Met John Blackwell today, very nice guy.  We had a long conversation about knowledge and strategy.  John displays a mastery of these subjects that was a joy to listen to.  Chatting to him suggests that his book will be well worth reading.

My recent exposure to Nonaka has lead me to view knowledge in a very dualistic fashion: either explicit or tacit and never the twain shall meet.  John bent my mind around the concept that knowledge is more like spectrum ranging from embodied knowledge to representational knowledge (although John didn't call it that, but I can't remember the term he used).

A particular thing I found hard to grasp was that knowledge transfer can be tacit to tacit without it being transferred to explicit in between.  Where did I get that notion from?  John gave me the example of riding a bicycle.  "Can you write a one page document that will teach a child to ride a bicycle.  Teach them the joy of riding, the tenacity to get back on the bike after scraping your knees for the sixth time?"  From his own experience John brought up horse riding and pointed out that the horse is a teacher but there isn't pen or paper to be seen.

I'm looking forward to thinking about this a lot more...