He says they did then and still continue to do a superb job of combining two types of knowledge, which he labels tacit and explicit.
Explicit knowledge is the stuff that can be written down in books and reports.
Americans are strong on this. Japanese are strong on this. The U.S. Marines, Nonaka contends, are strong on both. Matsuda said championship basketball teams need a lot of tacit knowledge of each other and the game to coordinate themselves into winners. The Marines may have to do it in killer combat.