Launching new framework: The Future of Work

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I have been working with one of the world’s largest private companies, which is engaged in a strategy project looking at the future out to 2025. Today a key workshop for the project was run, where we refined the project process and I provided some perspectives on the future of work as input to the study.

While the future of work and organizations is one of my most important themes, I haven’t had any public summary documents on the topic. For today’s workshop and also as a first step in building out some richer frameworks, I created an overview framework on the future of work.

The framework probably needs some explanation, and I intend to both refine and provide more detailed explanations of the framework in the near future. In the meantime, here is our Beta v1 of The Future of Work framework.


Click on the image to download the full framework.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or input you have.

Global distributed organizations can attract the most talented in the world

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Forbes has a nice story about the history of WordPress and the role the open-source software plays in the for-profit business Automattic. The article at one point says:

Automattic has an idiosyncratic workplace. As a legacy of its open-source roots its 120 employees are spread across 26 countries and six continents. Although most work alone at home, each team–usually made up of five or six people–has a generous budget to travel. “All of the money we save on office space, we blow on travel costs,” Mullenweg laughs. Groups have gathered in Hawaii, Mexico and New Zealand. Once a year everyone meets for a week at an accessible destination with a solid Internet connection. A distributed workforce means Automattic can hire talent from around the world–without having to offer the perks and pay of Google, Facebook and Apple.

This brought a response from Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg:
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Disruptive innovation in professional services: the value in expertise

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The concept of disruptive innovation is now well-recognized in business. It was originally described by Clayton Christensen almost exclusively in terms of products – often technology-based – such as storage devices.

Disruptive innovation can happen in any industry, however it can need translation and interpretation for other domains such as services.

I recently I ran a presentation and interactive workshop on the future of professional services to kick off a law firm partner strategy offsite. Among the more specific challenges, opportunities, and responses that the professions face, I ran through some of the core principles that could disrupt their industry.

In fact a broad range of expertise-based industries are being subject to disruption, however with quite different dynamics than in product industries. The 3 key drivers of disruption of expertise are remote work, process automation, and artificial intelligence.

Four expertise-based services industries that are being disrupted are:
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The law of requisite variety: Why flexibility and adaptability are essential for success

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I first came across the law of requisite variety almost 20 years ago. Ross Ashby proposed the idea in his 1956 book An Introduction to Cybernetics (see p.202-218), and expanded on it in his paper Requisite variety and its implications for the control of
complex systems. The idea became one of the foundational concepts of the field of Cybernetics.

The law is developed mathematically, using essentially what we would now consider game theory. Ashby states it as:
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How 3D printing will transform the retail industry: The opportunities

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Power Retail magazine has just published a very nice piece on 3D Printing: The Next Retail Revolution, drawn primarily from an interview with me.

It is worth reading the entire article, but I have below excerpted some of the quotes from me with some additional commentary. The piece begins by discussing the news that a company is developing technology for the 3D printing of meat. It goes on:

“One of the major constraints currently and in the future will be the materials used in these devices,” says Dawson. “There are currently a few particular plastics that can be used and we’re beginning to see some metals and metal-plating appearing – but we still don’t have a full spectrum of materials.”

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Launch of We’re Looking For Talent – the foundation of a crowd business model

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We have just launched our new recruitment site We’re Looking For Talent.

Crowd business models are a major theme for us in our publishing and events. They are also at the heart of the AHT Group business model. As we build our businesses we want to see how far we can take the use of distributed work.

We currently tap work and talent on a wide variety of crowdsourcing sites, but we have reached the stage of creating our own platform in finding the best people to work with.

The principles for how we seek to attract talent are described in detail on the page Why Work For Us?, which is the best place to read about what we are doing, however I’ve provided a brief summary below.
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Study: Increased customer expectations are driving corporate uptake of social media

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Yesterday I spoke at a business leaders lunch event in Darwin on the Future of Business organized by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Optus.

Following my keynote John Paitaridis, Managing Director of Optus Business, shared some of the highlights of a recently released Optus Future of Business report, based on an extensive survey of corporate Australia.

One of the pointed themes that emerged from the study was that customer expectations are driving uptake of social media and digital intiatives. This happens to be highly aligned with my perspective that increased expectations are at the heart of social change, as expressed in my Transformation of Business framework.

Here is some of the interesting data from the report:


Source: Optus
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MegaTrends and the future of professional services – Melbourne and Sydney

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Next week I will be giving the first in the First Mover series of seminars for professional services leaders organized by Beaton Research & Consulting.

See here for the seminar series overview or the brochure for full details.

The seminars will be held in Melbourne on 25 July and Sydney on 26 July, with a live webinar option also available.

For quite a few years much of my work was with professional service firms, and while I have spent more time in other sectors recently, I still see the professional services model (in an evolved form) as central to the future of the global economy.
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Singularity Business Models: The link between lean startups and exponential change

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Singularity University describes itself as “a vibrant innovation and impact engine that generates leaders and start-up companies with the ability to positively impact the lives of a billion people within a decade”.

Apostle of lean startups Eric Ries recently joined Singularity University as the chair of its Entrepreneurship track.

In this video Ries is interviewed by entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa about the link between startups and the Singularity, asking him about how to students at the university can scale their initiatives.


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Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds

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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 of me speaking, however as I’m travelling it may take a little while to complete.

Here is a brief overview of the structure of the presentation:
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