Abstract
Forces such as increasing globalisation, demographic change, European enlargement, and the emergence of networked organisations stimulate the emergence of new forms of organisation and collaborative working. Mobility, sharing of information and knowledge, and collaboration across organisational networks are key aspects of workplace innovations. New information and communication technologies enable a diversity of future workplace scenarios. However, coping with the human and organisational aspects involved will determine their success or failure. In order to exploit the potential of workplace innovations we, therefore, must better understand their systemic nature. This article, based on the MOSAIC project, explores the potential of mobile and multi-location collaborative workplaces, investigates some future scenarios and roadmaps, and discusses the strategies and research approaches for systemic innovation.
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The MOSAIC project is a Specific Support Action under the 6th Framework Programme within the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority of the European Commission, and will be completed in October 2005. In close collaboration with the European Commission (2004), MOSAIC has also launched in the Ambient Intelligence @ Work Communities. See: http://www.mosaic-network.org/
See the Collaboration@Work 2004 report from the European Commission Directorate Information Society for an overview of new working environments and practices in EU member states
See Empirica, (2003), for a typology for mobile workplaces as part of the STAR project, including a set of criteria for distinguishing between different types of mobile working
See http://www.testplatsbotnia.com. Within the AMI@Work Communities, a Special Interest Group on Living Laboratories has been initiated lead by Mats Eriksson, manager of Testbed Botnia
See http://www.gigaport.nl/info/en/home.jsp. Since 2003, Gigaport is continued focussing on network infrastructure
See: http://www.freeband.nl/. The size of the Freeband programme, running from 2002–2009, is 85 ME. The programme is managed by the Telematica Instituut and co-funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Velthausz, 2004, in his MBA end term report, has given a detailed analysis of organizational arrangements of Freeband and its predecessor, the GigaPort programme running 1999–2003
Not all experiments are successful in all aspects. The Netherlands Knowledge Village (Kenniswijk) in Eindhoven, providing a real-life city environment for innovative broadband service development and adoption, and based on a public-private partnership, did not meet targets as regards the number of services and development of the broadband infrastructure. Economic developments played a role in the decreasing willingness of companies to invest, besides difficulties in the scaling up of services and in creating economically viable services
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Schaffers, H. Innovation and systems change: the example of mobile, collaborative workplaces. AI & Soc 19, 334–347 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0318-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0318-5