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Informal learning accounts for over 75% of the learning taking place in organizations today

Formal learning includes the hierarchically structured school system that runs from primary school through the university and organized school-like programs created in business for technical and professional training.

Informal learning describes a lifelong process whereby individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educational influences and resources in his or her environment, from family and neighbors, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media.

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Presidents Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished barely a year of formal schooling. He self-taught himself trigonometry (for his work as a surveyor) and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer. Martin Van Buren, U.S. president. Little formal education. Began studying law at the age of 14 while apprenticing at a law firm. George Washington, U.S. president, general, plantation owner. Ended his education after a few years of elementary school. Andrew Jackson U.S. President, lawyer. Little formal education; Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian president. With a fifth grade education only, he shined shoes on the streets of Sao Paulo as a kid but later became a steelworker union leader. Scientists Albert Einstein, Nobel prize-winning physicist, discoverer of the General and Special Theories of Relativity. He left school at 15.

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Too often, we place technologies in the forefront, which end up obscuring authentic knowledge formation.

Our knowledge-based societies demand a deeper change in our culture of teaching, and, particularly, in the ways in which we learn (and unlearn).

We need to rethink and explore all the “invisible” (non-formal, non-certified, but equally relevant) ways of learning in a world where personal knowledge development, comprised of both tacit and explicit elements, is rapidly becoming more valuable than commodified, industrial-style information delivery.

Creative learning becomes the fundamental activity. It is not about consuming pre-determined content, passing tests or something with beginnings and ends. Learning is continuous transformation. It is the foundation for creative action.

The new competitive edge comes from interactive capacity: the ability to connect with information and people, as and when needed.

In increasingly complex environments learning curriculums cannot be effectively designed beforehand.