Explicit knowledge has been created by experience, observation, and learning. Tacit knowledge can be acquired without words or language and it is mainly acquired through experience. Metaphor is a way of perceiving or intuitively understanding one thing by imaging another thing symbolically. The analogy illuminates the unknown by providing a logical model to compare. In total, it is the creation of new concepts and realities from knowledge.
Combination involves the synthesis of different bodies of explicit knowledge.
The transition from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge is related to experiential learning, or learning by doing. To aid the internalization process of the knowledge, such activities as documenting, verbalizing, and diagraming the knowledge is necessary. This may also aid in the transfer of this knowledge to others. This may also occur as the knowledge becomes part of the corporate culture and thus, becomes the knowledge of others in time to come. These four modes of knowledge conversion take place in a continuous spiral.