Knowledge Maturing: Creating learning rich workplaces for agile organizations

The agility of organizations has become the critical success factor for competitiveness in a world characterized by an accelerating rate of change. Agility requires that companies and their employees together and mutually dependently learn and develop their competencies efficiently in order to improve productivity of knowledge work. As a reaction to failures of organisation-driven approaches to technology-enhanced learning and the success of community-driven approaches in the spirit of Web 2.0, we have recently seen a paradigm shift in technology support for learning towards more participatory approaches in which learners are seen as active contributors. Within enterprises, this new perspective brings together traditionally separated disciplines like e-learning, knowledge management, and human resources development, but also requires a fundamental change of the culture of the respective enterprise towards an enterprise 2.0, which is characterized by enhanced collaboration and a cultural of employee participation. These developments are at the heart of how individuals and companies value and deal with knowledge. To make sense it and to productively shape the change process, we need a new conceptual framework that is both well-grounded on extensive research and pratically relevant and proven through application in numerous projects. The Knowledge Maturing perspective is a novel approach that helps understanding the fundamental change, the barriers and disruptions in knowledge development, but also shows opportunities and gives guidance to make use of them. This book summarizes the results of the European Research Project MATURE.