Structural learning: Embedding discoveries and the dynamics of production

•Production and learning are profoundly intertwined processes.•The analytical map of production highlights interdependencies among capabilities, tasks and materials in learning processes.•Structural learning is a learning process triggered and oriented by existing and evolving production structures.•Structural learning trajectories are activated by complementarities, similarities and indivisibilities.•Embedded opportunities’ discovery implies production and cognitive structures coevolution and changing organisational forms.

Production and learning of productive knowledge are profoundly intertwined processes as the activation of either process triggers the other, very often implying interdependent transformations. The paper aims to open the ‘production black box’ by proposing the analytical map of production as a tool for disentangling the set of interdependent relationships among capabilities, tasks and materials. The concept of structural learning is introduced to identify the continuous process of structural adjustment triggered and oriented by existing productive structures at each point in time. Structural learning trajectories allow for the transformation of structural constraints such as bottlenecks and technical imbalances into structural opportunities. Complementarities, similarities and indivisibilities are essential focusing devices for activating compulsive sequences of technological change as well as discovering structurally embedded opportunities. The paper then investigates the tension between structure and agency present in structural learning trajectories, and examines the form it takes in different productive organisations.