Introduction

Within the scope of its preparations for the design and launch of activities under the European Research Framework Programme VII - which will start in 2007 - DG Information Society held a number of exploratory workshops during 2004 for input to the sub-priority on Information Society Technologies. These workshops offered a unique opportunity for recognised experts to provide direct input to this process. The Knowledge Anywhere Anytime workshop took place in Brussels from April 29th-30th 2004.

The report from this workshop is available below. For reports of other workshops held in preparation of the IST priority in FP7, click here.

Policy Context

In March 2000, European Heads of State meeting in Lisbon adopted the “Lisbon Agenda” which seeks to make Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. This Agenda recognised for the first time that a new paradigm is emerging - that of an economy in which the importance of knowledge is stated at the highest level, as the main source of wealth of nations, regions, enterprises and citizens. At the Spring European Council meeting in March 2004, European Heads of State revisited progress made on the Lisbon Strategy, and reiterated the opportunities that economic recovery and the enlargement process can make to providing impetus to carry the Lisbon Agenda forward.

As we move towards the mid-term point of 2005, it is worth noting that the Commission has proposed to the European Spring Council in March that three priority areas need to be addressed if we are to deliver on the Lisbon Agenda. Progress reports drafted annually on the Lisbon strategy have highlighted, critically, that investment in knowledge and innovation is still insufficient. The priority areas then, for discussion in March 2004, included Improving investments in Knowledge and Networks, Strengthening the Competitiveness of the European Economy through greater application of the Lisbon strategy to the industrial sector, and by promoting the Active Inclusion of Older Workers to remain in the workforce and modernising health care systems. The first two of these policy priorities are addressed directly by this workshop, while the third was addressed tangentially.

If we are to reach the ambitious targets set at Lisbon, we must deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that interlink knowledge, innovation, competitiveness and productivity at European, national, regional and individual levels. We will need to understand better the critical contribution of European research to address the policy challenges that are still open and are as pressing as ever.

Scope

Knowledge is created by people in the context of the communities, networks and teams in which they work. Knowledge emerges through conversations, connections and relationships of people with their peers, known and unknown. Knowledge surfaces through dialog and is socially mediated. Access to knowledge is by connecting to people that know or know who to contact and making possible the rich interactions which enable knowledge to emerge.

The workshop explored a vision for Europe of “Knowledge Anywhere Anytime”. Such a vision places the individual, the professional or worker, at the very centre of the knowledge competitiveness drive outlined in Lisbon. It is individuals - professionals and workers - that come together to create and share knowledge. The collaboration and interaction between individuals is thus very important to the Lisbon agenda, and at the heart of European competitiveness. Such collaboration and interaction is strongly enabled by technologies.

The workshop explored at a theoretical and practical level the individual, relational and technological drivers of knowledge creation and sharing, collaboration and interaction. It reflected on research challenges ahead in providing effective enabling infrastructures (or knowledge infrastructures) which permit delivery of Knowledge Anywhere Anytime, derived from real user needs, and supporting collaboration and interaction effectively on a large scale. The workshop reflected on challenges in developing services and applications which can effectively assist professionals in making meaningful connections, building effective relationships, collaborating effectively in the groups, communities and networks in which they operate. The “Knowledge Anywhere Anytime” approach will assist professionals in connecting (with contextual support) to others that know, in brokering and facilitating emergent connections. It will allow professionals to tap into sources of expertise and knowledge that are available and useful to their work. It will thus provide professionals with seamless and effortless connections, so they can concentrate on what is most important, building the relationships, and creating and sharing knowledge necessary for the work at hand. Linking such issues with the real competitive and innovation needs of industry and business in Europe will be critical for a successful workshop outcome.

At a macro level, it will be important to discuss how such emergent knowledge can be better harnessed for the goal of creating greater prosperity in Europe. The workshop presented an opportunity to map out research and policy challenges ahead to provide us with a desired view for a better connected, more innovative, competitive, productive, collaborative and creative Europe beyond 2010, to support the Lisbon objectives. As such, it provided vital input to research and policy development in this area at European level.

Why focus on knowledge?

The process of creation of knowledge is little known or understood. Yet it is clearly a vital component of the concepts of knowledge-based economy and society since without knowledge individuals, teams, groups, communities and networks do not acquire effective “capacity to act”, individually and collectively, in their private and professional lives. A better understanding of the processes at hand in the emergence of knowledge is critical. This, along with a clearer understanding of the interplay and crossovers between knowledge and innovation, competitiveness and productivity, can provide a critical component to the achievement of the Lisbon goals.

