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Executive Interviews: Interview with Daniel Levinthal on Learning Organizations
July 2008
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Daniel Levinthal Reginald H Jones Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Current Chair of the Management Department at Wharton. 
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How to identify the need for being a
learning organization? Should some
companies in some industries, for instance
IT, Consulting, Consumer
Electronics, Financial Services, etc.,
be more aggressive in being learning
organizations than other companies
from other industries?
Again, all organizations can benefit
from learning, whether producing
tangible physical products or services.
What may vary across organizations
and across time is the need to
emphasize "first order" refinements
of existing practices and strategies or
more fundamental changes, such as
the establishment of new
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business
ventures. For a firmfacing a relatively
mature market or intense near term
cost processes, more localized learning
of refining existing practices may
have a higher propriety. Firms facing
more dynamic markets with greater
and more variable opportunity structures
would want to place greater
weight on learning about the possible payoffs of more fundamentally new
ways of competing. Of course, even
for the former situation, one way of
escaping those difficult competitive
circumstances is to use learning processes
to develop a new competitive
position.
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What according to you should be
the defining DNA of a (to be) successful
learning organization? Are there
any sacrosanct principles that an aspiring
learning organization should
adhere to?
With regard to the so called DNA of
the organization, I would identify humility
and inquisitiveness. A business
enterprise is a complex entity
bothwith respect to its internal operations
and the establishment of more
or less profitable externalmarket positions.
A learning organization is both
committed to the notion that gradients
of performance progress can be,
and must be, defined but at the same
time, acknowledge that it will never
get it "right"—the learning process is
unending. -
How to create a learning organization?
What are the building blocks of
a learning organization?
There are relatively straightforward
elements such as developing a rich
set of outcome measures, but more
challenging is developing a broader
organizational culture that will be
supportive of learning processes. A
nice contrast is provided by considering
the Toyota production system. As
one plant manager noted, anyone can
put in an andon cord to stop the assembly
line if an error or problemhas
occurred, but it takes an enormous effort
to empower the front line workers
with a sense that it is ok, indeed
desired, to pull the cord if they believe
the need arises. The organization
must be committed simultaneously
to progress and improvement
and to the fact that errors, mistakes
and unfortunate outcomes are
inevitable. What is the role of knowledge management
in creating a learning organization?
Do you think that a learning
organization is the front end and
knowledge management is the back
end of a successful learning organization?
Knowledge management systems
most readily facilitate in the leveraging
and sharing of previously identified
preferred practices. What is less
appreciated is that knowledge management
systems can also contribute
importantly to the creation of novel
practices and approaches. Most new
insights involve a recombination of
some sort of existing pieces of knowledge.
Indeed, Joseph Schumpeter in
heralding the important role of entrepreneurs,
characterized the act of entrepreneurship
as one of creative recombination.
Thus, by providing
ready access to existing knowledge
modules, a knowledge management
system may provide rich fodder for
innovative efforts.
1.
Learning Organizations Case Study
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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