Recently in Future of work Category
Marshall McLuhan very often provides an instructive reference point for how we understand our changing world. As I wrote in my Chapter 1 of Living Networks: The brilliant visionary Marshall McLuhan accurately described the media as an extension of our senses. Your eyes can see what’s happening in your immediate vicinity, your ears can hear
Continue reading Why crowds are an extension of our capabilities
Last week I had an early evening meeting set up with Indy Johar, the inspiring co-founder of Hub Westminster. When I arrived I found that Indy had invoked an ‘Open Meeting Protocol’, offering £10 to Matt Sevenoaks of KPMG to join the meeting, who in turn invited Shelley Kuipers, the CEO of Chaordix, who as
Continue reading Open Meeting Protocol and the structure of emergent collaboration
[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website] Over the last two weeks I have delivered 8 keynotes or workshops on crowdsourcing across Western Europe. Most of them have been highly interactive sessions, bringing out new ideas or highlighting common issues or concerns. Part of the intent has been to gather
Continue reading 8 crowd insights from 8 crowdsourcing workshops
TheNextWeb produced a good quality video of my keynote at TheNextWeb Conference 2012, shown below. It doesn’t show all of my full motion graphics presentation, though it frequently cuts to show segments of the visuals through my keynote. I will create and share a full video of my motion graphics presentation along with the audio
Continue reading Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds
Je viens de faire une courte vidéo à propos du crowdsourcing. Dans mon livre Getting Results from Crowds, qu’on pourraît traduire par “Obtenir des résultats des masses”, j’explique comment les organisations, petites et grandes, doivent procéder pour bien utiliser le crowdsourcing. À Paris, le 3 mai, je présente avec le Boostzone Institute un petit-déjeuner à
Continue reading La valeur du crowdsourcing: Atelier à Paris
On April 28, immediately after my keynote at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam, I will travel to Cologne to run a workshop on the Future of Crowdsourcing. Unfortunately I will miss what looks like an excellent Crowdsourcing Summit on April 27 as I will be speaking in Amsterdam that day. I’ve made a short video to
Continue reading Future of Crowdsourcing workshop at Crowdsourcing Summit in Cologne
I’m at the Melbourne Google Enterprise Atmosphere on Tour event, the first of 25 events around the world. I am doing the keynote on The Evolution of Business at the Melbourne and Sydney events, giving an external perspective which happens to be highly aligned with the Google vision. The event included a Google Apps demo.
Continue reading Every business document should be in the cloud and concurrently editable
Je suis enchanté de faire une présentation à Paris 3 mai avec Boostzone Institute. Dominique Turcq de l’institut et moi avons discuté depuis longtemps de notre intérêt commun qui est le futur du travail et des organisations. Je vais parler du “Crowdsourcing”. Mon nouveau livre Getting Results From Crowds vient de paraître, et en mai-juin
Continue reading Le Crowdsourcing en France: une opportunité de créer le futur
These are frantically busy days, which is squeezing my ability to blog and capture some of the fascinating stuff flying by. In coming months I think I’ll try to do more ‘mini-blogging’, just capturing quick thoughts and impressions rather than writing up every interesting speaking engagement or media appearance I do. Yesterday I gave three
I caught up with some of the Yammer team this morning, including Chief Customer Officer David Obrand, while they are in town for the Yammer on Tour series. I was particularly interested in talking with them about Yammer’s shift to activity streams. In the massive convergence of enterprise social platforms that we’ve seen over the
Following the launch and fantastic response to Getting Results From Crowds we will be running a series of workshops around the world on creating value using crowds and crowdsourcing. The first ones will be in Sydney on April 16, followed by a number to be announced shortly in Europe and the US (see our call
This morning I appeared on Channel 7′s The Morning Show talking about the world 10 years from now. A few of the things I mentioned in the interview include:
The role and prominence of online markets for work have soared dramatically over the last few years, but this is just the beginning. I have been following the rise of online markets for work since Elance was founded in 1999, writing about them in my 2002 book Living Networks and dedicating a large chunk of
I recently spoke at an event organised by Building the Organisation of Tomorrow, a group created by alumni of University of Technology Sydney’s Master of Business in IT Management program. The format was very stimulating, with three 15 minute presentations, each followed by 15 minutes Q&A and then a ‘disruptive event’, including some awesome satirical
Continue reading New ideas: Building the organizations of tomorrow
We released our Map of the ExaTrends of the Decade a while ago now. However the decade is still young, and all of these ExaTrends (which is a MegaTrend cubed) have a long way yet to play out. We have created a set of slides to make the 14 ExaTrends easier to read and understand.
