Megachange 2050 Book by The Economist

I am working on a research paper titled People Management 2015. One of the books I read was Megachange 2050 It helped me understand where the world is going in the next 20 to 30 years. It covers the trends well.  Here is a video of the editor talking about the book. It is a good book, if you are a researcher. Not a coffee shop read.

The predictions are that by 2050 the world will be a richer, healthier place. By 2020 women will be more successful in the work place and will outnumber men in the US workforce. The economic center of gravity will shift towards the east. A larger portion of the working age population will be in the east.

Social Content Management

Ken Bisconti of IBM says that social content management can help optimize the workforce, improve customer service and foster innovation.

I have seen this resonate well with customers I meet. SuccessFactors Jam is integrated with SuccessFactors Learning. When learners search for content in the learning management system they also get content created by their network including documents, conversations, images and videos all arranged by popularity. The user can not only get content created by people in the private communities they are part of, but also see who created the content and verify the credentials of the person by looking at their profile. I think this can be applied to more situations.

There is Wisdom In The Clouds

When thousands of companies use cloud services for talent management software, they have a wonderful opportunity to gain from the wisdom of the clouds. Apart from analyzing information generated by their own data, they can benchmark, in real time, against data available from other companies in the industry.

Here is an example of how such information, accessed in real time, can be used.

Of course they may get this information ,only if they choose to participate by providing their own information anonymously to the other cloud participants. Such bench-marking makes sense only if there is a sizable number of customers and users using the same provider.

The Classic 'Did You Know' Video Updated For 2012

The classic one is now updated for 2012. Interesting insight as always.

Transcend - Nine Steps To Living Well Forever

Today, @enricgili  told me about the book Transcend - Nine Steps To Living Well Forever, when we were talking about the level of stress a person goes through while changing a job either within a company or outside the company. He pointed out to me that the stress level a person goes through while changing a job is as much as the stress a person faces while coping with the death of a friend. It is more than the stress a person goes through while foreclosing a house. I was surprised and even a bit disturbed by this fact. In such stressful times, the one thing that can help a person cope with life is compassion and human contact. May be even conversation.

We discussed that enterprise software should be able to do something about this. We decided that we should do what we can in the upcoming releases of our products. It is a good thing we release software every three months now a days.

Meanwhile I plan to read the book that refers to these stress levels. Here is a video of the authors talking about the book.