Relating learning, knowledge creation and innovation: case studies into knowledge productivity

This study explores which learning processes contribute to the improvement and innovation of an organisation’s procedures, products and services. It aims to find the variables that promote or inhibit these learning processes. For this purpose a conceptual framework was developed. This framework helps both to better understand learning processes that lead to improvement and innovation and to stimulate knowledge productivity in practice. In this article, we first present the conceptual framework. Next, we present the results of 16 reconstruction studies deployed in various organisations in the Netherlands, China and Indonesia. The results confirm that the elements in our framework play an important role in developing and using new knowledge that is needed for improvement and innovation.

An earlier version of this article was as a paper presented at the fifth European conference on Organisational Knowledge, Learning and Capabilities.