The Future of Talent at Work

Next generation Science & Technology Parks (STPs) need to step up their collaboration game to deliver against public and private sector return on investment expectations and own performance indicators.

Expectations of next generation STPs

STPs have come a long way since the early beginnings in the mid-1960s (in Europe) and undergone a number of transitions to yet arrive at another transition to the next generation of STPs. Past success factors, such as size of land and buildings to be developed are no longer under the most relevant indicators for potential success of a STP. Their tenants and the knowledge-base in general demands the provision of services that enable the creation of new (knowledge- and innovation-led) business, accelerate the growth of existing ones as well as the easy attraction of inward investments.

Successful STPs have been able to deliver on public investment expectations by creating high value added jobs in their locality and have matured to sustain themselves through mostly traditional STP business models, e.g. rental and service charges, like catering, mentoring, etc.. Successfully identifying and implementing new business model could be an additional income stream for STPs, which haven’t yet been identified or exploited in an efficient manner, which will further define the next generation of STPs

Create value through collaboration in a digitally transformed world

Foster collaboration amongst STP tenants and their entire knowledge-base is a well-known and documented best practice. For instance by providing collaboration spaces and “managed serendipity” so researchers, entrepreneurs, students, business angels, mentors and investors can be part of the same ecosystem. In that digitalization plays a vital role to support changed behaviours, especially of younger professionals in the knowledge-base.

In terms of the main drivers of STPs, being the creation of high value added employment, tech-/ knowledge based business as well as return for public and private investments, STPs can benefit from the employment of digital solutions. Depending on size, geographical spread of the knowledge-base, number of businesses, research and academic institutions, corporate ventures, venture capital as well as the STPs maturity, digitalization can contribute in different ways, all of those present the STP as a state-of-the-art STP embracing digitalization for efficient and effective development of their knowledge-base.

Quote: “Building the right ‘software’ into a Park is where the true value lies.” - Dr. Andrew Witty, CEO GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), 2009

Academic Knowledge Transfer Establishing formal knowledge-base networks, by creating proximity through office, meeting and collaboration spaces  is at the center of STPs doing. Thus facilitating physical environments and opportunities for idea exchange and collaboration.

Opportunity for digitalization: Connect knowledge transfer actors in a STP on a digital platform to add the virtual collaboration dimension, including students for project internship programmes Manage information and share effectively with targeted users on the platform Understand the value of contributions made by the actors of the ecosystem

New Business Creation Facilitating affordable office solutions for founders and an incubation scheme with connected legal and advisory services along with help to access public funding, proofs to be the setup of choice for STPs to encourage entrepreneurs to create businesses and take the step into managing the entire scope of setting up and running a Startup.

Opportunity for digitalization: Utilize digital support the entire (or parts of the) problem-to-market (or idea-to-market) process Transform traditional, offline innovation processes into digital and novel open crowdsourcing approaches (open innovation concept) Versatile and proficient knowledge management capability through transparency of challenges, ideas, research undertakings, projects, businesses, investment and venture opportunities across the entire ecosystem Enable the connection of diverse and rich source of risk finance to support entrepreneurs and SMEs undertaking innovation, e.g. through crowdfunding procedures

High value-added employment With a working knowledge transfer and a business creation incubation scheme STPs get to fulfill their innate objective to create lasting high value-added employment. Typically knowledge about existing skills and competencies within a STP is rather drawn from approximations, than actual skills and competencies present at a certain point in time. For instance the research institutes main focus of investigation or the general focus of businesses present in the STP are such proxies to identify, whether competencies in certain fields of science, technology and or industries are available. Required skills and competencies to achieve true academic transfer to build new business and create employment is more, than just approximations based on high level information, but must be based on the individuals within the reach of the knowledge-base of the STP.

Opportunity for digitalization: Build insights of skills and competencies available (or required for) in the entire knowledge-base of the STP Detect and select the required skills for a task, project or for incorporation into a startup or business venture

Building next generation STPs with collaborative social network for Science and Technology Parks

TELANTO is an unique Academic Business Network, which introduces novel and holistic digital processes to academia and business ecosystems such as Science and Technology Parks on the quest to drive efficient and effective collaboration, innovation and talent output.

Furthermore it enables STPs to stay on track with societal changes in collaboration behaviour and provisions a social network that allows all actors in the STP to be part of it, regardless of timely geographic or other physical constraints.

Its processes based on relevant use cases for STPs allow for game-changing results within the management of parks around the world.

Provide a trusted business network for all actors in the ecosystem to share information and knowledge Facilitate and accelerate the innovation process, through crowdsourcing and crowdfunding mechanisms Detect talents with required skills and competences within the knowledge-base and motivate them to innovate and collaborate Inclusion of private businesses to engage with the knowledge-base to source innovations and identify + hire required skills, and thereby creating new income streams for STPs Attract additional investors, corporate ventures and business angels and allow them to further spread their risks by backing startups through crowdfunding campaigns

Conclusion

Deploying novel solutions to drive collaboration within STP’s knowledge-base is already becoming a determining factor in delivering against academic and business stakeholders expectations and beyond as well as becoming the new definition of next generation Science and Technology Parks.

Author(s) Short Bio

Aldi tut es, Ikea tut es, Daimler erst recht: Sie nutzen Studenten als Unternehmensberater. Auch Mittelständler sollten "Grünschnäbeln" eine Chance geben: Besser kommt man nicht an neue Ideen - und potentielle Bewerber.

„Wir leben in einer Zeit des exponentiellen Fortschritts“, sagte Sascha Lobo, Autor, Blogger, Journalist und digitaler Allrounder, am 6. Oktober im Frankfurter Westin Grand-Hotel bei einem Vortrag zum Thema Zukunft der Arbeit. Das bedeute, dass Technologien schon wieder out seien, bevor man überhaupt verstanden habe, wofür sie gut seien.

