LILA has three main goals:
Create social connections: Generate high-trust relationships among top global Chief Learning/Innovation Officers across industries and with top academic thinkers and researchers in the fields of organizational learning and innovation.
Craft intellectual insights: Develop powerful conceptual frameworks that synthesize the latest research and illuminate the challenges facing leaders and organizations.
Have practical impact: Members support one another in making real advances on the organizational challenges they face through soliciting critical feedback on organizational initiatives, exploring questions in small and large group formats, and reporting in on their progress throughout the year.
Organizational Leaders: The Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) is a small community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of organizational learning and innovation. We are not a best practices group but instead we focus on “next practices” based on robust innovative research and multidisciplinary perspectives. Since its inception in 2000, LILA’s practitioners have been Chief Learning and Chief Innovation Officers from non-competing industries who have established themselves as leaders in their field. At LILA they collaborate to share challenges, ideas, and innovative practices, and to explore current issues in the field through in-depth conversations with academic experts from a variety of disciplines. By limiting the size of the group to twenty-five members and by encouraging continuity of membership, LILA members engage in a deep level of confidential, collaborative inquiry and problem solving. Current LILA members include leaders from Agilent, Cisco, Exxon/Mobil, Gannett, Humana, Monitor, Novartis, Sapient, Steelcase, US Army and W.L. Gore.
Scholars: To fuel the exploration of the annual theme, each year LILA convenes 8-10 leading academic thinkers from a variety of disciplines who are pushing their respective fields. These guest faculty join the Chair members for each of the multi-day gatherings at Harvard University. Recent faculty include Teresa Amabile (Harvard Business School), John Seely Brown (University of Southern California), Warren Bennis (University of Southern California), Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School), Yrjö Engeström (University of Helsinki), Howard Gardner (Harvard Graduate School of Education), Richard Hackman (Harvard University), Andrew Hargadon (UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship, Linda Hill (Harvard Business School), Robert Kegan (Harvard Graduate School of Education), Ellen Langer (Harvard Dept of Psychology), Sandy Pentland (MIT Media Lab), Michael Roberto (Bryant University), Peter Senge (MIT Sloan School of Business), Ed Schein (Professor Emeritus, MIT) and Kathleen Sutcliffe (University of Michigan).
Harvard Researchers: A half-dozen Harvard Project Zero researchers and Harvard graduate students work closely with the community to expertly facilitate and document the gatherings, conduct analysis on relevant research, synthesize practical findings, and conduct investigations in the quality of the learning process and outcomes of LILA.
The community has a commitment to model a progressive learning environment, with a set of norms, customs, and tools intended to advance members’ own learning.
From September to June, the LILA community explores a theme that connects to current member challenges. It convenes three 2-day gatherings at Harvard University, each of which focuses on a topic within that theme. At each gathering, members are provided research briefings and book summaries that synthesize the latest research and thinking on the topic from a variety of disciplines. Members may present “learning rounds” in which they have the opportunity to invite feedback from others on particular initiatives or challenges. After the gathering, members receive comprehensive documentation of key ideas and discussions, and articles that recap central insights.
Between the gatherings, Chair members engage in monthly conference calls on contemporary issues of practice, which are largely defined and led by members themselves. Members also keep in touch via our website through ongoing blogs and discussion hosted by other members, LILA researchers, and guest speakers.
The exploration concludes with a 1-day Summit that recaps and synthesizes insights and progress made during the year. Member organizations can send several additional representatives to this gathering which will also include LILA alumni Chairs, Associates, and faculty guests.
To date LILA has hosted over 40 gatherings and produced over 90 research briefings and insight articles on themes around knowledge, learning, collaboration and leadership in organizations. Recent areas of focus have included, “Weaving Wisdom in Organizations” (2011) “The Effective Collective” (2010), “Leading Insight and Impact” (2009), “The Future of Learning” (2008) and “New Models of Decision Making” (2007).