to learn
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The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Learned when young is (well) done when old.* You are never too old to learn.** If someone else can do something, you can learn it. Nice to say, but how do we learn? How does an organisation learn? Does a 'perfect' way to learn exist? Is it possible to learn to learn? To want to learn, just looking isn't enough; seeing properly is more important, listening instead of hearing! To learn is to experiment and to experience. Many approaches to learning exist, depending on learning goals, capabilities and context. Within Digital Knowledge we use a philosophy and approach based on TRIZ and OTSM-TRIZ, both within organisations and individually. For us, central to this approach is the idea that both (young) people and organisations can and should learn to apply creativity and inventiveness to (emerging) problem situations. Instead of teaching standard solutions, we stimulate extensive analysis of (conflicting) requirements, preconditions and assumptions within the problem context.
We do this because we have found that often the question behind the question (or the problem behind the problem) is insufficiently defined. Once that is done, we look at possible solutions and find the the 'solution space' is usually larger than initially assumed. The actual suggested solutions are surprisingly creative and versatile. Even (very) young children prove able to come up with very creative solutions. As we have no idea whatsoever which problems we – as a society – will be facing, we don't think static knowledge of standard solutions will make the difference. We will require more dynamic, generic learning and research capabilities, which should help us to learn, to learn to learn and possibly even learn to think. Learning to adapt. * ‘Jong geleerd is oud gedaan’ and ** ‘Een mens is nooit te oud om te leren’ (Dutch proverbs) |