Und das macht vielen Unternehmen große Sorgen. Nicht nur der rasante technische Fortschritt und die sich ändernden Anforderungen an die Mitarbeiter, auch die immer neuen, immer schlechter vorhersagbaren Konkurrenten machen ihnen das Leben schwer: Tesla, eigentlich ein Software-Unternehmen, verkauft in den USA mittlerweile mehr Luxusautos als irgendein anderer Anbieter. Die Welt spielt scheinbar verrückt, da ist guter Rat teuer.

Beratermarkt profitiert von der Unsicherheit

Entsprechend profitiert die Beraterbranche: Laut Bundesverband Deutscher Unternehmensberater belief sich der Umsatz der Unternehmensberatungsbranche in Deutschland 2015 auf rund 27 Milliarden Euro. Zum Vergleich: 2001 waren es noch 12,9 Milliarden – und selbst zu Zeiten der Finanzkrise lag der Umsatz der externen Berater bei 18,2 (2008) beziehungsweise 17,6 Milliarden Euro (2009). Seitdem steigt die Hilfsbedürftigkeit der Unternehmen quasi täglich.

Die Top Unternehmensberatungen nach Umsatz auf dem deutschen Markt sind McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group und Roland Berger. Aber neben den großen Kanzleien gibt es einen regelrechten Beraterdschungel: Deutschlandweit existieren 15.425 verschiedene Beratungsunternehmen, für die gut 109.500 Berater arbeiten.

Wer keinen klassischen Unternehmensberater an Bord holen, aber trotzdem frische Ideen ins Unternehmen bringen will, kann mit Universitäten kooperieren. Gerade im Mittelstand ist das ein weitverbreitetes Modell: Die Studierenden können sich praktisch austoben und ihr Wissen anwenden, die Unternehmen sparen Kosten. Von den 100 innovativsten deutschen Mittelständlern arbeitet weit mehr als die Hälfte regelmäßig mit Unis zusammen.

Start-up vermittelt Kooperationen mit Hochschulen

Die Brücke zwischen Betrieb und Forschungseinrichtung will das Start-up Telanto künftig schlagen und mittelständische Unternehmen mit Studierenden zusammenbringen. „Action Learning“ nennen die Telanto-Gründer ihr Modell. Der Gedanke dahinter: Ein Unternehmen startet auf der Website einen „Call for Solution“ und Studierende der Partnerhochschulen – unter anderem die HTW Berlin, die Universität Barcelona, die Hochschule Fresenius oder die WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management - können sich darauf bewerben, die Probleme des Unternehmens zu lösen. So sammeln sie praktische Erfahrungen, das Unternehmen wird seine Probleme los – und im besten Fall lernen sich so Arbeitgeber und künftiger Bewerber kennen.

Derzeit können sich Studierende beispielsweise an einer digitalen Strategie für ein mittelständisches deutsches Unternehmen die Zähne ausbeißen, die Internationalisierung eines französischen Konsumgüterherstellers vorantreiben oder einem Schweizer Pharmaunternehmen bei einem Projekt rund um Tiergesundheit helfen. In der Regel haben die Studenten dafür drei Monate Zeit.

Im Oktober beginnt die Konzeptionsphase eines solchen Projekts bei Somfy. Das Unternehmen aus Rottenburg am Neckar entwickelt und vertreibt Antriebs- und Steuerungstechnik für Rollläden, Sonnenschutz, Garagen- und Hoftore – und stellt im Schnitt pro Jahr zehn neue Mitarbeiter ein.

„Wir investieren viel in Sozialleistungen"

„Bis 2025 sind wir vermutlich 50 bis 60 Leute mehr. Da stellt sich die Frage: Baut man an oder kann man deutlich stärker Richtung Home-Office gehen?“, sagt Carlo Sprenger, Leiter Personalwesen bei Somfy. Diese Fragen sollen Studierende beantworten, in dem sie die "Arbeitswelt 2025 bei Somfy" entwerfen und entwickeln. Pläne, die sich als realistisch erweisen, will das Unternehmen in die Tat umsetzen. Trotzdem tut sich schon jetzt einiges: „Wir wollen weg vom Konzept des reinen Arbeitsplatzes“, sagt Sprenger.

Auch wenn es blumig klinge wolle man bei Somfy lieber ein Erlebnisplatz sein, an dem die Mitarbeiter sich wohl fühlen. „Wir investieren viel in Sozialleistungen und Aufmerksamkeiten wie Gratiskaffee, Gratisgetränke oder Betriebsfahrräder.“ Und wer könnte besser entscheiden, ob sich das auch in Zukunft lohnt, als die potentiellen künftigen Mitarbeiter?

Neben Somfy arbeiten etwa Groupon, Bioprognos, Aldi, Ikea, Philips Healthcare oder das KaDeWe mit den Telanto-Studenten zusammen. Mit Erfolg: Die Problemlösequote der vermittelten Studenten-Teams liegt bei 90 Prozent.

Studentenjob Unternehmensberater

Dass das Modell „Student berät Unternehmen“ auch langfristig erfolgreich ist, zeigt die Oscar GmbH. Die ausschließlich von Studenten und Absolventen geführte Unternehmensberatung feierte am 1. Oktober ihr 25-jähriges Bestehen. Rund zwei Millionen Euro Umsatz machen die Jungberater mit Projekten wie etwa einer Trendanalyse zur Untersuchung der künftigen Relevanz des Themas “Consumerization” für Vodafone, Marktanalysen im Bereich Membranpumpen für Saint Gobain PPP, Verbesserung der der Ausbildungs- und Traineestrukturen beim Deutschen akademischen Ausbildungsdienst oder der „Entwicklung, Konzeption und Implementierung einer internationalen Diskussionsplattform für Studenten“ bei Daimler.