A world in which knowledge is available anywhere anytime, is one in which people can connect seamlessly with one another - entering social mediation processes, undertaking meaningful interaction and dialogue on the fly – thus allowing knowledge to emerge naturally in the form in which it is needed. In such a world in which the focus is on knowledge creation and sharing through people-to-people interaction, one might expect technologies to take care seamlessly and automatically of background tasks. Such background tasks might include contextual tasks (e.g. linking to relevant document and information sources, presentation in context etc.) and tasks relating to the capture of interactional activities for future reuse (e.g. how new knowledge emerged, how decisions were taken). Thus, one may ensure that where possible people – workers and the groups within which they operate - can concentrate effectively on rich interaction with their peers, and on developing the conversations, connections and relationships so vital to the surfacing of knowledge.

For their part, designers of collaborative workplaces and work processes will need to take into account the need for complementary innovations at the social and organisational levels in order to ensure optimum environments and settings in which knowledge can be exchanged effectively. New organisational and work processes, as well as new services and applications (not least impacting at the level of organisational culture) will emerge to meet such new needs.
Technologies that support wired, wireless, mobile and grid-based interaction and technological innovations, for example, in the areas of mobile telephony and services are key drivers for deploying applications for ICT-based distributed, virtual and physical collaborative working environments. Critically, they have a strong role to play in the delivery of “anywhere, anytime” knowledge. Individuals, professionals at all levels rely increasingly on such technologies to deliver flexible access to colleagues and peers, to permit exploration and use of job-related and networked information, content, data and applications, wherever they are, whenever needed, and in whichever context is necessary for the job at hand. Such technological innovation can create new opportunities for social and organisational innovation, and vice versa, and the combination and interaction of these innovation levels can lead to systemic or system-level innovation, providing for greater sustainability of competitivity efforts over the longer term.

The Workshop Process

The workshop had three main directions of investigation and research in various socio-economic contexts.

- Firstly, it questioned the idea of "Knowledge Anywhere Anytime”, challenging each notion of “knowledge”, “anytime” and “anywhere” from social, technological, application or operational perspective.
- Secondly, it attempted to determine the relationships between knowledge, innovation, competitiveness and productivity, identifying the transformation process of knowledge from emergence to value creation through collaboration.
- Thirdly, it attempted to set out a research agenda in this area, to support the drive towards European competitiveness in the knowledge-based economy set out in the Lisbon Agenda, and indicate the interesting prior work upon which this research agenda should build.

Materials from the workshop will be used as input to further planning during 2004-2005 as the European Commission moves forward to the start of FPVII.

Participants

A limited number (approximately 20) of senior participants from industry and academia were invited to attend the workshop, which took place in Brussels over two days.

The workshop process was assisted by both a rapporteur and a facilitator who together ensured that all discussions were collected effectively for future use by the Commission services in planning activities under Framework Programme VII.

Commission contacts

Paul Hearn, DG Information Society – Paul.Hearn@cec.eu.int

20 Initial Questions for the Workshop

As a starting point, the workshop considered the nature of social mediation, interaction and collaboration processes (e.g. how trust is formed, how knowledge emerges), and explored the gaps and opportunities of technologies to enable rich exchange to occur, and knowledge to emerge when and where needed. It proceeded as a facilitated brainstorming session, which reflected on some initial questions, as outlined below.

Q1. Why should knowledge be available anywhere anytime? Is there any demand for this? If so, from who? Should knowledge be pervasive? If so, how would such pervasive knowledge be used and become useful?

Q2. What might “Anywhere, Anytime” mean, in terms of technological challenges? How are Information and Communication Technologies driving this or what can they learn from user needs? How can we translate visions in technology roadmaps? What is required in terms of technology? What could “Knowledge Anywhere Anytime” bring in addition to or in complementarity with “ambient intelligence”? What does it mean for ambient intelligence?

Q3. How does knowledge help competitiveness? What are the links and crossovers between knowledge, productivity, competitiveness and innovation capability? What would it bring to have a “Knowledge Anywhere Anytime” solution to enhance European competitiveness? How strategic would such a vision be? Would such a vision always be desirable? Would alternative visions also need to be set in place?

Q4. If innovation is the link between knowledge and competitiveness, how does knowledge develop into innovation? If innovation is a function of knowledge creation, reuse and exploitation, how does knowledge contribute to each of these aspects? In view of stimulating innovation, should knowledge be treated as a commodity available anywhere and anytime or as a context-sensitive service?

