5 augmented reality startups to watch this year — from huffingtonpost.com by Clara Tsao; with thanks to Woontack Woo for his paper.li posting on this
Excerpts:
Why do people think you can’t teach CREATIVITY? — from thoughts.siliconguild.com by Tina Seelig
Excerpts:
Why do people think that you can’t teach creativity and entrepreneurship? It stems from the lack of a clear vocabulary and a process for moving from inspiration to execution.
…
To begin, there is a hierarchy of skills, starting with imagination:
Imagination leads to creativity.
Creativity leads to innovation.
Innovation leads to entrepreneurship.
…
The Invention Cycle
From DSC:
The article below relates well to this graphic from sparks & honey.
NOTE:
Higher education is included in this discussion. If we think that we’re not included — and the other forces continue that are putting the heat in higher ed’s kitchen — it’s highly likely that other forms and channels of learning will fill the voids and gaps in what people are looking for and are willing to pay for.
How the new economy is changing the workplace, part II — from workdesign.com by Bob Fox; also see part I and part III
Excerpts:
Change is a constant, but when the speed of change increases it becomes a much different animal. Incremental business improvements are much easier to manage, and are a necessary part of all businesses. We tend to think linearly, so disruptive change is the real risk. The challenge with disruptive change is that it is often unpredictable and it generally conflicts with the core competency of a business. What’s more, it can come from other industries.
…
While disruptive change and innovation are likely the cause, it’s the inability of most businesses to deal with or react to those challenges over time that’s the death knell. We think tomorrow will be just like today, and we don’t have the workspaces to effectively share, question, and iterate ideas and leverage innovation to sustain our organizations through tough challenges.
There is a widespread human tendency, with which we are all of us familiar, that can be simply expressed as the “kink” in the curve where the past meets the future. The exponential line of human technological progress, long driven by information and for the past generation by the power of the chip, is kinked. It is kinked, inevitably, at the present. — Nigel Cameron
If I had told you 15 years ago that in the future you would have a device that you could carry in your pocket where you can get your mail, make a video call, carry thousands of your favorite songs, take pictures and videos and share them, check the stock market in real time, get the latest headlines immediately, get directions instantly to wherever you wanted to go, make a dinner or hotel reservation, invite your friends and that all of it would be essentially free, you would have thought I was some kind of nut. But look at us now.
From DSC:
For institutions of higher education, we need to be able to experiment…to fail…to succeed….to iterate until we find out what’s working and what’s not working. We need more innovative cultures. We need more Trimtab Groups.
For K-12 and higher education, we need to teach our kids how to run their own businesses…as it’s highly likely they will be a part of the contingent workforce at some point(s) in their lifetimes.
Also related/see:
The results help to clarify digital disruption and how business leaders view it. Here are some key findings:
The skills agenda: Preparing students for the future — from Google and The Economist Intelligence Unit
Excerpt:
As technology becomes more pervasive, traditional trades disappear and the world of work becomes more globalised, the skills considered to be valuable for the future are shifting.
Problem solving, team working, and communication (a trifecta commonly known as “21st century skills”) are the most-needed skills in the workplace, according to our recent surveys of business executives, students and teachers. Digital literacy and creativity— and the latter’s close relative, entrepreneurship—are expected to grow more important in the next three years.
Addendum on 4/23/15:
The college degrees ad skills employers most want in 2015 — from forbes.com by Susan Adams
Excerpt:
The hiring picture keeps getting better for college graduates. According to a new survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers are planning to hire 9.6% more graduates for their U.S. operations than they did from the class of 2014. That’s a one percent hike from the 8.6% gain a year ago and a significant jump from 2013, when employers said they would boost hiring by just 2.1% over the previous year.