Die Berater sitzen in Köln oder Stuttgart und haben mindestens vier Semester studiert, bevor sie bei Oscar anfangen dürfen. Ein Nebenjob ist die Unternehmensberatung bei Oscar jedoch nicht. Alle Angestellten arbeiten dort in Vollzeit, manche unterbrechen das Studium, andere nutzen ein Praxissemester oder die Pause zwischen Bachelorabschluss und Beginn des Masterstudiums, wie die ehemalige Geschäftsleitung des Kölner Standortes erklärte.

Das rasante Innovationstempo allerorten macht den Austausch zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis zum Erfolgsfaktor für Unternehmen. Nur so bleiben sie auf der Höhe der Zeit. Ein Blick auf gelungene Kooperationen und auf ein Start-up, das daraus ein cleveres Geschäftsmodell entwickelt hat. 

Noch haben nicht allzu viele Unternehmen begriffen, wie wichtig für sie der Austausch mit Wissenschaft und Forschung ist, um wirtschaftlich erfolgreich zu bleiben: Selbst von den Firmen, die das Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW) als „innovationsaktiv“ bezeichnet, kooperieren gerade einmal 6,8 Prozent mit Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen. 

Nun kann man argumentieren: Nach den Maßstäben des ZEW sind 93,2 Prozent der Unternehmen auch ohne Kooperation erfolgreich. Man kann aber auch zu der Ansicht gelangen, dass diese Betriebe sich einfach mit dem Erreichten zufriedengeben und Potenzial verschenken. 

Zusammenarbeit als Innovations- und Wachstumsmotor 

Schaut man beispielsweise nur auf die TOP 100, also auf die innovativsten Unternehmen des deutschen Mittelstands, dann sieht man, dass überdurchschnittlich viele von ihnen regelmäßig mit Universitäten und Forschungseinrichtungen zusammenarbeiten: 66 Prozent. Kooperationen dieser Art sind also ein echter Innovations- und Wachstumstreiber. 

Das bestätigt Daniel Huber, der Geschäftsführer des viermaligen TOP 100-Unternehmens Peter Huber Kältemaschinenbau: „Wahre Technologiesprünge lassen sich durch die Zusammenarbeit mit externen Entwicklungspartnern am ehesten erkennen“, sagt der Mann, der mit seinen Technologien unter anderem ein Observatorium im Himalaja-Gebirge ausgestattet hat. 

Studenten organisieren virtuelle Modenschau 

Am Puls der Zeit bleiben: mit dem TOP 100-Blog Studenten organisieren virtuelle Modenschau Auch zwei Top-Innovatoren aus der Modebranche setzen auf universitäres Know-how und übertragen Studenten außergewöhnliche Innovationsprojekte. „Die Wissenschaftler und Studenten helfen uns aktuell zum Beispiel bei der 3-D-Simulation: Eine Software näht Stoffe virtuell zusammen, zieht die fertige Kleidung einem Avatar an und kann auch die Bewegung der Stoffe simulieren. Für solche Forschungen haben wir als Mittelständler gar nicht die Kapazitäten“, berichtet Helmut Schlotterer in einem Interview für das gerade erschienene TOP 100-Buch. Schlotterer ist Inhaber des international tätigen Damenmode-Herstellers Marc Cain. 

Der älteste Damenschuh-Hersteller Europas, die Peter Kaiser Schuhfabrik, profitiert ebenfalls von der Einbindung externen Wissens in seine Innovationsprozesse: Gemeinsam mit Studenten der Technischen Universität Berlin realisierten die Pirmasenser in einjähriger Entwicklungsarbeit einen fotorealistischen 3-D-Produktkonfigurator. Mit ihm können Kundinnen selbst zu Designerinnen werden und ihre eigenen Wunschschuhe und -handtaschen entwerfen. Peter Kaiser fertigt und versendet die individuellen Entwürfe in nur drei bis vier Wochen. 

TWL „mietet“ eine Universität 

Die Technischen Werke Ludwigshafen (TWL) zogen die Zusammenarbeit gleich etwas größer auf: 2015 veranstaltete der Energieversorger gemeinsam mit der Karlshochschule in Karlsruhe den Ideenworkshop „Rent a University“: 100 Studenten und 20 Professoren entwickelten gemeinsam neue Ideen für die Versorgungswirtschaft der Zukunft. 

„Nach dem ‚Open Space’-Konzept beschäftigte sich die Hochschule mit der Frage, welche Kundenbedürfnisse die Versorgungswirtschaft 2020 erfüllen soll. In drei Runden à 75 Minuten wurden unterschiedlichste Ideen in den Hochschulräumen generiert und bearbeitet. Von ‚Mobilität der Zukunft‘ über ‚Social Responsibility’ bis hin zu ‚Smart & Green Cities’ – den Gedanken waren keine Grenzen gesetzt“, berichtet das Unternehmen in seinem Newsletter. Die Ergebnisse wurden dann an der Karlshochschule im Rahmen eines Unternehmensprojekts weiter bearbeitet. 

Austausch mit Universitäten als Geschäftsmodell 

Nicht selten fehlt mittelständischen Unternehmen aber der Zugang zu Universitäten oder das Vertrauen in die Praxisnähe ihres Forschens. Diese Kluft will das Start-up Telanto mit Sitz in München und Barcelona überwinden. Das von ehemaligen SAP-Managern gegründete Unternehmen verwebt mit seinem „Academic Business Network“ Universitäten und Firmen. 

Unternehmen, die ein Problem zu lösen haben, können auf der Telanto-Webseite einen „Call for Solutions“ platzieren. Beim Blick auf die Webseite überrascht das breite Spektrum der aktuell zur Bearbeitung ausgeschriebenen Aufgaben: Es reicht vom Klassiker, der Erarbeitung einer Internationalisierungsstrategie, bis zu außergewöhnlichen Aufgaben wie die „Erhöhung der Akzeptanz in Kommunen für erneuerbare Energien“ und die „Tiergesundheit in Zentral-Molkereien". Letztere „Challenge“ ist übrigens mit einem Tiger-Bild illustriert, was einen eher unorthodoxen Lösungsansatz bedingen könnte. 

