the core concepts around explicit knowledge: what is it, what are its defining characteristics, how does it benefit teams, and how does it compare to tacit knowledge? We've prepared all you need to know.
In modern organizations, intellectual assets are as critical as physical ones. In fact, 58% of employers agree that knowledge and information are vital business resources. Explicit knowledge is an essential pillar of strong knowledge management practices. It gives teams a reliable, accessible foundation of documented information that they can act on with confidence.
Keep reading to learn what explicit knowledge is, how to spot it, the benefits it provides across teams, and how it compares to and interacts with tacit knowledge.
What is Explicit Knowledge?
Explicit knowledge is tangible information that is seamlessly shared from one person to the next. Also called expressive knowledge, it includes information that is easy to document, store, organize, and understand.
Explicit knowledge forms the foundation of product, procedural, and domain understanding that each team needs to do their jobs correctly. Therefore, this knowledge is often used to train or upskill employees.
What are the Characteristics of Explicit Knowledge?
Explicit knowledge has several defining characteristics that can help you identify it.
- It is recordable. This knowledge can be documented in written documents, digital formats or even multimedia. This recordability is what differentiates it from tacit knowledge.
- It is shareable. Organized, structured information is simple to send and disseminate among teams.
- It is scalable. Companies can distribute explicit knowledge by embedding it into Learning Management Systems (LMS) or centralized knowledge repositories.
What are Some Examples of Explicit Knowledge?
Explicit knowledge exists in a variety of formats across all companies:
- Written: Marketing reports, training manuals, standard operating procedures (SOPs), policy documents, financial statements, and case studies.
- Multimedia: Video tutorials, recorded webinars, audio transcripts, diagrams, and code snippets.
- Online: Knowledge bases, documentation portals, internal wikis, and websites.
These resources ensure critical knowledge remains accessible, reducing reliance on employee memory or informal communication channels.
What are the Benefits of Explicit Knowledge?
Explicit knowledge helps new and existing employees learn crucial information and skills that help them do their jobs efficiently. Some specific benefits within organizations include:
- Accelerated decision making: Explicit knowledge provides easy access to clear procedures, updated product information, customer data, and other documented information. This helps employees make quick, informed decisions with confidence.
- Improved institutional knowledge: When explicit knowledge is documented, it can be shared with many teams at the same time. It can take effort to organize and share it effectively, but doing so helps everyone learn faster and improves the overall understanding within the organization.
- Faster onboarding: New employees have many questions and need to find information quickly and easily. Explicit knowledge includes key resources and training materials that help employees learn and become autonomous.
- Reduced knowledge loss: When employees change jobs and retire, they take undocumented information with them. Explicit knowledge is codified and easy to find, so it doesn’t disappear with former employees.
- Fewer errors: With clear procedures, facts, and figures, people aren’t making assumptions. They can check documentation when performing tasks to make sure they are following protocols and not skipping important steps.
- Simplified operations and communications: Teams can easily share customer feedback, research results, and other explicit knowledge with relevant stakeholders. This information loop informs product roadmaps and company operations.
Explicit vs. Tacit Knowledge
There is a big difference between explicit and tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is intuitive and experiential, making it challenging for organizations to extract and document. However, this applied know-how is essential for maximizing business results.
Explicit Knowledge
Tacit Knowledge
Attributes
Definition
Knowledge that is easy to articulate, document, and share.
Knowledge that is ingrained in lived experiences and acquired by applying theory to real-life situations.
Transferability
High: can be shared through documentation, portals, and systems.
Low: requires mentorship, observation, or direct interaction.
Storage
Stored in file systems, knowledge bases, documentation portals., and other systems.
Often unrecorded and instead stored in the minds of subject matter experts.
Examples
Explicit knowledge includes product documentation, company policies, training videos, case studies, employee handbooks, and more.
Tacit knowledge includes life lessons, expert know-how, intuition, stories about specific experiences, and more.
Characteristics
It is recordable, codifiable, shareable, and scalable.
It is subjective and experience-based, hard to codify, and context-sensitive.
How to Transfer Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
Transferring knowledge from one type to another is important for both documenting organizational knowledge and helping employees apply theory to lived experiences.
Transferring explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge: The process of transforming explicit information into tacit knowledge is called internalization. It occurs when employees take the rules, procedures, and insights from explicit knowledge and apply it to real situations. They see how those practices influence real results and make adjustments based on their own experiences.
Transferring tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge: Turning tacit knowledge into explicit information is a bit harder than the other way around. This is when teams document the learned knowledge of subject matter experts, for example, turning expert interviews into FAQ documents. This way, other teams can read and learn from the expert’s experiences.
Conclusion
Explicit knowledge is a fundamental element in knowledge management strategies, and the benefits are concrete and measurable. Modern organizations are leveraging a wide range of technologies to manage explicit documentation and other knowledge assets. To learn how explicit knowledge fits into the current state of knowledge management and how innovative technologies are shaping and sharing information, get your copy of KMWorld’s 2026 State of KM & AI Report.
The 2026 State of Knowledge Management & AI
AI alone isn’t enough: organizations must make their knowledge AI-ready. Learn the steps leading organizations are taking to close the gap.
Explicit Knowledge FAQs
The five types of knowledge in knowledge management strategies are:
- Explicit: Explicit knowledge is concrete data, procedures, or insights that are easily documented and stored
- Tacit: Tacit knowledge is the understanding, insights, and know-how gained from a person’s lived experiences and practices skills. It’s knowing how to apply implicit knowledge in different contexts.
- Declarative: Often associated with raw data, declarative knowledge is information that simply states facts or describes something without proposing any related actions.
- Implicit: Implicit knowledge is gained through personal experiences, and it focuses on how information is applied in decision making.
- Procedural: Procedural knowledge refers to information that explains how to perform tasks, procedures, or operations, such as step-by-step guidelines.
5Â Knowledge Management Trends Defining 2026
Knowledge Management for AI: From Human to Agentic AI Enablement
