Applying Organizational Learning Modelling to Management Innovation

The basis of competition in today’s marketplace is changing from one based on human labor, to one where the principal source of value creation and economic growth is a firm’s knowledge. Firms are dealing with more data being transmitted at faster rates than ever before. The amount of data being stored by corporations is doubling every 6 months. These firms collected more customer information in 2010 than all other years combined! In the midst of all this information, firms must somehow understand and leverage new innovative technologies to stay competitive and keep their products and services current and marketable. A firm’s ability to learn and grasp technical concepts drives its ability to offer innovative solutions to the world’s problems. The more capability a firm has to learn, the faster it can understand new technologies, and the easier the firm can generate innovative solutions improving their product and services to meet these new challenges. It is the critical and reflexive use of technology that leads to understanding the underlying concepts so they can be applied in other settings.

These findings have been incorporated into a new knowledge creation model and presented as part of this research. Organizational learning involves knowledge conversion modes or processes that transform knowledge states between an individual and group focus, and between tacit and explicit forms, as the organization’s core knowledge levels evolve iteratively to increasingly refined levels of accumulated base knowledge. Since organizational learning involves transmitting information between individuals and groups as the knowledge is converted from one state to another, the effectiveness of firm communication practices was evaluated in developing a new learning model. Anticipated communications required to implement each element of the organizational learning model have been defined, depicted in sequence diagrams and compared to how firms are actually communicating. The comparison includes in a gap analysis which is the basis for making practical recommendations to firms regarding how to improve the posture of their organizational learning capability.