Dr. Richard Straub, Director Learning Solutions, IBM EMEA and Chairman of the European eLearning Industry Group, will be giving a keynote presentation at the upcoming ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN conference titled: “Competing in a "Flat" World - The Transformational Power of E-learning. His talk with be part of the Opening Plenary session on Thursday, December 1st. The following is a brief excerpt from his overview:
“Technology has contributed to leveling the playing field in global competition – in this sense the world has become 'flat', a notion popularized by Thomas Friedman. However, the transition towards a more integrated global economy poses some monumental challenges for many European democracies, burdened by inflexible and engrained structures and cultural rigidities An environment of continuous innovation must be created as innovation is becoming the key driver of economic success. This will require a significant transformation in the fabric of corporations, governments, education, and research institutions… The combination of a robust, industrial-strength technology implementation and an open-standards-based ecosystem for learning will provide a sound foundation for implementing true innovation in learning that results in new pedagogical models, new virtual collaboration environments, and digital content that can be seamlessly shared across the continent. With this, we may finally see our societies evolve towards a genuine culture of lifelong learning. As a ‘learning society’, Europe may be able to live up to the Lisbon objectives – even in a ‘flat’ world.”
I think this should be one of the high points of the conference and I am looking forward to the hearing his thoughts in more detail and hopefully have the opportunity to talk with him in greater depth during the conference.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Dear Ted, all this nonsense about competing in a flat world is in fact a way for large companies to impose the idea that they need less controls in hiring staff, less controls in reporting profits, less controls in doing business. How else can you interpret its presentation: " transition towards a more integrated global economy poses some monumental challenges for many European democracies, burdened by inflexible and engrained structures and cultural rigidities An environment of continuous innovation must be created as innovation is becoming the key driver of economic success. "
So innovation would mean just a more liberal and less controled environment. UNfortunatly history has proved this idea to be wrong. A cooperation between entreprises, governments, education, and research institutions has never emerged "naturally" but under some institutional pressure. Industrial strength has never been without the actrive support pf the government. And the US is the best proof: the weigth of large public markets on the corporations that rae providers of the government (and large innovators also) is a simple fact.
What really bothers me here is not the historical falsness of the arguments. But rather the fact that the online learning technologies are relaying this ideology (just in the same way that ten years ago "organizational management" was the voice of large corporations).
yours
I certainly do not disagree with the notion (reality) that the "flattening" of the world economy could be considered a euphemism for further exploitation of the global workforce (capital will flow to the least expensive locations). But that is not my point. The point that I was trying to make in the previous posts on the subject was to draw a parallel with Friedman's concepts and modern learning/collaboration technologies. When anyone in the world with a computer and internet connection can express themselves for all the world to see (via blog, podcast, social networking site, etc.)--that is as flat as it gets! And we can take advantage of this opportunity to flatten the ways we go about facilitating enterprise learning--by enabling unencumbered collaborative knowledge sharing amongst employees, partners, and customers.
Post a Comment