Examples  

* One of the most convincing examples of tacit knowledge is  facial recognition  : one knows a person's face, and can recognize it among a thousand, indeed a million. Yet, people usually cannot tell how they recognize that face, so most of this cannot be put into words. When one sees a face, they are not conscious about their knowledge of the individual features (eye, nose, mouth), but rather see and recognize the face as a whole.  [18]
* Another example of tacit knowledge is the notion of  language  itself: it is not possible to  learn a language  just by being taught the rules of  grammar  —a  native-speaker  picks it up at a young age, almost entirely unaware of the  formal grammar  which they may be taught later.
* Other examples are how to ride a bike, how tight to make a bandage, or knowing whether a senior surgeon feels an intern may be ready to learn the intricacies of surgery; this can only be learned through personal experimentation.
*  Harry M. Collins  showed that Western laboratories long had difficulties in successfully replicating an experiment that a team led by  Vladimir Braginsky  at  Moscow State University  had been conducting for 20 years (the experiment was measuring the quality, _ Q  _ , factors of  sapphire  ). Western scientists became suspicious of the Russian results and it was only when Russian and Western scientists conducted the measurements collaboratively that the trust was reestablished. Collins argues that laboratory visits enhance the possibility for the transfer of tacit knowledge.  [19]  [20]
* The  Bessemer steel process  is another example:  Henry Bessemer  sold a patent for his advanced  steelmaking  process and was subsequently sued by the purchasers after they could not get it to work. In the end, Bessemer set up his own steel company because he knew how to do it, even though he could not convey it to his patent users.  [21]
* When  Matsushita  (now Panasonic) started developing its automatic home  bread-making machine  in 1985, an early problem was how to mechanize the dough-  kneading  process, a process that takes a master baker years of practice to perfect. To learn this tacit knowledge, a member of the software development team, Ikuko Tanaka, decided to volunteer herself as an apprentice to the head baker of the Osaka International Hotel, who was reputed to produce the area's best bread. After a period of imitation and practice, one day she observed that the baker was not only stretching, but also twisting the dough in a particular fashion ("twisting stretch"), which turned out to be important in the success of his method. The Matsushita home bakery team drew together eleven members from completely different specializations and cultures: product planning, mechanical engineering, control systems, and software development. The "twisting stretch" motion was finally achieved by a prototype machine after a year of iterative experimentation by the engineers and team members working closely together, combining their explicit knowledge. For example, the engineers added ribs to the inside of the dough case in order to hold the dough better as it is being churned. Another team member suggested a method (later patented) to add yeast at a later stage in the process, thereby preventing the yeast from over-fermenting in high temperatures.  [15]  : 284
* During the  COVID-19 pandemic  , increased  remote work  seems to have influenced the informal exchange of tacit knowledge among workers, which has subsequently led to an adverse effect on the variety of outputs produced by remote workers.  [22]