One of the fundamental and critical components of any effective process is knowledge - how to discover the knowledge you need, how to create new knowledge, and how to use knowledge to effect better decisions and actions. The issue with knowledge needed for innovaiton is that it is usually incomplete, uncertain, unstructured and ambiguous.

Knowledge is the key to innovation, but it is the types of knowledge and the means to discover, create and use knowledge that make innovation difficult. The knowledge that is most critical is not written down anywhere--it is inside people's heads. The critical knowledge inside people's heads is the tacit knowledge that is subconcious and hard to get at.