In focusing on research, it is easy to forget that most of the information about
customers and competitors comes from the experience acquired in the course of the
everyday work of salespeople, marketing strategists, planners and the like. It may not
be systematic in the scientific sense but it is rich, and reveals information that cannot
easily be elicited from statistics, surveys and interviews. Reflective practitioners
build both explicit and tacit knowledge. However, practitioners are prone to rely too
much on past experience and so may miss emerging changes, but if we recognize that
the best way forward may not depend on exclusively on systematic research or on
experience but a combination of both, we may well find that practice (at its best) can
also be the best theory.