What will be the jobs of the future ?

Innovation is easy (Tom Peters)

In 1982, John Naisbitt depicted globalization as we know it today

John Naisbitt in January 2007 (picture Flickr FabianMohr)

How social networks want to change the pace of scientific publication

2.0 tools are starting to change the shape of scientific debate. An article published this week in The Economist reminds us of the fact.

For decades, research has been moving on step by step, following the pace of major scientific publications. The process is tedious. For an article about a new scientific discovery to be published, results, methodology, must be peer reviewed by several other researchers. They investigate the entire protocol. The all procedure takes months, sometimes years.

Nature Network wants to change that. Researchblogging as well. The rationale for the second can not be more explicit:

“Do you like to read about new developments in science and other fields? Are you tired of science by press release? ResearchBlogging.org is your place. Research Blogging allows readers to easily find blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research, instead of just news reports and press releases”.

According to ResearchBlogging, bloggers are often experts in their field. They write well thought notes over their research. Scientific bloggers can register on ResearchBlogging. Each new post is then tagged and indexed. A team of experts checks articles quality. Readers can comment, make their own observations, rectify interpretations. Posts are classified according to disciplines and specific fields of research (anthropology, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc.).. The tool allows open interaction. It is faster than any classical peer reviewing

Nature Network is a sister company of Nature magazine. The philosophy is similar to the one behind ResearchBlogging. But Nature Network is more of a social network, the type of Facebook or MySpace. Each researcher can create his own profile, join scientific groups on topics of any interest to him/her. Dozens of groups have already been created (regarding membranes, conscience, the effect of calcium …). On top of ot, in order to foster scientific blogging, Nature Network is organizing a competition. The best blog posts will be published for good.

Science 2.0 could provide scientific innovation an impentus never known in former History, as it shortens the time between scientific discoveries and effective communication to the whole researchers community.

Value creation through network orchestration

The point on the Wikinomy (by Don Tapscott)

Is the link economy the key to innovation in business ? Definitely yes!

Very interesting post found on The Restless Mind, the blog of Mark Ury, architect and occasionaly entrepreneur. He reminds us of a few succesful companies, like Procter & Gamble, which have build their growth on a new innovation approach. Here is an excerpt.

BusinessWeek’s Chief Economist Mike Mandel recently penned “Can America Invent Its Way Back?” and highlighted that while the US spends on R&D, it doesn’t get its bang for its buck:

“Since 2000, the nation’s public and private sectors have poured almost $5 trillion into research and development and higher education, the key contributors to innovation. Nevertheless, employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen. The number of domestic jobs in the computer and electronics sector continues to plunge while pharmaceutical and biotech companies lay off as many workers as they hire. And even the industry category that includes Google (GOOG)—Internet publishing and Web search portals—has added only 15,000 jobs since 2003.”

Mandel’s piece goes on to suggest that “innovation economics” are an important part of the road forward, stressing that idea management, culture, and “creation economics” are the antidote to traditional economic thinking that emphasize taxes, inflation, and cost-control.

He’s right, of course. Corporations (and the infrastructure that supports them like public labs, universities, and policy makers) are still in an industrial-age hangover, too blurry-eyed to notice that their organizational DNA—a military blueprint that favors information asymmetry and strict vertical hierarchies—is counterproductive to the post-grid era, a network model that encourages edge-competencies and group coordination.

Today, companies that act porously—enabling and encouraging the flow of IP and talent in and out of their sphere of influence—are winning. Google is an obvious example, an organization that thrives largely by coordinating—rather than suppressing—the flow of information between people and markets.

So remarkable is their success that the “link economy” has become an increasingly recognizable phenomena, a pattern that spotlights value wherever it resides and manages abundance rather than controls scarcity.

The rest of this very interesting post on the economy of innovation is to be found here.

Wim Elfrink (CGO Cisco): “Bangalore is a globalisation hub”

Jef Staes and the Red monkey theorem