Which is important? Knowledge or Experience?

I hear many people say, an experienced person can do the same job of a qualified person? What is the difference here? To expand on this, lets us firstly examine the difference between qualification and experience in the context of profession.

A qualified person is someone who acquired theoretical knowledge of a particular field, for example drilling, through some formal education and has been awarded a certificate acknowledging his/her attainment. He or she is known as a qualified expert. On the other hand, an experienced person is someone having acquired all the skills necessary for a particular job, for example drilling, through actually practicing it over an extended timeframe.

Knowledge and experience are equally important for a job on the one hand but knowledge gives someone the edge to advance and endure in his/her profession. Knowledge can be thought of as an ingredient to speed up experience.

Why Knowledge is important than Experience?

Experience is somewhat limited to the physical interactions; outcomes are driven from the physical interactions that are seen. Experience makes a person expert in a particular job but does not qualify for the job. Experience can never explain diversity of practical applications. It requires knowledge to feed relevant information into the brain before making sense out of a situation or certain practice. The dynamics are never understood because it lacks knowledge. Knowledge is dynamic and it is the reason advances technology are made.

For instance, an experienced driller may be very good when it comes to down hole drilling practices because he has done downhole drilling all his life and is very smart when it comes to downhole drilling. His results in downhole drilling are remarkable. However when given a circumstance where he is fronted with uphole or inclined drilling, obtaining similar results are highly unlikely. There is a knowledge gap that exists that confines its outcomes. 

Knowledge has a deeply rooted framework. It forms the fundamental processing unit for practical application. Knowledge provides an avenue to explore options, aligning correlated practices, give critical analysis, probing high level reasoning and comprehension when it comes to getting a particular job done. Knowledge explains hidden mechanisms that drive physical interactions/outcome. Knowledge provides avenue for rationale analysis and comprehension and dynamic interpretation. It justifies why things happen the way they happen. Knowledge is very important as it plays a direct role in advancing career paths.

Both knowledge and experience are relevant qualifications in doing a job but knowledge accelerates experience and is very important for survival and this gives knowledge edge over experience.

This is an account of my observation. As always feel free to comment your thoughts.