The matching between types of knowledge and organizational learning styles and the transformation of the relationship in the process from imitation to innovation

Generally, enterprises lagging in technology begin their endeavor to narrow the gap between their technology and that of technologically advanced enterprises with imitation. As the gap is constantly narrowed, those enterprises with backward technology but extraordinary learning capacity will experience the catching-up process from pure imitation to creative imitation, and then from partial innovation to independent innovation. As technology gap between enterprises is mainly caused by their knowledge gap, acquiring knowledge, core technological knowledge in particular, is the key to bridging technology gap. And organizational learning is an important means to the end of knowledge acquisition, application and dissemination. Due to the characteristics of knowledge, different stages from imitation to innovation will have different learning focuses, which requires that different organizational learning styles should adapt to the target knowledge as so to ensure effective acquisition, assimilation and application of knowledge. As the enterprise advances from one stage to another and its target knowledge changes, organizational learning styles should be adjusted correspondingly.