Technical knowledge creation

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to amend shortcomings of existing theory concerning organizational learning and knowledge management.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews and refines existing theory.
Findings - Findings from cognitive neuroscience suggest that technical knowledge domains essential for product development are largely nonlinguistic. Operations management/strategy tools enable the use of tacit knowledge in its tacit form and discourage premature standardization. Similarly, language use introduces standardization, which if introduced prematurely, causes incrementalism in line with findings from product development research. However, frameworks on organizational learning and knowledge management focus on language development and neglect use of tacit knowledge and the benefits involved with allowing elements of new product ideas to mature in a tacit form.
Originality/value - The language development emphasis en existing theory is questioned and amended using perspectives from cognitive neuroscience, product development, and operations management/strategy. The paper conceptualizes product development as an integral part of strategic renewal processes and illustrates how lean enables the use of tacit knowledge. The paper adds prototypes as the necessary, but currently missing outcome option from the intuiting and interpreting processes in the 4I framework.