…
The NACE survey also asked employers to rate the skills they most value in new hires. Companies want candidates who can think critically, solve problems, work in a team, maintain a professional demeanor and demonstrate a strong work ethic. Here is the ranking in order of importance:
Excerpt from the tech.ed.gov/developers/ page:
For Developers
Excellent opportunities exist for software designers and developers who want to use their talents to create impactful tools for teachers, school leaders, students, and their families. Our goal is to connect you to the resources needed throughout the cycle of a project – from concept ideation, to generating seed funding, to research and development and evaluation, and ultimately to scalable impact in education.
I originally saw this at “Ed tech must do more to ‘advance equity,’ U.S. Secretary of Education says” — from hechingerreport.org by Nichole Dobo
Excerpt:
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona—The U.S. Department of Education unveiled a new education technology developer’s guide [on 4/7/15] during the annual ASU+GSV Summit conference here.
In remarks at the conference, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan urged developers to consider the needs of disadvantaged students, so that they are not left behind as more schools adopt new tools that advance teaching and learning.
“If the technology revolution only happens for families that already have money and education, then it’s not really a revolution,” Duncan said.
Duncan announced the developer’s guide during a speech at the ASU+GSV Summit, , a gathering of about 2,500 people interested in innovation in education. The free guide, available for download at tech.ed.gov/developers, is the result of two years of research by Department of Education officials, who interviewed educators, entrepreneurs, parents and students. Its goal is to help technology developers better understand the key needs of the nation’s school system. It identifies 10 “persistent problems in education,” among them increasing family engagement, improving professional development for teachers, creating tests that accurately measure what students have learned, and closing achievement gaps.
Don’t raise a hoop jumper — from by Terri Eichholz
Excerpt:
Yesterday, a dad forwarded this fabulous post from the TED blog. It includes the video of Jane Andraka’s TEDx talk. If that name sounds a bit familiar, but you can’t quite place it, Mrs. Andraka is the mother of two successful young men. One of them is Jack Andraka, a teenager who developed an early-detection test for pancreatic cancer. The other son, Luke, won an international science fair and the MIT Think Award.
Mrs. Andraka speaks about how she helped her sons find their passions, and the responsibility that all parents have to do so. In the Q&A included in the blog post, she says the following,
I saw all these kids who had made themselves into little hoop-jumpers. All of a sudden, for seniors in high school in October, it’s, “Oh, jeez, I need to join some clubs and get my grades up, and then I’ll go to Harvard.” And then whining, “Well, I got all ‘A’s, and I joined Model U.N.” But that’s just not what it’s about. You have to make your own self remarkable. Make them say, “Wow, this couldn’t be any other child.” Don’t be like everybody else.
Also see:
Why Millennials understand the future of work better than anyone else — from fastcompany.com by Sara Horowitz
We can learn a lot about the future of work from how Millennials are approaching and redefining their careers.
From DSC:
Note the digital media literacies mentioned in the excerpt below — as well as how many times the topic of freelancing comes up:
Excerpt:
I call that traditional view, “Big Work,” and millennials intuitively understand that’s not where the future is. They are, in a sense, the first generation of freelance natives. They’re embracing freelancing in a way no other generation has. And now, they’re the majority of the workforce.
They are generation with markedly diverse interests––they’re into design, tech, activism, the arts, everything. They’ve been told their whole lives that they can and should pursue as many of those interests as they want. The Internet has opened more doors to this generation than any other.
That’s why the idea of a portfolio of work comes naturally to them. They’re doing web design for their mom’s coworkers after they’re done studying. They’re teaching themselves FinalCut and picking up video editing gigs to complement their shift at the bookstore. They’re aiming for a more meaningful work-life, not necessarily what their parents would call a “traditional career.”
That natural flexibility positions millennials to take advantage of this new economy without fear. They are the most likely age group to freelance––38% of millennials are freelancing, compared to 32% of all others, according to a national survey conducted last year by Freelancers Union and Elance-oDesk.
Millennials also expressed by far the most confidence about this new way of working, with 82% of young freelancers saying they’re optimistic about the future of freelancing.
From DSC:
We need to help students out by offering more courses on entrepreneurship, owning one’s own business, freelancing, basic accounting, basic marketing, social networking, etc.
