Capturing the Moment of Conversion: A Protocol for Studying Knowledge Creation as Qualitative Transformation

After three decades of empirical research on Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) SECI model,no study has captured a knowledge conversion event. Every instrument has measuredactivity frequencies or self-reported importance, not the qualitative transformation in whichtacit knowledge becomes explicit. This paper argues the absence reflects a categoricalmismatch: knowledge conversion is a phase transition in cognitive state, inaccessible inprinciple to frequency-based measurement. The paper makes four contributions. First, itestablishes the inseparability thesis: the four SECI modes co-occur constitutively, anddesigns that isolate them import an untested separability assumption. Second, it proposes amixed-method protocol — combining real-time participant insight reporting, trainedhuman-centered design (HCD) observer detection of non-verbal markers, and individualstimulated recall — to capture conversion as it occurs. Third, it introduces structuralsuppression: facilitation of one mode inadvertently inhibits others, visible throughcomparison of structured and unstructured sessions. Fourth, it bridges HCD and knowledgecreation research, positioning trained observers as instruments whose tacit knowledgedetects qualitative transformation in others. The protocol is organized as a four-experimentseries generating a co-occurrence matrix and a suppression-release map.