The Learning Imperative

The book brings together eleven articles and four interview which were published in Harvard Business Review during 1990-1993. The Foreword by Chairman and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co Robert Haas sets the tone of the book and Introduction by Robert Howard gives the panoramic view of the topics to be covered. The book is organized in four parts: namely I) Decoding the Business Logic II) Designing New Behaviors III) Managing New Psychological Frontiers and IV) Getting from Here to There. Each part ends with an interview of an industry leader broadly covering practical aspects of the themes discussed under that part.Part-I discusses the core of businesses in emerging New Economy with focus on knowledge-creation, -organization and -integration. This part put in perspective the role, status and orientation of organization in 21st Century in light of Knowledge Society and IT. Peter F. Drucker very lucidly explains these principles in his curtain raiser article "The New Society of Organizations". In the article "Competing on Capabilities: The New Rules of Corporate Strategy", George Stalk et. al. successfully highlights the essence of competing on capabilities and supports it with the example of Wal-Mart, Honda, Xerox etc. Article also brings out the difference between "Core Competence" and "Capabilities" while explaining the concept such as cross-docking and capabilities predator. Knowledge creation is one of the very important steps in the knowledge management and learning Organization and Ikujiro Nonaka is an authority in this field. It is once again reflected in his article "The Knowledge Creating Company". While quoting examples from Japanese Companies, he convincingly establishes importance of continuous innovation and "Knowledge Spiral". According to him another aspect of knowledge creation is continuous interaction of Tacit and Explicit knowledge to arrive at "Model" from "Metaphor" through "Analogy". This section ends with an interview of Swatch Titan Nicolas Hayek by William Taylor. Hayek is the success personified. He swam against the course in early nineties to snatch back market share from Japanese and Hong-Kong-based watch maker in favor of SMH by his total belief in the Philosophy: "... if you have a manufacturing process in which direct labor cost is less than 10% of total costs, you have eliminated those costs from the competitive equations...". By his total commitment towards the domestic manufacturing he could come out with the automation process to nullify the effect of labor wage differential.Part-II deals with the behavioral aspects of Learning Organization. Simply changing technology, implementing BPR and restructuring organization is not enough; suitable and compatible behavioral aspects should also be incorporated. One can buy technology but organizational culture needs to be inculcated. John Seely Brown in his article "Research That Reinvents the Corporation" cogently brings out that innovation itself is not sufficient but what