school was directed to submit an
environmental report volunteered to do
the report in place of the previous
years high-priced outside experts the
school accepted the bid and the report
was submitted and accepted by the
government of his shows becoming much
more than just an educational exercise
for the kids learning was something we
usually call work in this case a kid
heard another example from his teacher
that many schools in Africa liked clean
water and proper sanitation he founded a
foundation whose volunteers have now
docked more than 1,000 wells bringing
access to clean water and better
sanitation to more than 700,000 people
in 16 countries now what are these young
people really doing at school these kids
learning or are they working or are they
doing something else is it something new
something that does not have a name yet
now before the internet and efficient
mobile communication devices most
professional occupations required
competencies that in most cases had
accumulated over years this education
and experience based was used to
retrieve answers from memory and two
independent is all situations arising at
work knowledge was seen situated in the
individual and learning was something
that preceded work work itself the
industrial process the transformation
from raw materials the plus was a linear
sequential chain or predictable acts the
problem to be solved was known and well
in advance and the solution to the
problem was clearly defined now the
original problem that Henry Ford wanted
to solve was how could farmers get the
goods to be sold on the markets in town
now his solution was such a brilliant
one that there was a time when half of
all cars in the world were teamer Awards
the industrial era the time of mass
solutions to problems was great for
customers but sometimes very hard I’m
very bad for the workers people came to
be the interchangeable parts of the
machines creating those products now
what I later found out is that there are
many problems without a mass solution
the content of work is then very
different if we accept this as effect in
the creative and learning intensive
world we live in it is not about
reductionist drawers job roles and
narrow clear responsibilities anymore in
post-industrial work the transformation
process is a nonlinear a common movement
of thought from unclear problems to
developing solutions work then its
exploration both what comes to defining
the problem and creating solutions it is
about exploration and exploration is
learning it is the same thing that the
kids did at school in the industrial
model decides the scene was your
individual knowledge the things you had
known before you could work what work is
expiration what matters is not what you
have yourself but what you can access
what matters is your network today you
work more and more lately from your
network than from your skills the
decisive things are your relations the
new structures work our dynamic
communities continuously organizing
themselves around shared context shared
interests and shared practices practices
of learning and value like the kids did
at school the focus of industrial
management was really on division of
labor and the design of vertical and
horizontal communication channels the
focus should today be different it
should be on cooperation and emergent
interaction based on transpire
see interdependence and responsiveness
the question to ask that might help you
are for example when you begin doing
something who knows about this who could
help me here who is interested in the
same topics I am interested in and for
all of us it is about the new key
competence how we are present and how we
communicate the good thing is that you
don’t need to be present in a factory or
in an office anymore but you need to be
present for other people the individual
experience base then is by default to
narrow a starting point for efficient
work in any case experiences can be a
huge asset but experiences can also be a
liability creating repetition where
there really should be innovation work
is thus not performed by independent
individuals but by interdependent people
in interaction what I claim here is that
work is interaction between
interdependent people in a way a new way
of understanding work and competencies
is unfolding in the zero distance world
of the internet knowledge should be
understood as network communication a
very different approach and this
requires us to learn new ways of talking
about education competencies and even
work itself what is also needed is to
unlearn the reductionist organizing
principles that are still the mainstream
at work today work is communication and
the network is the amplifier of
knowledge and value the collective
intelligence of our societies depends on
the tools that augment human
intelligence we should really welcome
the fact that people today are smarter
in large measure because they have
invented and used smarter tools the
tools we have in our pockets the new
machines the new factories
making tools is to support the soil
problems is what human beings have
always done so it’s not different but
what the first Industrial Revolution did
was to democratize consumption too much
much lower prices than ever before what
the present revolution is doing is to
create a revolution what comes to
production too much much lower prices of
our tools the factories we carry in our
pockets the production capacity of a
smartphone caused over 1 million 10
years ago the price was 10 million 20
years ago no it is here in our pockets
the interaction between our tools that
human beings are so complex that it is
very hard to try to draw a line between
humans and technology now there is it a
zero-sum game where the human brain is
losing out to technological intelligence
but as technology changes people and
what people do r is a surly change and
this creates totally new opportunities
for technologically Augmented human
beings we can now rethink what work is
the automation work we see around us is
not part of the digital revolution it is
the last phase of the industrial era the
first phase of the new era is technology
helping and augmenting human beings to
do things in a more intelligent way and
there are a lot of similarities between
work and learning work starts from
defining problems are learning start
from asking questions work is creating
value a learning is creating knowledge
both work and learning requires the same
things interaction and engagement with
the help of other tools we can create
new ways for very large numbers of
people to become learners and thus new
workers what we need to rethink some
familiar concept learning itself has
changed it is not a matter of first
acquiring skills and then utilizing
those skills at work post-industrial
work is by definition learn
now success in life has been seen as
being governed by two concepts Kilson
effort how bright you are how hard you
work recently researchers have claimed
that there is a third and decisive
concept it is the practice of lifelong
curiosity knowing what to do when you
don’t know what to do as Piaget put it
that is the essence of both work and
learning today it is easy for us to see
work as learning the harder thing is to
understand the learning so should also
be work work that you get paid for but
anyway the most inspiring and energizing
future work may be in solving problems
and sporting opportunities in creative
interaction with your customers with
your network your network periods like
the young kid story did at some schools
thank
[Applause] [Music]