The way we work will change dramatically over the next 10 years and we will need to adjust accordingly.

Here are some of the key changes that may happen:

• Non-routine processes that require human intervention will dominate our work in areas such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning. All routine processes will be automated by IT network infrastructure in massive datacentres.
• Swarming will become the new style of teamwork; where people get together to solve a problem quickly and then dissipate. These people don’t necessarily have to work in the same company but are networked somehow.
• Informality in the work environment will be seen as a light-handed approach to collective activity and information gathering.
• Proactivity; spontaneous reactive activity to seek out new opportunities, create new designs and business models, as well as detecting divergent emerging patterns.
• Hyperconnected; networks within networks across enterprise boundaries, both formal and informal.
• Virtual workplaces; companies may not need to provide an office or a desk, meetings will occur across time zones and organisations, causing overlap between personal and professional time, as well as information overload.

All this has implications for the IT environment; remote access, datacentres, security, ease of information access, storage,  and IT support.

Mark Cadbury, Marketing Director, Hardware.com