Fakultäten oder Professoren der unterschiedlichsten Fachrichtungen, die für ihre Studenten eine Praxisaufgabe suchen, können sich als Problemlöser bewerben. Umgekehrt können sie aber auch selbst „Calls for Challenges“ ausschreiben, wenn sie für ihre Studenten eine Praxisaufgabe aus Unternehmen im Rahmen eines akademischen Kurses suchen. „Die Studierenden sammeln so praktische Erfahrungen, die nicht für die Ausbildung konstruiert wurden, sondern aus der Unternehmensrealität stammen“, betont Telanto in einer Unternehmensmitteilung. 

We asked three individuals with their eyes on the future to highlight the biggest changes they see ahead for business. They include Jeanne Meister, a founding partner of the consulting firm Future Workplace and co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today, and Karie Willyerd, a workplace futurist for SAP and co-author of both The 2020 Workplace with Meister and Stretch: How to Future-Proof Yourself in Tomorrow’s Workplace. We also spoke to David Krackhardt, professor of organizations and co-director of the Center for the Future of Work at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Their predictions coalesce around four primary areas. Let’s call them “the four T’s”: training, time, technology, and teams. According to these experts, educational providers who address the needs of business in these quickly evolving areas will stay relevant and ready for the future of work.

75% of the workforce will be millennials by 2025.

Training: Future workers need more of it to stay up-to-date.

What’s one of the biggest concerns for today’s employees? That their skills will become obsolete, according to a survey conducted by SAP. “And yet companies cannot keep up with the need for training to meet today’s needs, let alone future needs,” says Willyerd. In the future, more employees will take charge of their own training needs, so they can stay current with the latest thinking, technologies, tools, and emerging fields.

The growing demand for just-in-time, brief, and highly focused learning opportunities represents “a huge opportunity for providers,” says Willyerd. She sees the possibility for more subscription-based models of learning, which would allow practitioners to access webinars and in-person discussions throughout the year to catch up on their industries.

Time: Future workers will have even less of it to spare.

People will be looking for ways to do everything more efficiently, which means they’ll be looking for educational options that are more easily accessible, are more focused on their current needs, and take less time to complete. Meister sees three primary trends reshaping workplace training: the explosion of online videos, the increased sophistication of digital assistants, and the rise of the millennial generation.

People have become very accustomed to seeking out online videos to learn everything from how to cook to how to play guitar, so it will be a natural progression for them to turn to short videos to master more complex learning, says Meister. As an example, she points to the growing popularity of MOOCs, which heavily feature video instruction supplemented by group discussion and other materials. “MOOCs just came out three years ago, and already 24 million people have taken one,” she says. “At first, MOOCs focused on technical training and computer science, but now we’re seeing more MOOCs on topics like leadership development and emotional intelligence— topics that have been the bread and butter for business schools.”

And as smartphone-based digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana become more capable, Meister believes that people will evolve quickly from saying “Find me the best restaurants within two blocks” to “Show me a list of MOOCs on leadership.”

The previous two trends will be reinforced by the third—the increasing influence of the millennial generation, whose expectations will have significant impact on the workplace, especially on the ways people learn, says Meister. By 2020, millennials will make up 50 percent of the U.S. workforce; by 2025, that number will be 75 percent. Millennials will be a primary target for anytime-anywhere learning, but they’ll want to engage in meaningful social interactions in the process, Meister predicts. “In the future, they’ll want to access education in ways that are more like a consumer experience, and they’ll increasingly expect more choices.”

In recent interviews that Future Workplace conducted with 220 heads of human resources and corporate learning, “44 percent said they had initiatives underway either to curate existing MOOCs or create custom company MOOCs for their organizations,” says Meister. “They planned to give their workers access to all the high-quality learning that’s out there.” That means that companies could shift more of their training budgets from formal degree and executive education programs to self-directed “microlearning” based on MOOCs, TED Talks, and podcasts.

“In a few years, I see half of all executive education programs going out of business,” warns Meister, unless business schools tap into the demand for shorter-term and more consumer-oriented online training options.

Technology: Future Workers will need to know more about it, even if they're not in IT fields.

Digital technology, social media, and big data will reign supreme in the future workplace, driving how people communicate, collaborate, and understand their markets. But the fast pace of technological advancement in the last ten years is only going to accelerate. “Technology is changing more quickly than managers can keep up with,” says Krackhardt. “They will have to bring in talented workers who aren’t just familiar with new technology— they also will have to know how to integrate new technologies into the organization.”

The most successful workers in all fields will have learned a coding language and the basis of technology platforms. With this training, Krackhardt says, managers will know when new technologies and innovations make sense and how to coordinate their implementation effectively. Those they manage might not necessarily know what the latest technology or innovation is, but when presented with new options, they’ll have the technical skills to understand them 

Meister reinforces the need for the educational market to address the “digital skills gap.” “Companies invest millions of dollars into new technology for people to use, but not enough in training them to use it,” says Meister. “Workers are asking for help to become more proficient in their digital skills.” She points to a 2014 Harris Interactive poll conducted for Grovo, a training solution company. In the poll, only one in ten workers believed they were “very proficient” with the digital tools they had to use every day for their jobs, while 58 percent noted that they would welcome additional technological training

Willyerd agrees that future workers will need to be more computer savvy. “Companies will have systems running all kinds of programs and producing all kinds of data, but they’ll still need to rely on people who can ask good questions.”

Teams: Future workers will need to work effectively across time zones, cultures, and perspectives.

