Mr Pasnicu,

Of course, lifelong learning is essential given the rapid changes  that we are witnessing today. Efficiency is probably related to the person concerned, as also effectiveness. The availability of so many online courses, source material means such learning is possible. If certificates are required,  one would need to sign up to fee-paying courses such as MOOC should result in obtaining such certificates.

Having myself taken a few MOOC courses, I am not particularly impressed with a few as fellow students assess one's assignments -- some overly generous and some particularly frugal  and course organizers do not bother to monitor. I was not trying to get certificates but learn new things which have aroused my curiosity or  just for the fun of it. Perhaps some educational institutions could be offering courses?

Yet another way would be to dive into research publications and if you are sufficiently interested you could be a  double-blind reviewer of research papers... you need to be invited, of course.

SMEs always faces the problem with sourcing and funding....Therefore, the amount, they invest may it be economic, effort or time, requires maximum return or optimization for  their sustainability and even survival. Life long learning helps to cut down the additional costs they have to bear.....but of course changes are inevitable with changing market conditions

From where I see things, lifelong learning nowadays is necessity in every business, even in life. wanting to learn and being internally motivated to acquire extra knowledge and experience is a trait that makes an individual open to new opportunities and thus to development. And without development, there would be no sustainability. So, it is a circle, and every thing leads to the other. Being internal motivated, employees work to increase their self efficacy and fulfill their goals of development. This way, companies grow and develop with the development of their employees.

Dear Daniela,

More than learning, I believe that what matters most in knowledge accumulation and formation is how one learns. This concerns procedures for scanning, filtering, and assimilating pertinent information. Moreover, it is important to know if learning implies a restrictive assimilation, that is, if once learning some information, this constrains further action. Ideally, one should adopt procedures allowing for learning, while leaving enough margin of manoeuver to modify one's framework if necessary.

What is best: accumulating a lot of "knowledge" or being fast enough to adapt when learning new knowledge? Hence the importance of how we learn over just learning.

Cheers,

Gabriel

I think @Leonidas gave the most complete answer on this interesting question.

 Through current economic crises spreaded throughout the world in most countries, SMEs are threatened from instability, many reasons reside behind these threats, including the international powerful franchises with competitive prices and advantages,, or large enterprises with reputable history that encompassed the market and is getting the most of market shares, these are the main reasons that might cause the breakdown of SMES, the solution for such enterprises is to work on a niche market, and focus on it with their maximum capabilities, by time this will increase of their market share and can assure their long term sustainability, another thing SMEs must always maximize the use of their resources maximumly with innovation, as innovation is what atttacts the costumers and is a main reason for sustainability., by continuous learning ,development for the latter occurs, R & D plays a major role in the aforementioned, and the need to educate the employees on frequent basis.

Thank you everyone for the interesting opinions and views about lifelong-learning in SMEs, as well as for the very useful links and documents that you have provided (Phil, Arpita, Sarah, Gabriel, Leonidas, Fatima).

Having in mind the complexity of the “lifelong-learning” concept, I appreciate that everyone made an effort to tackle it from their area of expertise and thus highlighted key areas of this field. On the other hand, I have to elevate Mr. Leonidas who was able to basically give a full literature review on “lifelong-learning” and then pin point its application in SME’s by giving some very interesting techniques of analysis, through game theory methods based on the “win-win-win” perspective.