Designing for Learning in the Workplace The implications of an emerging knowledge economy for professional development Joseph Kessels University of Twente NL j.w.m.kessels@gw.utwente.nl Abstract In an economic environment where knowledge is becoming the main organisational currency, organisations must be able to learn fast, respond to recurrent unfamiliar challenges, and ensure that their workers can construct and share strategically valuable knowledge as well as acquire technical and interactive skill. Competitive advantage relies increasingly on the capability to regularly generate and apply new knowledge to continuous improvement and radical innovation in work processes, products and services and to co-create value with customers (Brooks, 1997; Leonard-Barton, 1998; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2002). We call this concept 'knowledge productivity' (Kessels, 1995, 2001.) This relative new domain of research that explores the relationships between innovation, learning and organisational characteristics also requires new approaches of researchers studying the field of knowledge productivity. This paper proposes a number of related research questions and combines the findings of recent series of studies in the field of knowledge productivity, the features of workplace learning and self-regulated knowledge development, Conceptual Framework Knowledge productivity has been described as the ability of a team to gather relevant information, that forms the basis of the development of new competencies, that will be applied to gradual improvement and radical