Organizational learning involves acquiring and using new knowledge. Should new knowledge be acquired from outside the organization?

Student responses may vary. Organizational learning involves acquiring and using new knowledge. The new knowledge can be created internally or acquired from outside the organization. An important leadership function is to encourage and facilitate external acquisition of relevant knowledge. New ideas and knowledge may also be acquired from a variety of outside sources, including: publications on results of applied research, books or articles describing practitioner experiences, and observation of best practices used elsewhere. Other sources include purchasing the right to use specific knowledge from another organization, getting advice from consultants who have relevant expertise, hiring outsiders with special expertise, entering joint ventures with another organization to increase learning opportunities, and acquiring another organization that has relevant expertise and patents. The process of examining best practices used in successful organizations is sometimes called "benchmarking." Imitating the best practices of others can be beneficial, but it is essential to evaluate their relevance before adopting them. It is also important to remember that imitation alone seldom provides much of a competitive advantage. Rather than simply copying what others are doing, it is usually better to improve their best practices, and to invent new approaches not yet discovered by competitors.