Also see:
From DSC:
Wow!
The two apps listed below could represent a new, major, door-opening concept! Such a concept could usher in an era that provides many new affordances — affordances made possible by the presence of beacon-related technologies (or similar machine-to-machine communications). If this is/becomes the case, we should expect to see a whole new wave of this kind of application, especially as wearables gain traction.
This startup is using iBeacon to make In Real Life (IRL) networking more efficient — from technical.ly by A pair of Amazon and Fab.com alums are working on a new way to answer the age-old question:
“Who should I meet here and are they relevant to my background?”
Excerpt:
We’ve all been frustrated by the notion of networking. You walk into a meetup full of people you don’t know, but you do know something about them. Say, for example, it’s a meetup of developers. You know that lots of people there are devs, but what kind? And just because it’s an Android devs meetup, for example, that doesn’t mean that’s what they all actually do. It also doesn’t mean that there aren’t a bunch of other people circulating who are simply trying to network but aren’t actually developers.
The best you can do is start walking up to people and asking — but often your pick is a miss. If you have an objective when you go networking, how can you improve your chances of finding the people you want to find? One startup that’s working on a solution is Surf Labs. The new, two-person company, cofounded by Amazon and Fab.com alums, has released two iOS products that could make it more likely that you will find the person you are looking for.
Surf Labs’ first product is called LiNK…and their second product is called LiNK Spaces.
A rendering of how a LiNK Spaces dashboard could work in a coworking space.
(Image courtesy of Surf Labs)
Addendum on 3/16/15:
digital workforce skills — from jarche.com by Harold Jarche
Excerpt:
Behaviour change comes through small, but consistent, changes in practice. So how do we move from responsibility, to creativity, and potentially to innovation? Play, explore, and converse. But first we need to build a space to practice. This is where management plays a key role: providing the space to ‘Do it Yourself’.
Our employer-employee marriages need counseling — from forbes.com by Dov Seidman
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Our Big Asks of employees have become so pervasive that they’re transforming into competencies. A report by Palo Alto-based non-profit research firm Institute for the Future identifies 10 increasingly important work skills. These include talents like: The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication; cross-cultural competency; proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rules-based; and the ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning.
Andrew McAfee: The Second Machine Age is approaching. Here’s how we can prepare. — from huffingtonpost.com by Dawn Nakagawa , EVP, Berggruen Institute
Excerpt:
Nakagawa: Inequality is already a problem. How much worse will inequality get in this new future?
McAfee: The stratospheric wealth of the 1 percent presents some challenges. But I think it’s largely a distraction from the more important challenge, which is not about the people at the top pulling away. It is about the 50th-percentile worker or the 25th-percentile worker. It is about the stagnation in the prospects and earnings of the middle class. We need to focus on how to improve the prospects for the middle and the bottom, people who are finding themselves stagnating or sliding backwards. It could well be that higher marginal tax rates on top levels of income and wealth are part of the solution, but we need to broaden the conversation to look for comprehensive solutions to a complex problem.
…
Nakagawa: How do we need to change the education system, not to address the labor force skills gap we see today but to prepare our younger generation for the economy that is coming?
McAfee: Our education system is in need of an overhaul. It is frustrating that our primary education system is doing a pretty good job at turning out the kinds of workers we needed 50 years ago. Basic skills, the ability to follow instructions, execute defined tasks with some level of consistency and reliability. Machines can do all those things better than we can. What they can’t do, at least not yet, are things like negotiate, provide loving and compassionate care, motivate a team of people, design a great experience, realize what people want or need, figure out the next problem to work on and how to solve it and so on. And not all the items on that list require advanced degrees. We’re going to need people with all kinds of skills and training for some time to come, so let’s rethink our education system so that it provides the required variety.