Team-based collaboration is the “T” that could shape the future workplace the most. From Skype and social media to telepresence and collaborative platforms, technology has closed the distance between workers, whether they’re in different offices or different countries. Today’s digital natives will have to develop skills in coordinating workflow and appreciating differences. “Ten years ago, people needed to develop a global mindset to run an office in Brazil,” says Meister. “Future corporations will be building multicultural workforces, and workers will need to understand the cultures of everyone they work with. A strong global perspective will be as core a skill as leadership development is today.”Krackhardt reiterates the point that global and technological understanding will go hand in hand. “Because technology is making it easier for us to work internationally, we can connect with people from different time zones more easily,” he says. “The technological side and the international side will be dominant themes for the future workplace.”

However, even though—or perhaps because—virtual teams will be more prevalent, face-to-face interactions will become even more important, Krackhardt emphasizes. He refers to the long-established “law of propinquity,” which states that the farther away people are from each other, the less likely it is that they will interact. Even with email, social media, and web conferencing, he says, people don’t work well together unless they trust one another—and they won’t trust one another unless they develop personal, face-to-face relationships.

As one example, he refers to Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant, which funds Carnegie Mellon’s Center for the Future of Work. Each month D’Souza requires all of his vice presidents to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, to meet

in person. “The irony is that Cognizant designs technology so companies don’t have to do this!” says Krackhardt. “When I asked him why, he said, ‘Because I really need their attention for the whole weekend.’”

He stresses the need for managers to learn how to balance the virtual and face-to-face effectively, because “relationships can be enhanced by technology, but they cannot be replaced by technology.”

47% of jobs in the U.S. could succumb to automation.

Takeaways:

Krackhardt, Meister, and Willyerd agree that as the workplace continues to evolve, the areas of training, time, technology, and teams will represent great opportunities for educational providers.“

The problem is that business schools are still focused on longer degree and certificate programs,” Willyerd says. “They plan their curricula to meet current business needs, but by the time they put their new curricula into place, the economy already has shifted.”

These experts stress that if business schools are to help workers stay up-todate, they’ll need to adapt their curricula to offer more flexible and accessible learning options, which can be more easily updated to stay responsive to industry. They will need to provide their students more opportunities—and even requirements—to pursue international study, take IT courses, and participate in project-based learning. Most important, business schools need to start preparing for the future today. Because in five or ten years, it just might be too late.

SIDEBAR:

Jobs at Risk, Jobs to Watch

Many researchers are focusing their studies on predicting which occupations that exist today will be gone by mid-century. In fact, up to 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. could succumb to automation, according to the University of Oxford’s Carl Frey and Michael Osborne in their September 2013 study “The Future of

Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” After studying employment trends in 702 occupations, they identified those at highest risk of being rendered obsolete by advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. These include jobs requiring the lowest levels of tactile dexterity, social intelligence, and creative intelligence, such as those in legal services, transportation and logistics, and production. Executive assistants also could become less necessary as electronic assistants like Apple’s Siri grow more sophisticated.

In addition, Frey and Osborne identify industries that are likely to evolve to require higher and higher levels of technical skill, including coding and cybersecurity, as well as those that rely heavily on creativityand emotional intelligence, such as the arts, healthcare, and management. Frey and Osborne predict that companies in these industries will still prefer humans over machines. However, to stay employable, they conclude, workers in any industry will need to seek out training that focuses on these crucial 21stcentury capabilities.

Source: BIZED Magazine http://www.bizedmagazine.com/archives/2016/1/features/focus-on-the- future-are-business-schools-ready-for-future- work?utm_source=HighRoads%20Solutions&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=HighRoads %20All%20Emails

Postscript:

The article bellow concludes that while traditional business skills and competences such as marketing, finance, strategy, managing people, etc. are still a must for succeeding in the future, the risk of them becoming obsolete is very high and thus the students will need to upgrade constantly their knowledge and skills by self training themselves and developing the key competence of being resourceful. 

In the future of Work Chair at ESADE, we have decided to run experiments, in collaboration with the full time MBA to develop a new form of teachings, where there are no traditional teachers and classrooms, but the focus is on team experimentation and the development of the said resourcefulness skills. We believe that by acquiring the latter we can better prepare the business school students to solve future corporate challenges. The program is called AlCP (Action Learning Consultancy Project) where students are learning to learn , “de-learn” and “re-learn” in solving company’s problems (called challenges). The students self-organize into their “dream Team” are matched with companies that expressed willing to collaborate with the program by providing a challenge. 

This is a form of dynamic real cases, in real time with real companies. The company grades the students at the end by assessing the level of creativity, innovation and quality of the solution. Students are being coached throughout thye 3 months project to ensure that there is a real learning going on and and encouraged to think and provide an “out of the box” solutions. The ALCP was initiated and developed by Prof. Simon L. Dolan (the Future of Work Chair in ESADE - www.esade.edu/research-webs/eng/fwc ). In order to run this experimental program, an alliance was forged with the MBA Full time program at ESADE (www.esade.edu/ftmba/eng ), with ESADE-Creapolis (a hub for innovation - www.esadecreapolis.com/#innovation-ecosistem ) and with TELANTO (a software and provider company- who has develop a special platform to manage this program - http://www.telanto.com/ ). 

"Partnerships will become important to CEOs pursuing growth and innovation.“ (PwC’s CEO Survey 2015)

According to PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey 2015, where 1,322 CEOs from a high range of industries in 77 countries were interviewed about upcoming trends, partnering is becoming one important way of gaining new capabilities to accelerate innovation. 51% of CEOs worldwide plan to enter a new strategic alliance or joint venture in the coming year. Instead of traditional ways of partnering more CEOs want to extend to alliance with start-ups, competitors, and firms from different industries.

Alliances with Startups, Business Schools and Universities

The last years have shown that some standout ideas come from universities or business schools. New companies were raised by long nights tinkering in garages or imaginative discussions in student sharing apartments. As we enter a new age of networking there are more ways to connect academic talent to innovation. Many universities begin to start innovation programs, aimed at launching new businesses. They teach their students how to innovate, support them conducting a business plan, help raising initial funding, and in many cases a new startup is born. There are Academic Business Networks, where companies can collaborate with universities providing real world challenges to source innovation and talents.

