Reuters Events | Pharma

Thought leadership and innovation for the Pharmaceutical Industry

During the course of my MBA studies I have been drawn to the subject of building learning organisations and managing the knowledge acquired through the learning process.  This led me to consid

During the course of my MBA studies I have been drawn to the subject of building learning organisations and managing the knowledge acquired through the learning process.  This led me to consider how we manage knowledge within the industry and if we can build learning organisations?

There is currently much written in the area of learning organisations with some common agreement about what the discipline constitutes. The key element of developing learning organisations is the focus on the system as a whole and not its parts. Focusing on parts of a system, fosters adaptive learning in by problems within the system are isolated and solutions formed to solve them. System thinking requires focus on the whole process of activities and the generation of solutions to improve the system and not solve isolated problems and thereby generative learning occurs. The system of working in the industry is basically split into two areas remote teams and head office workers. The challenge therefore arises in viewing these different systems as a totality and not as separate entities which frequently occurs. Successful employment of platforms of learning, sharing and collaboration in virtual learning environments are being successfully used in other industry and to a limited extent in the UK Pharma setting. The question is, are we and can we maximise on the potential that these platforms have to offer and does anyone know of success at the moment?

The other benefit of systems is they are excellent tools to store, transfer and disseminate knowledge and information throughout the organisation which could assist the way we manage knowledge from a wide variety of areas. Changes within the NHS have and will continue to drive changes in organisational size and structure, with the trend towards less people continuing. Down sizing through redundancies not only has financial implications to the organisation but also has a huge cost in terms of the loss of human intellectual capital. The problem with human intellectual capital is the intangibleness of it, in its own right it is an asset but not one that you would see on the balance sheet of an organisation. However the loss of the asset can prove costly to organisations, currently much of the knowledge possessed by individuals is not stored in a comprehensive way neither do we appear to learn from the richness and diversity of it. The movement towards employing Learning & Development Managers/Directors is a positive step for the industry. The question is can they truly develop learning organisations and find ways to protect, build, store, and learn from the vast amount of knowledge within the organisation before it is lost to redundancy or a competitor?