The future of work
There’s an app for that — from economist.com
Freelance workers available at a moment’s notice will reshape the nature of companies and the structure of careers
Excerpt:
HANDY is creating a big business out of small jobs. The company finds its customers self-employed home-helps available in the right place and at the right time. All the householder needs is a credit card and a phone equipped with Handy’s app, and everything from spring cleaning to flat-pack-furniture assembly gets taken care of by “service pros” who earn an average of $18 an hour.
…
Handy is one of a large number of startups built around systems which match jobs with independent contractors on the fly, and thus supply labour and services on demand.
…
The obvious inspiration for all this is Uber, a car service which was founded in San Francisco in 2009 and which already operates in 53 countries; insiders say it will have sales of more than $1 billion in 2014.
…
This boom marks a striking new stage in a deeper transformation. Using the now ubiquitous platform of the smartphone to deliver labour and services in a variety of new ways will challenge many of the fundamental assumptions of 20th-century capitalism, from the nature of the firm to the structure of careers.
…
The on-demand economy will inevitably exacerbate the trend towards enforced self-reliance that has been gathering pace since the 1970s. Workers who want to progress will have to keep their formal skills up to date, rather than relying on the firm to train them (or to push them up the ladder regardless). This means accepting challenging assignments or, if they are locked in a more routine job, taking responsibility for educating themselves. They will also have to learn how to drum up new business and make decisions between spending and investment.
Also see:
Professional Millennials and super-powered smartphones are changing the working world — from medium.com and Liquid Talent
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
This is the year when modern technology squarely intersects with the economy and the workforce. This is the the year that marks a noted change in how we work as individuals, and as a collective. This is the year of the Millennial Generation takeover in our professional world. This is the year that marks the beginning of the Independent Workforce Revolution.
Why?
Two reasons:
1) Millennials take over
Millennials are the largest generation at 82 million strong. They do not have the same priorities as past generations and their professional incentives are quickly changing. They care less about maximizing profit, finding a secure job and taking 2.5 weeks of vacay. In fact, 54% of Millennials assert that they want to start a company one day, or already have. This generation is now 50% of the workforce, and will be 75% of the workforce by 2020. These percentages may seem staggering but with 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring everyday (every single day!) we can see this tectonic shift happening before our very eyes.
2) Mobile technology
We have our economies in our pocket. We can work anytime from anywhere, and source professional opportunities with a simple swipe. The proliferation of mobile productivity apps (ie Slack), globalized workforce platforms (ie eLance) and professional networks (ie LinkedIn) show the power and growth in professional, mobile technologies.
From DSC:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again to those of us working in K-12 and in higher education:
We need to be sure that we’re preparing our students to know how to run their own businesses. They need to know how to survive and thrive as freelancers — because chances are they will be freelancing at various points in their career. Our curricula should already be in the process of being updated to address these critical skills. More courses on entrepreneurship for example; also some basic accounting courses as well as coursework involving programming, brainstorming, marketing, and how to use various technologies to collaborate, stay organized, and manage one’s time.
The above items also stress the need for lifelong, accessible/affordable learning; and for constant adaptation and for reinventing oneself in order to remain marketable in the workplace.
Addendum on 2/18/15:
New tech companies say freelancing is the future of work. But there’s a downside for workers. — from washingtonpost.com by Lydia DePillis
More companies are switching their workforce to freelance. Policy needs to catch up.
Excerpt:
If the nation’s way of regulating work revolves around a relationship between an employee and employer, what happens when that relationship no longer exists?
6 things you can learn from LeWeb Day One — from nextberlin.eu by Adam Tinworth
Excerpt:
1. The sharing economy is bigger than you think
2. The secret of wearable will be simplicity
3. We all wear clothes, but we don’t all wear jewellery or watches
4. Yandex started life searching floppy disks
5. The clock is ticking on the classic office suite of software
6. Games make you a cognitive superhuman
Excerpt:
LeWeb in a nutshell
Founded in 2004 by French entrepreneurs Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur, LeWeb is an internationally-renowned conference for digital innovation where visionaries, startups, tech companies, brands and leading media converge to explore today’s hottest trends and define the future of internet-driven business.
