Specialization and territorial division of knowledge marks the organization of knowledge. The history of our universities in the West reflects the reign of vertical disciplines, hostile to a universal approach to knowledge in which Descartes is one of the great thinkers. The hard sciences coexist alongside the soft sciences, « humanities », without a lot of bridges. Each analyzes the situations with its own methodology or point of view.

Knowledge can only grow by using summaries and reconfiguring territories established in the light of new tools and concepts. With the development of contemporary neuroscience and human cognition, it is now the interdisciplinary that is coming back (1). Overall, our time period reveals that the more knowledge becomes global in its learning, the more training courses become interdisciplinary. Engineering schools are combined with business schools. This is particularly the case of EM Lyon and Central Lyon. Alice Guilhon, General Director of Skema, in partnership with Demos is co-producing degree programs, makes the comment that "a finance course should interfere with that of a general knowledge course, an accounting course must include the intangible".

Companies are also driving this approach because they demand versatile executives that think less in terms of disciplines than in terms of issues such as energy, sustainable development, health and safety at work or diversity. Jean-Claude Lehmann, former Director at the CNRS, recalls: "We must combine basic training with a strong opening on major issues. This goes beyond interdisciplinary, knowledge must be structured differently." (Les Echos, November 30, 2010).

Structuring knowledge in a different way (2) must also allow for a comprehensive global approach in the field of training. Our courses must work more on integrating logical solutions in many sectors, by taking part in interdisciplinary exchanges from different communities of practice. Organizational learning thus becomes one of the first tools that help orchestrate the globalization of knowledge, and also contributes to further make knowledge operational.
 
(1) The interdisciplinary is the subject of the first chapter of my book The Creation of Value from Operational Knowledge, co-authored with Didier Naud (published by Demos, 2007).
 
(2) Among the approaches in this direction, one could cite in the field of innovation, the CK theory from A. Hatchuel and B. Weil.