Dell–The Evolving Workforce
The report, co-sponsored by Intel and researched by TNS includes a contribution from TomorrowToday’s Dean van Leeuwen, whose blog lists the main findings.
Technology, though not necessarily the driver of evolution in work, is certainly the great enabler so it’s no surprise that technology companies have a fair bit to say about how the future might look. Microsoft has spoken about the New World of Work since 2005 and currently the UK subsidiary is promoting its vision of the Hybrid Organisation with some insightful work on how the bits, bricks and brains of the future will fit together.
I was particularly attracted to the Dell paper – the first of a series – because it is the first of this type of paper I’ve seen that explicitly identifies the growth of freelancing and other forms of temporary contract. Dell brackets this under the broader trend of “Crowdsourcing and Crowdsource Service” which gives an interesting perspective on the organisational trend towards agility. At the extreme, a crowdsourcing approach to work leads to the Hyperspecialization concept proposed by MIT Sloan’s Thomas Malone recently and to services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Well worth a read.
