Up until the end of last year I was Director of the Learning Center and
Client Development for a Boston-area management consulting firm; my
activities there pulled me into issues of organizational learning -- which
I've been looking at in the following terms: An organization sustains
competitive advantage to the extent it engages all its constituents,
internal *and* external, in continuous dialogue and therefore continuous
learning and therefore continuous innovation. I've become fascinated by
the work going on at the Palo Alto-based Institute for Research on
Learning, which takes a multi-disciplinary (i.e., including anthropology,
ethnology, linguistics, computer science) tack in looking at how work
actually happens and at how communities of practice arise naturally. To
me, the impact on business results can be particularly compelling using
this kind of inductive approach.
I'm also interested in the tie-in between organizational learning and
organizational purpose -- the extent to which the latter defines the
former. And finally -- again -- I'm interested in ways in which the
customer becomes part of the learning process, producing that Joe Pine has
called a series of learning relationships. Without the customer, this is
primarily very elaborate, self-referential navel- gazing.
Mostly, though, it's good to be in touch with a bunch of other folks who,
to varying degrees, talk a language that I hope will become more common.
Cheers.