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To innovatively address challenges faced by corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in this modern age of globalization and digitalization, this chapter takes a fresh look at questions of learning and leadership from the perspective of organization development (OD), a field that has long studied questions of planned and emergent change. This alternate perspective adds to our knowledge and understanding of the role of individuals and teams in CE and presents opportunities to integrate learning and leadership. In particular, the OD literature provides us with multilevel measurement methods and tools to better analyze the employee and team level-of-analysis. As a result, these insights should enable us to better explain the interaction between CE strategic orientation and the performance of corporate venturing employees and teams, as well as the progress of organizational strategic renewal and market (re)creation efforts.

We use experiential learning theory to develop new conceptual insights into offshore outsourcing of innovation. In particular, we show how offshore vendor firms are able to overcome liability of outsidership and eventually learn how to innovate on behalf of their onshore clients as a result of their embedment with clients across multiple teams. We theorize that the cross-border relocation of innovative activities from a client firm to an offshore vendor is only possible when teams within the vendor team have assumed a double-loop learning capability from the client allowing them to determine governing variables relating to the client’s organizational environment. Through direct on-the-job experience working with each other, international teams comprised in part from the vendor and in part from the client can undergo different learning transitions, which we classify as either relationship-oriented or task-oriented. These transitions determine the extent to which double-loop learning can be developed in offshore locations and are influenced by intra-team dynamics and the way the joint teams organize and manage themselves. Our perspective has implications for our understanding of organizational designs associated with both client and vendor multinational enterprises seeking to benefit from innovation in offshore outsourcing.

The presence and practice of individual and organizational humility has the power to enable organizational growth and change. Humility drives behaviors associated with learning and the ability to embrace the value of existing mental models while valuing the insights offered by new perspectives and approaches. This paradox-savvy practice, observed in humble individuals and organizations, allows them to appropriately value what is working about the existing system while simultaneously embracing the need for change. Our research finds humble behaviors emerging within psychologically safe environments that foster an attitude of inquiry, kinship, extraordinary collaboration, and professional excellence. Humble behaviors, at every organizational level, appear to enhance both individual and group capabilities that drive long term strategic advantage. Five capabilities were identified in our research: diverse networks, shared values, flexibility and adaptability, judgment and decision-making, and organizational learning. We bring these concepts to life by synthesizing established and emerging research, as well as diving deeply into an empirical case study that leverages humble practices in order to effectively drive organizational change. We argue that humility can impact organizing at all levels (individuals, leaders, followers, teams, executives, and organizations) and in so doing create the conditions in which sustainable organizational change can flourish.

This chapter defines a learning culture and discusses the relationship between knowledge and learning. The authors explain why learning is essential to bringing knowledge to life and incentivizing knowledge flows and use. The chapter addresses the interplay between knowledge and learning cultures. A key point in the chapter is the value of mistakes as learning opportunities. The authors explain how mistakes are viewed in the industrial economy and how this perspective impedes critical organizational learning. Specifically, we define mistakes, explain the double cognitive bias of mistakes, explain the tendency and impact of hiding mistakes, the side effects of double mistake bias, learn to learn from mistakes, and take on the challenge of reconciling mistake acceptance and avoidance. Finally, the chapter addresses the importance of cultivating a learning climate to realize your learning culture.