 "CEOs draw a strong correlation between recruiting for a diversity of talents and the ability to innovate." (PwC’s CEO Survey 2015)

Organizations need to have the ability to learn and innovate. That is why CEOs start looking for talent in multiply places, according to PwC’s CEO Survey. Social professional ‎networks‬ take the lead as top source of quality hires. In PwC’s CEO Survey 2015, 92% of CEOs responded to use multiple channels to find talent, over all online platforms and social networks. They also focus on a wider range of skills when they hire new talents than before.

Technology, talent and partnering are the primary catalysts for innovation

Another top finding of PwC’s Survey 2015 is that "CEOs are focused on technology as a primary catalyst for innovation.” Digital technologies create a high impact for organizations in relation to their ability to innovate.

By 2050 there will be more than nine billion people living on our planet, consuming twice the energy and twice the food than today. That makes it even more difficult to provide productive employment in the future or education for everyone on the planet. How are we going to heal upcoming diseases, face the ongoing impact of climate change or the rising inequality? There is a huge amount of existing challenges in the world that need to be solved.

The importance to find solutions for humanity’s worst problems is evident. What it takes are new ideas, innovative approaches and a bunch of talented, passionate and cross-minded people to solve them. These days the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) calls for action with its new program SOLVE. From the 5th to 8th of october 2015 the SOLVE Conference takes place on the MIT campus, where more than 600 researchers, business leaders, philanthropists, and change agents from all over the world stick together in conferences, debates and try to find practical and actionable solutions facing our global problems.

Solve is structured around four key “pillars”: Learn, Cure, Fuel, and Make. But still “everything is connected,” comments the curator of Make, Rodney Brooks. “We have to structure things in some way to make Solve work, but these are not distinct, unconnected pillars at all - there’s cross-coupling.”

SOLVE calls out for everyone to participate, think out-of-the-box and offer ideas on how to commercialize and scale up technologies. Doing so they call for action to get everyone involved, also you and me. You can watch the SOLVE Live Stream, follow their social coverage or participate and send your ideas via Social Media, like Twitter.

Thought Leader in problem solving

The MIT has a long history to bring innovation into the field of solving real time problems. Again it demonstrates its thought leadership in addressing the importance to move towards new approaches. SOLVE underlines the importance of people from different cultures, backgrounds to come together to seek for solutions. It is not just the technology that solves problems. It is all together the engagement of people that change the world. In the past the MIT already pioneered the idea of Action Learning Programs for students and companies.

The intention of our research was to understand the adoption rate and impact of ACTION LEARNING PROGRAMS in both academic institutions and companies.

8 week collection period (June & July) and 3 different sample groups. Our data represents responses from 604 participants.

Furthermore, our data shows that the response rate from company representatives was higher than from professionals representing academic institutions - this was, due to targeting the Talent Acquisition and Innovation professionals separately.

less partial responses from our academic sample group than from companies. While analyzing the data in more depth we identified an error of our survey design which unfortunately allows to answer less questions than initially wished for.

The Key Findings

All in all, we can conclude that ACTION LEARNING PROGRAMS are at the forefront of mind in both Academic and Industry professionals. For academic professionals the adoption of such programs is less related to economic results presented to their institutions but rather centered around learning experience, reputation and industry collaboration.

Company representatives shared a high interest in adopting such programs supporting their current recruiting or Talent Acquisition strategies which are slowly drifting away from the traditional modus operandi. In companies where a real-time/world challenge collaboration already exists the wish for more innovative ideas for products and services from multiple academic institutions resonated as the most valuable aspect for collaboration and engagement in such academic programs.

For the first time the ALCP was supported by TELANTOs Academia Business Network solution, that connected student talent with corporate challenges via a collaborative platform, which made project management and communication with fellow students, faculty, coaches and the companies very easy.

Given the pilot character of the usage of the solution, worthy insights were generated from the integration via quantitative and qualitative focus group interviews with participating students.

The most important part however is the satisfaction of the participating students as well as the companies. Herewith few facts: 

There were 12 teams (made up to 4-5 students) solving challenges for 12 companies

90% of the companies were satisfied to very satisfied with the end results of the students (reflected based on feedback, notes and final evaluations)

90% of students have also reported their satisfaction

Advances in information technology (IT) and its increased use in the workplace have led to changes in the way people labor. Recent trends point towards remote working. The online management tools allow business professionals to develop their work freely from home with flexible hours without the need to travel to an office.

 What is remote work?

Remote work is a form of organizing and / or performing work, using information technology as part of a contract or employment relationship, in which a work usually performed at the premises of the company, is made outside these premises regularly.

It is considered as a means of modernizing the shape of work for companies and public service organizations, and it also allows workers to reconcile professional and social life by giving them greater autonomy in carrying out their tasks. In this way travel times are reduced and downtime without tasks to perform are also reduced. It also produces a rescheduling of work; from hours at the office to hours spent at work.

Benefits of remote workers for organizations

In short and in general, employers in Europe see the following benefits:

Remote workers increase the organization´s productivity. Employees, working from home, can better manage their time, which optimizes their activity by working when they're inspired and eager, and minimizes downtime. In return for the power to self-manage their activity, the worker feels the need to demonstrate commitment, consistency and productivity to the employer. A parallel benefit is a decrease in absenteeism that occurs as remote work provides great flexibility to the worker in aspects of his personal life. In this way it is much easier to combine family responsibilities or unexpected events and not have to miss his job.

It is shown that costs are saved by working this way. As the worker is not being present in the office, the company reduced spending on electricity, water, gas, furniture, etc. In turn, this allows a better and more efficient management of resources. There is also a saving in incentives. The comfort of these working conditions provides an incentive to the employee without any extra expense for the company. This is a motivation for the worker and the corporation will not have to invest money in retaining talent or the recruitment of new staff.

