A Web 2.0-based internal crowdsourcing solution for tacit knowledge externalisation in enterprises

Abstract

Tacit knowledge externalisation (TKE) is a vital business process used in decision-making, business innovation and problem-solving activities within an enterprise. The paper proposes a Web 2.0-based internal crowdsourcing workflow that provides a generic and flexible structure for the process of externalisation. The workflow comprises crowd creation, crowd opinion, crowd voting, crowd wisdom and crowd learning phases, which encompass knowledge elicitation, sharing and utilisation activities that occur during the externalisation process. The workflow is implemented as an ASP.NET web application titled TKApp, measured using the certainty-factor model and demonstrated for a decision-making scenario in a start-up company. Additionally, the core logic of the workflow is developed as a SOAP-based web service and deployed publicly, thus empowering any enterprise to reuse the service for externalisation purposes.