For many who come across the idea of crowdsourcing in its many forms, their first thoughts are about the ethical issues. As such, in writing Getting Results From Crowds, it was important to address the ethical domain rather than ignoring or glossing it. We address the ethical issues of crowdsourcing in Chapter 5 on Relationship
[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website] One of the most important implications of organizations shifting to crowdsourcing and crowd work is the need for effective project management structures. We cover Project Management in Chapter 14 of Getting Results From Crowds. The chapter opens with an excellent case study of
Continue reading Case study: Using project management for effective crowdsourcing
The intelligent use of crowdsourcing can have many benefits for companies – as well as government and non-profit organizations – in achieving their objectives. Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter 3 on Crowds and Business Value of Getting Results From Crowds The business value of using crowds Through history, companies have been limited in
Continue reading 5 important ways in which crowdsourcing creates business value
[This post first appeared on Getting Results From Crowds book website] Harvard Business Review has once again kicked off the year with a List of Audacious Ideas. One of them is Crowdsourcing Management Reviews for Better Management. Authors Linda Hill and Kent Lineback say:
In December I created a list of 12 themes to frame the year ahead, and then explored the ideas in a number of media interviews. The slides for the 12 themes have been seen almost 50,000 times now, suggesting they struck a chord somewhere. It’s now interesting to reflect on these, especially the response from
Continue reading Dominant themes for 2012: transformation and beyond
[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website] Research firm IDC has forecast that there will be 1.3 billion ‘mobile workers’ in the world by 2015, representing 37.2% of the global workforce. This points to the massive explosion of what I call the ‘global talent economy’, in which talent can be
Continue reading In the global talent economy over 50% will be mobile workers
It’s almost the end of the year, so I’ll try to do a few compilations of my most popular posts of the year. Today, on the general theme of the future, here are 12 (+1 for next year) that have attracted the most interest… 1. Zeitgeist 2011: anxiety, mobility, blending, indulgence, immersion, wrath, nudity and
Continue reading 12 most popular posts of the year on the future
This morning I appeared on the Australian national breakfast TV program Sunrise in their ‘Ask an Expert’ segment, talking about the year ahead. Here is the 4 minute clip. In the brief segment I draw on a number of the 12 Themes for 2012 I recently released. The key topics we discussed were:
Today we are launching my new book Getting Results From Crowds: The definitive guide to using crowdsourcing to grow your business! This has been, in all, many years in the planning and making, and I’m extremely happy with how it has come out. It is definitely my most useful book, and while it’s hard to
Continue reading Launching my new book today! Getting Results From Crowds
Last week I participated in and spoke at an Education Roundtable organized by Telstra, which brought together a small group of very senior executives in all layers of education in Australia. In the same way that I have been drawn into discussions on the future of government over the last 18 months, I am finding
Continue reading Tech-savvy children are driving the future of education
Towards the end of each year I share some thoughts on what awaits in the year ahead. It is actually a lot easier to look years into the future than just a single year, as while we can readily discern broad trends, the major events in a year are usually unforeseeable, though they may express
Continue reading 12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead
I am in the final stages of completing a book on how to use crowds and crowdsourcing effectively, which I am co-authoring with Steve Bynghall. We are using brief case studies liberally through the book, however we need a few more to flesh it out. We’d love to hear from you if you have been
Continue reading Book research: Looking for case studies/ leading practice in using crowdsourcing
This week I was MC for the AHRI HR Technology conference, and ran one of the workshops on the following day, on Creating Results Using Social Media. A real highlight of the conference was the Social Media: Risks and Rewards panel, which I chaired, with the participation of a fantastic cast of Peter Williams of
Continue reading Using social media to track and drive organizational success metrics
Tomorrow is the Australian Human Resources Institute HR Technology conference. I will be MC for the conference day, and will also run a half-day workshop on Creating Results Using Social Media on the following day. I thought I would share the visual content we will be using during the workshop. As usual, the slides are
Continue reading Workshop content: Creating results using social media – the HR perspective
This awesome video from New Scientist TV shows a surgical robot with a human operator peeling a grape. This technology greatly augments what human surgeons can do, and also provides a platform for telesurgery. The New Scientist article Watch a surgical robot peel a grape, says:
We have just posted an ad on Elance, looking for editors/ writers/ project managers for some of our existing and forthcoming online publications. Please apply on Elance if this seems like a match, or pass it on to others if you think it might be of interest. If you have questions before applying you can
This morning I am giving the external keynote at a closed conference for senior client executives run by a major professional services firm. They know the technical content they are presenting is rather dry so my role is to provide a highly engaging kick-off to the day (spouses are invited too) which is also practical
Continue reading Keynote slides: The Power of Social Media and Future Organizations
Today I gave the keynote at an invitation-only meeting of senior executives looking at the future of their industry. My role was to bring perspectives on the broader drivers of change in business. One of the central themes of my keynote was the future of work and organizations. There are of course many facets to
Continue reading The global polarization of work: what we can do about it


























Visualization of our activities and model
Our priorities for 2012



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