And the most important thing is the fact that this type of work allows for a much more relaxed, motivated and resourceful workforce, thereby there is increasing in creativity and innovation.

 Advantages of remote work for employees and collaborators

Among the positive effects on workers would be the following:

There are major motivations and possibilities of creation and innovation, from the freedom to decide the working time and leisure, together with better concentration at home. It also increases the capacity of self-reliance and self-discipline. Less time is spent in transportation between home and workplace, saving time and money accordingly. And there are more job opportunities for people with disabilities and for those dedicated to the care of the sick.

There are other advantages to consider, for example, it favors the balance between work, private life and personal development. It also allows reconcile work and childcare, for cases of maternity or paternity. Offers alternatives for people who have been excluded from the traditional labor market can return to reinserted as could be the case of people with many years of knowledge and experience, but because if the age has been replaced by younger people.

New tools and new ways of working

Nowadays there are new platforms in which this kind of work can take place. One of them is TELANTO (www.telanto.com). TELANTO is an Enterprise Network and is the perfect tool for remote work. Since it runs through the cloud, it can be accessed anywhere in the world, from any device connected to the www. Its interface allows users to easily connect with each other, whether employers, employees or customers. TELANTO allows creating work groups effortlessly, and easily establishing assignment goals with deadlines. In this way employees can manage the use of their time, working when they feel ready and motivated, allowing greater creativity and better production. Employers can follow the project progress in real-time, and can also make comments, be consulted, and modify the deadlines in a very dynamic way. The interaction between co-workers through the platform allows simple and rapid transmission of knowledge and an easy management of the task when working in groups. All these advantages make it a very suitable tool for remote work, promoting healthier labor flexibility, better management of resources, which, in return, is accompanied with increased productivity and innovation.

Conclusion

We are living not a time of change, but a change of era. This are the "New Times" and remote work is a symptom of a profound change in the economy and society that is ushering in a new way of working for companies and their employees, a new way that brings economic, personal and ecological benefits.

According to Peter Johnston, head of the department of New Ways of Working in the Directory Information Society of the European Commission, "this new way of organizing work that is called telecommuting provides an important enhancement of innovation and productivity that is essential to bring businesses of all sizes to new levels of competitiveness".

Can a 20000 € advertising campaign win the best commercial in the Super Bowl? Doritos, a PepsiCo’s company, did it 2 times using crowdsourcing campaigns.

But not everything in crowdsourcing smells of roses. For example, the BP oil attempted to generate a campaign to prevent harmful effects on the environment after the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, and the results were not as expected. Despite the 120,000 applications, only 30 were applied and none succeeded, resulting in a waste of time and resources, and the pollution generated could not be solved.

In this article we will talk about some advantages of crowdsourcing, and, more important, some disadvantages and how to solve them.

 Over the last years many definitions of the word crowdsourcing were proposed. Although it was Jeff Howe who used the word first, we believe the following definition, by Estellés & González (2012), is the most complete and accurate:

 "Crowdsourcing is a type of online participatory activity in which a person, institution, nonprofit organization or company, proposes to a group of individuals, through an open and flexible call, free and voluntary execution of a task. The completion of the task, of varying complexity and modularity, and where the crowd should participate by contributing their labor, money, knowledge, and / or experience, always involves a mutual benefit. Participants get the satisfaction of a specific need, whether that economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or personal skills development, while the crowdsourcer obtain and use to their advantage the user output, and the form will depend on the type of activity."

 Among the benefits of crowdsourcing it was found that, initially, it decreases costs and solution times. Many proposals are generated, some of which can be very innovative and productive than traditional because of the heterogeneity of the contributors. These contributors can be, sometimes, very talented undiscovered people. Besides, the gap between the company and consumer vanishes, since each project participant is more in touch with the needs of the target buyer.

 But also many problems are found in this type of approach. The quality and effectiveness of the results are unpredictable. This can lead to wasted time and resources on projects that do not produce the desired results. Nor is there a very high assurance that the resulting final product quality is high or solves the initial problem. And there is the drawback of unlimited number of projects and information leading to a great effort in qualifying potential undertakings. Being a project that works in the community, intellectual property is also another issue, because participants could get to take the productions to other projects or companies.

 To solve many of these problems we propose the use of state-of-the-art Innovation Management Software, like TELANTO (which also incorporates Talent and Business Network functionalities). Typically functionality allows the production of challenges where enterprises can instill very clearly and effectively the use of resources and estimated production time, and allows real-time monitoring of the progress of individual projects, enabling more effective management. Additionally, this allows anticipating projects that can lead to successful results and quality productions, and discard those that do not, enhancing creativity and innovation. The data of everything produced becomes part of the arsenal of the company information, and it also takes the problem of intellectual property head-on, as participants groups are required to sign an agreement stipulating that everything produced, despite being used for the final solution or not, becomes property of the company that defined the challenge problem in the first place.

Design thinking is changing the foundations of traditional management. Design practice - that is, how designers approach a problem and the methodology they applied - can help professionals, businessmen and entrepreneurs to generate ideas, solve problems creatively and expand their horizon.

Organizations around the world are becoming more competitive because their approaches draw on the methods and skills of designers to solve problems and generate innovation.

In this article you will find:

What is design thinking?

What processes make design thinking?

The innovation process based on creativity

Conclusion

 What is Design Thinking?

We are undergoing a change in the culture of innovation, this change is to move from a culture based on efficiency and optimization to a new form of innovation that brings many possibilities. This form of innovation originates in creative thinking and especially in the particular way designers solve problems - Design Thinking (DT).

DT seeks to understand the needs of the user and the stakeholders to deliver a solution that is appropriate from the technological and operational point of view.

