“Only when it can be replicated reliably on a meaningful scale at a practical cost can it be considered an ‘innovation.'” In these terms, the learning organization has been invented, but it has not yet been innovated. “A new idea has been invented when it is proven to work in a laboratory,” he explains. In terms of actually creating such an organization, Senge believes we are still on the road from invention to innovation. It is very action-oriented.” From Invention to Innovation “Learning is really about evolving the capacity to create. But Senge feels that the idea of learning as adaptation is very inadequate. A learning organization is often described as one that is “fast on its feet,” and able to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace. It also draws on the experience of a core group of organizations - including Ford, Digital, Hanover Insurance, Herman Miller, and Analog Devices - who, under the auspices of the MIT program, have become “experimental laboratories” for developing and testing new tools and ideas.Ī learning organization, explains Senge, “is an organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” He distinguishes his definition of organizational learning from the contemporary meaning it has acquired. Senge, the director of the Systems Thinking and Organizational Learning Program at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, describes The Fifth Discipline as a compilation of the work of many people in the systems thinking field. But what exactly is a “learning organization” and what resources and capabilities will it take to create one? In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge tackles that question head-on, proposing a framework of five key disciplines that can provide a foundation for building such an organization. The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called a learning organization,” intoned a recent Fortune magazine article. “Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership.
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