Acquisition of tacit knowledge to enhance economic competitiveness: An empirical validation by Cosine distance

Abstract

Knowledge is the core of economic development because it has an increasing return to scale. It has two forms: explicit and tacit. It is more important to collect tacit knowledge because it would lead to the creation of new innovations. Unfortunately, the acquisition of tacit knowledge is costly because it is difficult to collect using investments in research and development and/or investments in education. Economists advocated three theories for ease of acquisition of tacit knowledge: the theory of learning regions, the theory of the communities of practices, and the theory of knowledge enablers. We did an empirical analysis of these theories by using cosine distance. The data have been collected during the study of the production of a local food originating from Côte d’Ivoire called “ Attiéké”. The results showed that the knowledge is different from one region to another and negatively correlates with geographical distance. The community of practice goes beyond nativity and is linked to training. The knowledge enabler is less efficient when he is far from the geographical area of original tacit knowledge. So, we recommend the Cosine Distance as a tool for decision-making in knowledge economics because it allows the arrangement of activities to collect tacit knowledge more efficiently.