DT is leading to a new methodology of creativity at the strategic level of business. This new orientation originates particularly in the work of people like David Kelley (David Kelley’s company IDEO helped create many icons of the digital generation — but what matters even more to him is unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely).

 The innovation process based on creativity

DT is an iterative process where new scenarios arise, propositions are made and experienced, prototypes are developed, evaluated, corrected, re-evaluate and re-correct, etc. Generally you go from analysis to synthesis to create the future way of user interactions with products, services and experiences.

It can be summarized in a three general methodology phases:

Identification and Inspiration

The creative phase

Implementation and launch

The process works by projects. This indicates that their activities are in a limited space of time that will determine some stages or phases, some milestones and resources.

Phase Identification and inspiration usually begins with a definition of the problem and the objectives of the project which is usually called Brief. This document is the chart of the process and even presents an initial understanding of the problem, this is enriched constructively to the end.

As is passed to the creative stage, the stories created to inspire the team become multiple ideas, thanks to activities such as brainstorming, whose results can be better concepts or proposals that respond to user stories. The team learns from his own ideas by creating simple prototypes, built and evaluated through experimentation. After selected and constructed, an idea becomes the solution.

Conclusion

Action Learning has emerged as a method of choice for global companies, government agencies, and non-profits that want to improve quality, cut costs, create new products and services, and change the culture of their organizations.

Companies as diverse as Microsoft, Samsung, Dow, GE, Deutsche Bank, Boeing, Sodexho, Novartis, Nokia and many others use Action Learning to solve complex problems, develop leaders, build teams and expand corporate capability.

Action Learning: a definition

Action Learning is an approach to solving real problems that involves taking action and reflecting upon the results. The learning that results helps improve the problem-solving process as well as the solution the team develops. The action learning process includes:

A real problem that is important, critical, and usually complex.

A diverse problem-solving team or "set"

A process that promotes curiosity, inquiry, and reflection.

A requirement that talk be converted into action and, ultimately, a solution.

And a commitment to learning.

In many, but not all, forms of action learning, a coach is included and is responsible for promoting and facilitating learning as well as encouraging the team to be self-managing. In addition, individuals, teams and organizations can apply to other situations the learning acquired by working on complex, critical and urgent problems that have no current acceptable solutions. The theory of action learning and the epistemological position were developed originally by Reg Revans (1982) who applied the method to support organisational and business development, problem solving and improvement.

Action Learning has many educational applications. Because it has been proven to be very effective in developing a number of individual leadership and team problem solving skills (Leonard and Marquardt, 2010), it has been used extensively as a component in corporate and organizational leadership development programs. As complex problems require many skills, individual team members can develop a customized learning agenda for themselves. This strategy is quite different from the "one size fits all" curriculum that is characteristic of many training and development programs.

Benefits of Action Learning

This type of problem solving enhances business performance at all levels by rapidly solving urgent and important problems and business challenges. It achieves a substantial return on Investment (ROI) on organization improvement projects. In management, it allows to establish effective succession planning by developing highly qualified candidates for promotion to executive leadership positions. By doing this, leaders are more strategic in goal setting and this develops a culture of staff engagement, involvement and performance. It is a new way of learning and knowledge sharing inside the organization.

Action Learning helps to dramatically enhance team performance, by developing positive, mutually respectful working relationships with co-workers at all organizational levels. Employees improve individual and team problem-solving and decision-making capabilities. These capabilities include reflecting on and learning from collective experience and the awareness in the context of multi-cultural diverse teams. The continuing monitoring of the action learning allows making effective and efficient planning and evaluations.

Individually, Action Learning enhances personal effectiveness and productivity, to contemplate and learn from individual and team experience. It improves personal leadership and soft skills. It helps to develop self-confidence and assertiveness, to expand awareness of how assumptions, beliefs, attitudes and organizational interests influence thinking, decisions and actions. It also allows developing Emotional Intelligence (EI): self-awareness, others' awareness and adaptability. Finding the courage to speak up and encouraging others to do the same.

A link between Companies and Business Schools

Today, many Business Schools invite companies to participate in projects of action learning.  Within their MBAs, they offer their students the chance to form working groups within their field of study and solve tangible problems that real companies are facing nowadays.  By doing this, scholars have the opportunity to hold a real world working experience, and organizations profit by having young, talented and innovative people solving their difficulties at a very low cost, saving a lot of money and generating large amounts of benefits.

This is not only beneficial in solving a particular problem, but giving both businesses and students the possibility of an interaction in which scholars demonstrate their capabilities so the company can see, in a real life practice, the skills and success of the work of a person who after obtaining the MBA could become part of their flanks.

Successful examples of Action Learning Projects

ESADE Business School provides an excellent example of this type of projects in practice. For more than two years Dr. Simon Dolan holds within its chair, Future of Work, an Action Learning Consultancy Project.

The modality of the assignment is that students form groups of 5 participants, according to the area of interest and knowledge, and choose three of several projects offered. Then, rendering to the different choices and possibilities, each group is assigned a challenge (problem). The interesting thing about this kind of practice is that students never know, throughout the project, for which company they are solving the problem.

Following the guidelines of Reg Revans of Action Learning, the company offers students a tutor or coach who will accompany and guide them in every step of the assignment. Scholars shall be presenting weekly reports on their progress, and have the problem solved in a maximum of three months, where its production is evaluated.

The success of these experiences in previous years has been resounding, both for businesses and students, many of whom were hired by companies who had worked on solving the problem. This year a total of 30 large companies and more than 100 students will participate in this project.

Also, for this year’s project, a new software platform is being used: Telanto, an Enterprise Social Network. Telanto is the perfect tool for this kind of projects as it allows users to work on the challenge within the platform. Each student has his/her own profile from which he/she can interact with other group members, sharing knowledge, assigning and performing tasks, and together solving the challenge. It also allows the coach to follow the students’ progress all along the project. Teachers can make weekly and final evaluations within the software to follow the learning process.

Conclusion