The future of work

I would like to take a break from education to look at what comes after education - the world of work, and how technology is likely to disrupt the traditional (in the mass-industrial era) patterns of employment.

The industrial notion of a stable job in a large corporate, with its clear hierarchy and defined experience, is being replaced by an ever shifting landscape of nomadic individuals combining in flexible and fluid organisations.

There are a number of key forces acting on society's current economic reorganisation, including

• decreasing costs of organisation
  
• declining capital costs of tools of value creation
• rise of the creator economy
  
• expansion of education
  
• extension of working life

I will try to look at these over the next few posts, and seek to identify how technology is shaping organisations - both from the social perspective of the individual (i.e. relationship with employer) and from the managerial perspective of the organisation (relationship with employee).

Time to ingnite the passion economy

Can technology disrupt the education system so that more students fulfill their full potential?

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who coined the term 'disruptive innovation', certainly thinks so, turning his focus to education in Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

I have already written about the game-changing possibilities for education, and Christensen has recently picked a number of disrupters who are looking to challenge the status quo.

Igniting passion

Saul Kaplan has a great post over at The Business Innovation Factory about the need to create a 'passion economy'

What he says mirrors Ken Robinson's TED speech about how the current education system is failing not only the students, but society as a whole, by stifling people's natural passions





He also has a book out which explores how 'finding your passion changes everything'.

The more we encourage and enable people to find their passion, not only do we increase our ability to solve the world's problems, but we also create a better, happier world for everyone.