Q5. How can we create in Europe a virtuous cycle between social, organisational and technological innovation, and to what extent would such a cycle drive competitiveness and contribute to the Lisbon Goals? How would a Knowledge Anywhere Anytime approach contribute to this?

Q6. What would collaborative and knowledge services platforms - capable of delivering on the promise of “knowledge anywhere anytime” – look like in the pan-European context?

Q7. What does “knowledge anywhere and anytime” entail in different life contexts including public and private ones? Which challenges exist with respect to privacy, work-life balance, and which research is needed to overcome these?

Q8. How can technology address the tension, for example, between proprietary and open/shared knowledge (e.g. competition vs collaboration)? How can technology make such an environment safe and secure to allow different models to coexist (e.g., in terms of authentication, authorisation and accounting)?

Q9. What does mobility imply for the generation, exchange and application of knowledge in particular among specialist and expert groups? What are the promises and challenges of mobile technologies and mobile work organisation in this respect?

Q10. How will technological advances – e.g. mobile web services, peer-to-peer and distributed computing, wireless access and grid-type infrastructures – combine and contribute to achieving a seamless “knowledge anywhere anytime” infrastructure for effective collaboration? What are the specific technological challenges in these areas?

Q11. How can the collaboration needs of specific sectors and activities (e.g. scientific collaboration, research, professional work, education, health care etc.) be taken into account in the design of overall solutions? Which promising applications cases could be envisaged to trial such a “Knowledge Anywhere Anytime” infrastructure? What is the operative function of knowledge in enhancing innovation in the research and development arena of academia, industry and business? How might “knowledge/collaboration pools” and/or “knowledge/collaboration grids” be set up and structured in order to establish, organise and cluster networks of excellence, competence centres and innovation hubs in Europe. What is the contribution of these concepts to the knowledge-based economy and society?

Q12. Which promising theories and models of individual, social and collaborative intelligence can contribute to understanding the needs and behaviours of individuals, groups, communities and networks in a “knowledge anywhere and anytime” setting? Which research is underway or is needed in this area? How can such models of human interaction provide a baseline for technological developments? How to derive the resultant technological needs?

Q13. Which theories and methodologies of value-adding organisation are most prominent to ensure effective “management” of the interaction processes at hand, and the effective leverage of the knowledge identified, created, shared, accessed and applied as a result of such processes? Can we derive from this a view of “the organisation of the future”?

Q14. How can innovations at technological and social levels provide invisible, unobtrusive support to professionals in their everyday working lives? How can we ensure that they are not delivered at the expense of creativity, curiosity, knowledge, excitement, entertainment, education, productivity and social contact? How may an immaterial world (or worlds) of our interactions with each other and with underlying technological and social innovations take shape for the benefit of all involved?

Q15. Which are the specific policy-related issues that will need to be addressed to achieve a “knowledge anywhere and anytime” infrastructure for Europe, e.g. in work organisation, internal market, education, lifelong learning? How should such policy implications be addressed?

Q16. Which complementary research initiatives are currently underway in the member states, associated states, US, Japan and rest of world in this area, and how best can efforts be combined? What might be the strategic positioning of Europe in comparison to other regions of the world with respect to creating and exploiting such a “knowledge anywhere and anytime” infrastructure?

Q17. The process of elicitation and acquisition of knowledge is still little known though the software methods and techniques for representing, sharing, and brokering knowledge start to appear on the scientist’s and engineer’s desktops. The emergence, articulation, utilisation and diffusion of knowledge in the scientific and engineering communities are already posing a number of difficult questions, not to mention epistemological ones. What can then be said in more general and technical terms about every day’s circumstances of normal work? How to bridge visions with realities?

Q18. How can interaction and collaboration, for instance on the job, be enhanced by the capture, extraction, description, use and sharing of knowledge? What are the source, role and the effect of knowledge in this kind of professional situation? What are the minimum requirements for knowledge to emerge, to perform and to contribute to all these social and economic activities? Which emerging technologies are necessary to enable and to optimise joint work processes?

Q19. What are the trends in the creation, usage and processing of knowledge especially in highly interactive industrial and service collaborative working environments and business settings?. Is there a collective knowledge that can arise from co-operating individuals, from multidisciplinary teams working together? If not, is it merely a collection of individual minds and memories?

Q20. What types, forms and modes of knowledge are required under professional conditions beyond the classical “implicit – explicit” distinction? How can they be supported by technology? Through which media can knowledge be channelled? Will “knowledge portals” merge with CSCW? How will this convergence be affected by irreversible footprint reduction of mobile devices, or will new knowledge needs drive the future of mobile applications development?