ACTIVITIES :: @Work :: New Working Environments

New Working Environments

Our mission is to contribute to R&D and policy developments in new working environments designs and in organization of work in the networked knowledge-based economy.

It incorporates innovation to facilitate creativity and collaboration, to resource-use efficiency, value-creation and extended work opportunities for all. It fosters grid technologies in new working environments and organizations, targeting towards integrated applications and platforms.

Focus is on the areas of

eProfessions and individually driven working,
new workplace designs,
knowledge management in media-rich working environments, including mobility and multimodality,
collaborative work and organizations and
ambient organizations and new organization of work.

Strategic Objectives

Information on the Strategic Objectives can be found on the IST Activities page.

We are involved in the following Strategic Objectives in the IST Work Programme 2003/2004:

We are also contributing to several other S.O.s as integration environment.

eEconomy

"The story of the eEconomy is complex, but it is one we need to understand,
since the prosperity of the EU citizens depends on it"

Romano Prodi,
President of the European Commission

The global emerging eEconomy increasingly based on knowledge and what is new is that a growing chunk of production in the new economy is delivered due to the increasing importance of intangible value creation processes.

The key to staying competitive is determined on managers succeed in continuously raising the productivity of productivity of knowledge and service works enabled by large-scale investment in information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The transition to the eEconomy are both a disruptive and volatile ongoing process which is driven forward by the transition towards a European knowledge economy a key fundament of the Lisbon strategy with target such as:

- Increase R&D spending with the aim of approaching 3% of GDP by 2010 of which to thirds of that total should be financed by business.

How to become more and more productive is depending on how the enterprises uses their diverse resource base available more efficiently as new working environments and modes of organisational design develops ? particularly in service-based and people centric organisations.

The knowledge based e Economy has gradually developed over the last few decades, accelerated in recent years by the advance of information and communication technologies.

Knowledge and innovation are central to the production of economic value but still not being captured by current measurement methodologies which is still based on the notion that the production of physical goods is the main source of economic value.

Intangibles includes among others traditional Intellectual Property Rights, R&D, patents, reputation, training, usage of ICTs and employee satisfaction, trust and confidence and market capitalisation are first recently being recognised as important issues to be managed carefully for staying competitive.

Economic reforms in relation to the Lisbon strategy are aimed at raising the economic growth while at the same time ensuring its long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The Lisbon strategy approach recognises the importance of technological progress and improvements in the quality of labour and capital inputs into the production process.
For these reasons the development of an Information Society for all is a key objective of Community actions in support of the Lisbon strategy spanning from new and more efficient services for the citizens and higher added value products and services in all industrial sectors. European initiatives for wider, faster and more efficient adoption of the Information Society in businesses, governments and by citizens.

This includes the e Europe 2005 initiative which key objectives includes awareness and diffusion of best practise actions as well as the support to infrastructure developments such as for research and education.

The objectives of the research priority in FP 6 are to ensure European leadership in both generic and applied technologies at the heart of the knowledge economy. The focus of Information Society Programme in FP 6 is on the future generation of technologies. Driven forward by the vision of ?ambient intelligence? which places the user, the individual, at the centre of future developments for an inclusive knowledge-based society for all.

Europe has to ensure the growth in the standards of living and jobs creation which requires a constant and sustainable productivity growth facilitated by the mastering of technology and know how as well as the capacity to exploit and to adapt the benefits from networked public and private working grid intensive ICT environments.

The increasing importance of intangibles challenges the ways work and how performances should be measured in which organisation need to deliver answers to how value is created in an increasing knowledge driven networked economy.

Both technological and organisational innovation recognises that new ways of organising work in technology rich environments will have positive influence competitiveness leading to new ways of creating value implemented in new business models.

Innovation is founded on the enterprises ability to recognise market opportunities and its internal capabilities to make use of its knowledge base increasingly dependent on how to make use of business networks and external input in the form of skills, advice and proprietary technologies.

Education and training is vital for the stimulation of knowledge workers learning capabilities which again are instrumental for innovation processes as their powers of creativity, initiative and drive, determining enterprises competitiveness.

Social partners at all levels should work towards a framework which facilitates the modernisation of work organisation in a way which contributes to developing the participation of all stakeholders in the innovation process in which research only play one important part in bringing about wider economic and social benefits.

Business Services on Europa
EU policy developments in the area of business services (consultancy, legal, marketing and technical); wholesale, intermediate and retail trade; tourism ...


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Last update: 24/11/2006