This paper investigates whether the introduction of incremental and radical innovation underlies different learning processes in terms of decentralized labor organizational practices, different modes of organizing R&D activity and the nature of employees’ competences. By drawing on survey data on manufacturing firms located in the Italian province of Reggio Emilia. The empirical evidence provided points out that incremental innovation seems to be mainly grounded on a problem-solving activity based on learning by doing and learning by using processes, while in the case of radical innovation a learning by searching process seems to be at work.