Creation of a learning culture through out the economy is seen as essential for economic growth and to keep up with the changing needs. Firms need to become learning organization that have the capacity to continually learn from their experiences and to translate that knowledge into improved performance and competitive advantage. Competitiveness in the global economy requires industry specific skills in addition to innovation and entrepreneurship skills. Studies have found out skill shortages in areas like design, material management, technology management etc. Apart from these hard skills, deficiencies have also been identified in soft skills like people management and basic management skills at management and supervisory level. .
Knowledge, the ability to learn, to change and to innovate in this new market place, will be accepted as the more relevant criteria for selecting managers than gender, ethnicity or even prior experience. Under such a scenario, the "learning organization " will be the standard philosophy for many enterprises and the major way they cope with change and turbulence. Success, in today's environment can be achieved only through the continous improvement of the business, a journey that spans from an initial awareness of the need to continuously improve to achieving world class systems. When an organization is getting started it should have the vision, skills and environment needed for success. Its endeavor should be to create a vision of what continous improvement will mean to the organization, focus improvement on key business result, integrate continuous improvement with managing the organization, find the right strategy for implementation and develop team work. For an organization which has already begun, the focus should be on the next stage of growth by obtaining an independent view of progress, proper planning to take the next step, identification and removal of barriers, strengthening of team leadership and effectiveness and utilization of advanced tools like Benchmarking, quality functional deployment voice of customers etc.
