Deeply embodied in emotions, personal values and beliefs, tacit knowledge emerges associated to skills which are dynamically translated into individual actions and experiences. Marked by its intrinsic difficulties in its formalization and communication processes, knowledge capture or creation seems to be intuitive, interpretive and hard to measure and disclose. Broadly understood as the main source of wisdom, it can be individual or collectively held, and its transformation process merges through the development and interpretation of explicit knowledge, usually structured around codification processes. If developed in a sustainable basis, those transformation processes are a source of competitive advantages. Its embodiment results in indexed drivers such as the contextual nature in which the fluidity becomes the key enabler of creation. Embodied in proactive strategies, knowledge and innovation are linked in a bilateral cause and effect clue towards the competitive advantages identification. Thus, intangibles factors that support them plunge, naturally, in the four areas of innovation proposed by the OSLO Manual: product innovation, process innovation, marketing and organizational innovation. This linkage between tacit knowledge and innovation emerges from a multiplicity of contingent circumstances whose origin intersects the creation and the evolution of specific models which depends from the systematic capture of tacit knowledge typologies and natures. Despite the recognition of its importance in the economic and social development and sustainability, the efficiency and the effectiveness of the generating innovation processes have been characterized by their complexity in identifying, from a whole model, the causal links between science, technology, and society. This paper aims to identify the main innovation models from a macro and microeconomic perspective. Researchers and practioners could identify the main innovation drivers and the multilateral links between its structural dimensions. This outlook is a multivariate overview about innovation linkages and their potential impacts in the companies’ performance. In this step, the theoretical model is also provided which identifies the main variables and cause and effect impacts in the integrated knowledge creation processes and intellectual property development and registration. Based on the biggest 500 non-financial Portuguese companies, and throughout a Structural Model of Equations (SME), this step of research aims to identify those structural linkages and theoretical relations between them. Furthermore, this theoretical model are derived from innovation boundaries and aligned with companies’ performance indicators such as return on equity, return on assets or even economic value added. It is expected that most of those variables could positively influence the performance towards a dynamic and structured sustainability, from a financial and strategic positioning.

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tacit knowledge, intellectual property, models of innovation, performance, Portuguese non-financial companies.