Evidence collected in the Radio, TV and software production sectors show how deep is the divide between the continuous learning needed in fast changing productive processes and most of the formal education and training interventions available from institutions. A clear majority of interviewees and respondents to the questionnaire-based inquiry stated that really important professional competencies are most effectively acquired through experience. Only real organisational settings can provide the conditions for learning in swiftly evolving environments, where formal/codified knowledge must be continuously updated but at the same time accumulation of tacit knowledge is key for being able to participate in work activities.

In parallel basic education is very often considered as insufficient and most of the experiences in vocational education are deemed to provide only a very superficial preparation in relation to real working needs. Competence development is the real yardstick that is used in order to assess what is valuable and what is not in this field, and this is linked to both explicit and tacit knowledge. Interviewees seemed aware that, in contexts being continuously reshaped by technological and other drivers, formal knowledge without experience is – so to speak – empty but also experience without appropriate levels of formalisation is blind.