Learning organizations create opportunities for people
Kenneth Derr
The Knowledge Factory
How knowledge evolves (Fluid Knowledge) is more important than what knowledge exists already.
All knowledge is imperfect and incomplete. Societies, human capabilities, social relations, resources, and technologies, all change. Even very ancient ideas must be restated using modern language and metaphors to make them meaningful to the current age.
People who refuse to learn will find themselves well-equipped for an organization that no longer exists.
In times of change, learners will inherit the organization. This learning organization should empower learners to manage individual knowledge (Human Capital) before attempting to use collective knowledge (Structural Capital) to meet superordinate organization goals.
Intellectual Capital = Human Capital + Structural Capital
The generic goal of the knowledge and learning process is in the development of core competencies to support strategic intent. Managing knowledge and learning helps the company to own, control and properly maintain competencies as state of the art, and helps it to tailor them to specific projects and business initiatives.
Creating a knowledge chain, starts with the end in mind: Organization's strategic Objectives.
Knowledge management consists of organizing the identification, preservation, valorization, and creation of strategic knowledge for the company:
Data - Result from a process of perceiving reality by sensors in the form of raw, uninterpreted facts.
Information - Is a structured set of data.
Knowledge - Is information in relation to an (implicit or explicit) model that contextualizes knowledge, and which is justified.
Individual Competency - Accumulation of experience resulting from individual and effective implementation of knowledge in operational activity to reach desired objectives. (Human Capital)
Collective Ability - Integrating all competencies to reach the Organization's strategic Objectives. (Structural Capital)
All innovation stems from connecting existing ideas in new ways.
You are the information you consume. Your choice of the information you take in determines whether you become who you want to be or who others want you to be. Information and knowledge are not the same thing. Information simply informs you of facts; it does not tell you what you need to do. Knowledge is the capacity to act effectively. An ongoing process of sense-making is required to transform all your experience and learning into useful capabilities.
Knowledge that integrates in the fabric of an organization
In a learning organization where we meet the Organization's strategic Objectives it are the knowledge leaders that weave the fabric between the threads of people, process, and technology:
People—Those who create, organize, apply, and transfer knowledge; and the leaders who act on that knowledge - Mind-Set - Align
Processes—Methods of creating, organizing, applying, and transferring knowledge - Skill-Set - Integrate
Technology—Information systems used to put knowledge products and services into organized frameworks - Tool-Set - Accelerate
