EARLY PROTOTYPES: A STRATEGY FOR EXPLICATING TACIT KNOWLEDGE IN DESIGN ACTIVITIES

The globalization of design activities has been an ongoing trend in industry for many years and at the same time sparked several research initiatives. One of the major reasons for globalizing design activities lies in accessing the global knowledge pool. Knowledge exchange within this pool is difficult as a large part is only available in implicit form und hence not easily accessible. This paper identifies some of the barriers in explicating knowledge, describes a framework and shows a strategy to overcome these barriers for successful sharing of knowledge and hence development of products or services in global design networks.