In March 2005 the KnowledgeBoard Project of Month was the MOSAIC project, that was aimed to accelerate innovation in Mobile Worker Support Environments by shaping future research and innovation activities in Europe.

It was Specific Support Action, funded by the European Commission (FP6-2003-IST-2, March 2004 - October 2005).

Through a process of vision development, scenario building and roadmap construction, and exploring the opportunities for innovation in different domains, MOSAIC has identified the challenges for research and innovation and has established a large community of practitioners and researchers preparing future innovation in new work environments in Europe..

The key result of the MOSAIC project is Future Workspace book. In addressing the future workspace and new ways of working, it investigates the current practice, future scenarios and challenges for research and innovation, resulting in a research agenda for the future. The agenda is based on an analysis of technological, organisational and social developments, as well as on case studies in three thematic domains: engineering, rural and regional working, and health and wellbeing. Besides, the book addresses the emerging societal challenges related to new and innovative ways of mobile working. The book concludes with recommendations for an innovative and socially sustainable workspace design of the future.

This article presents a Chapter 2 from the Future Workspace book "The emerging networked workspace". In Chapter 2, authors provide an overview of broad trends and developments shaping the future workplace. Besides generic developments taking place at the societal level they describe sector specific trends and their implications for business, with examples from manufacturing and healthcare. They present the results of the project survey into future mobile workspaces and reflect on the way systemic innovations could succeed. Additionally, a short overview of technological trends is presented.

Authors say, that nowadays, a traditional approach of workplace organisational models corresponding to different work styles is still appropriate. Nevertheless, there are new emerging practices introducing a new work style that could be named the “networked” work style, where knowledge workers are more or less permanently wireless connected with their peers and belong to several communities of practice or knowledge communities or even communities of professionals to serve either business or social purposes. They could be working from their home, from a customer or supplier’s site, on the move in the plane, in the train, at their hotel, at the station, at the airport or anywhere else.

Actually, the foreseen main problem, beside organisational and social aspects, is to carry on various heavy equipment while network connection is not ensured anywhere. The Future  Mobile Workplaces survey did reflect perfectly these different points. About 90% of respondents are willing to get a new wearable computing device that integrates multimedia, telephony and computing in consumer's applications. More than 70% predict convergence of networks and IP connectivity anywhere at anytime as well as collaborative and context-aware applications, and “on-demand” collaborative workspaces. A large majority requires more interactions among multidisciplinary competencies and plug&play capabilities as well as mobile access to experts. More than 80% of respondents predict the implementation of flexible working and the integration of social, learning and work activities.

In terms of a workplace organisational model, the emerging signal is on “External Global Model” which means that individual workplaces are hosted by a service provider ensuring and guarantying permanent wireless connection to the network and shared applications anywhere at anytime. It is also quite clear that soon or later knowledge workers will be walking their hands in their pockets without to have to worry that much about their workplace and working environment as their workspace will follow them wherever they have to go and whenever they need it.

In a conclusion of the chapter authors suppose that a possible mobile workplace approach could be based on three main capacities: inclusiveness, innovation, and interconnection. Inclusiveness implies a flat and open structure of communities, allowing the inclusion of new comers at any time when needed. Innovation and creativity will be enhanced through stimulating multiple interactions among multidisciplinary competencies at the crossroads of experiences. Interconnectedness on basis of permanent wireless connections established anywhere at anytime will provide much more flexibility and adaptability to any situation.

Another concluding remark is that there is not any “universal”mobile workplace organisational model so far, due to the diversity of various legacy situations. Prediction is always a very difficult task because one needs to foresee the “weak” signals. But we can predict for sure, due to cost-to-use and time-to-market pressure, that soon or later "the network will become the collaborative workplace” for all knowledge workers.

We invite you to become familiar with other interesting project findings and outcomes in more detail and make your comments on it.

The Chapter 2 "The emerging networked workspace" is attached below.

The whole Future Workspace book you can download from KB Library here.