1. A Framework for Organizational Knowledge Creation Innovation Network for Communities
2. Organizational Learning THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION: An organization where the members have the capacity and opportunity to interact with each other to compare, contrast and adjust their “mental models” of the world as they work together to accomplish their personal and collective visions. “ Learning in organizations means the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into knowledge -- accessible to the whole organization, and relevant to its core purpose.” (Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook) A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. David Garvin, “Building A Learning Organization”
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4. Different Forms of Collective Learning A Learning Community: A group of individuals who voluntarily come together to accomplish a specific learning agenda together. Communities of Practice: A group of people who have informal allegiance to each other because they share certain practices an are exposed to a common class of problems. Learning Organizations: An organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.
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7. The Cycle Of Knowledge Creation The knowledge creation process involves four distinct phases (adapted from Nonaka and Takeuchi). Each phase implies a set of activities to be carried out by the Center. The continuous management of the cycle leads to a “learning spiral” that generates deeper and more powerful levels of knowledge and competence. Tacit Tacit Explicit Explicit Sharing and Networking Writing it Down and Distributing It Comparing it to What Others Know Integrating It into Skill Development and Strategy FROM: TO: NETWORKS DOCUMENTATION BENCHMARKING & TOOL DEVELOPMENT SKILL DEVELOPMENT
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13. The Evolution of “Practice Fields” Stage 1: FRAMING. Stage 2: NETWORKING. Stage 3: MATURATION. Stage 4: STANDARDIZATION. Conceptual framing and isolated practice examples. Networking of innovators and the proliferation of practices. Practices are fragmented and considered “proprietary.” Maturation of practices; convergence around common methods and tools; integration of previously differentiated practices; development of a professional implementation support network. Practices become highly standardized, and incorporated into formal training; credentialing and certification systems. Practices are considered “commodities.”
14. Summary of Organizational Learning Dimensions Be clear about your “theory of your business” – the core assumptions, hypotheses and purposes around which the organization is designed. Your vision creates the basis for your knowledge agenda. Clearly define the kinds of knowledge that are most important to the achievement of your mission & vision; assess your current knowledge assets and build a plan for knowledge creation. Create systematic opportunities for individuals doing similar work to interact and share their tacit knowledge with each other. 1. Clarify your vision 2. Build a knowledge agenda 4. Nurture Communities of Practice Organizational learning is not a substitute for day to day discipline in operations. In fact, it depends on such discipline being in place. 3. Create a base of operating discipline
15. Summary of Organizational Learning Dimensions Create disciplined processes for exposing the underlying rules of successful mental models and behaviors in the organization so that they can be shared with others and compared to outside knowledge. Have an explicit process for designing and trying out innovative new practices (e.g. a “new product/service process”). Design in redundancy, overlap and information sharing between different parts of the organization. 5. Convert tacit to explicit knowledge 6. Support a culture of innovation 7. Organize sharing across practice communities Avoid hierarchical and autocratic organizational designs; create disciplined “autonomous agents” with open access to broad ranges of information. 8. Create flexible and entrepreneurial organizational structures
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17. Toyota – Creating A Community of Scientists “ The fact that the scientific method is so ingrained at Toyota explains why the high degree of specification and structure at the company does not promote the command and control environment one might expect. Indeed, in watching people doing their jobs and in helping to design production processes, we learned that the system actually stimulates workers and managers to engage in the kind of experimentation that is widely recognized as the cornerstone of a learning organization. That is what distinguishes Toyota from all other companies we studied.” What Toyota Production System has done is to create a “community of scientists” that is continuous conducting experiments on the production process. (“If we make the following specific changes, we expect to achieve this specific outcome.”) The purpose of standardization in this context, is not to enforce discipline, but to enable experimentation – you can’t accurately test a hypothesis for improvement if you don’t have stability in the system you are experimenting on.
