Is your organization prepared to meet the collaboration needs of young adults to attract, develop and retain the workforce of the future?

Fact - Generation X and Generation Y Talent use more real-time collaboration tools over asynchronous (non real time like email). According to a recent survey by The Associated Press - almost half of the teens surveyed use Instant Messaging (IM) and almost three fourths of teens use instant messaging more than email, while less than a quarter of adults use IM, and almost three fourths of adults who use IM use email, more often than IM.

I know that with my daughter who recently started university - for me to personally keep in close contact - having an MSN IM account was the best way to stay connected as she seldom checks her email, but guaranteed she is always accessible on MSN IM or via cell text messaging.

So, what do these behaviours tell us about the collaboration age gap between different generations?

I think this means a number of things for organizational and leadership communication approaches. Companies need to encourage IM, Blogs, wikis and all forms of real time collaboration to motivate the talent of the future. These communication needs need to be taken into account and designed into all forms of employee communication, online communication and software development approaches.

Asynchronous communication is well on the way to extinction….unfortunately old habits for the Baby Boomers, including me are hard to break.

Demand for real-time collaboration solutions have already generated more than $1.3 B in 2006 - which represents nearly one quarter of all collaboration application revenue. An increasing trend is to integrate all communication toolkits - and in different formats - whether the media form is via: email, IM, or voice - the promise is an integrated platform or a unified communication platform (UM) which promises to improve the productivity of knowledge workers - and for sure simplify operating infrastructure costs.

A promising collaboration company based in Canada that was recently recognized as one of the hottest Web 2.0 companies at the Enterprise 2.0 and Tim O’ Reilly conference recently held in San Francisco is Octopz.

Octopz is a browser based collaboration solution developed in Flash and has a simplified interface allowing ease of navigation, enables interactive and secure communications, and easily allows markup of advanced media types like videos, audio, animations, Flash files, and 360º panoramas. Octopz gives us a good perspective of the increased collaboration toolkits that are viable business productivity tools. This is a company to have not just on your company watch list, but also BUYING a subscription is a MUST to get you underway in using onoe of the most powerful on demand collaboration software solutions that I have seen in a long time.

More information on understanding collaboration commerce and the business impacts can be further understood by reading Collaboration Commerce: The Next Competitive Advantage.

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I was fascinated to read the blog postings from speakers attending the upcoming SuperNova conference in California next week.Supernova is a unique conference that brings together business, government, and technology thought leaders to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world. Intelligence is rapidly moving to the edges, through networked computers, empowered users, fluid digital content, distributed work teams, and powerful communications devices. Business models are under pressure as end-users gain greater control, computing becomes a commodity, and companies collaborate across geographic boundaries. At the same time, new opportunities are emerging through social software, pervasive wireless networking, massively multi-player virtual worlds, and distributed e-commerce, among other trends.

In essence, these trends are creating a truly connected - Flat world. Platforms such as the web are no longer the new frontier; they are the baseline. Supernova attempts to answer “what’s next” after everything is connected.

The blog that gained my attention was Dr. Irving Wladawsky Berger’s posting. His vision of the challenges that we globally need to collaborate on were insightful and reflect the type of global thinking required to help make our world a better place. Five major challenge or problems worthy of Super Nova consideration are summarized below:

#1 - Human-Oriented Complex Systems.

The implications of IT, Internet and related systems capabilities on people based organizations, including companies, industry ecosystems and economies. The intensification of the meshing of these capabilities has us at the brink of a technology-based revolution that could have the same kind of profound influence on all aspects of business, society and our personal lives that the Industrial Revolution had on previous generations. This time, the revolution is not about applying technology to the design and manufacture of physical things, rather it is about applying technology to human-based organizations of all kinds - thus transforming the very nature of enterprises, economies, and work itself.

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I thought there was no life after Google when I leaned from my grade eight son about Dog pile. an alternative search that combines search from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Live Search. They also have a NEW select search for sourcing online media videos. Out of curiosity I did a search on both YouTube and Dog Pile for the number of Rolling Stone online videos. On DogPile there were thirty listed…. On You Tube, there were 21,400. So Google’s powerful engine backing YouTube (which Google recently acquired for $1.65B) , there is definitely more search zip in Google vs using Dogpile. However, one experiment does not guarantee accuracy, hence - I did another search. This time I chose to search for the number of doghits on both Dogpile and Google. I found that on Google, there were 131 million references to dogs listed on Google and on Dogpile, there were only 94 search results.

What this relatively small sample search experiment did show that the dog in Dogpile.com translates to a real dog. I told my son that I will continue to use Google, as my business and personal search engine of choice.

Can you imagine a world without Google going forward?

It will only be a matter of time before Google penetrates all wiring of intelligence of the future. Just imagine how much better when I can simply talk to my watch or cell phone, driving panel or my kitchen fridge and my search requests appear instantly. The world of ubiquitous and pervasive computing is well underway and Google has a head start in this new world order - this much is certain. So is the future of Google a target buy out by Cisco? Only time will tell but even Google will be one day acquired — the question is only who will be the dominant player in the takeover. Only a few could swallow such a Goliath? Cisco, IBM, Microsoft …to name just a few.

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The global manufacturing industry is in crisis as the need to purge to lower cost centres in Asia, and India for competitive survival has this industry stakeholders participating in a perfect storm.

Manufacturers in North America have no choice but to adopt more advanced and leaner forms of business practises, and seriously consider outsourcing more of their production operations. The profit crunch continues to ramp and with the steady beat to increase revenues, the reduced profitability of all NA operations puts enormous pressure on this industry sector.

In Canada, the reeling increased value against the loonie has purged out even more profit, with the Canadian currency closing at nearly a 30 year high of US94 cents. The Canadian dollar has increased against the US$ over fifty percent which means the attractiveness to the US to source parts in Canada for their operations is no longer as attractive for sourcing. The reality no matter which way you cut it -the higher cost of wages, commodities, energy and transportation costs cannot compete for production and distribution against lower cost countries.

So what are the leadership questions that CEO’s and the board should be asking for competitive survival. We are in a crisis and there is no way of putting lipstick on the pig. In our research, we see 4 key questions that each CEO and Board Director needs to earnestly define for growth capacity development?

1.) What is your unique business core innovation or service offering (specialized knowledge that is not easily replicated)? If you cannot easily answer this question - then your business has likely already been commodities.

2.) What is your capacity to hold a competitive position of strength in your major market(s)? (what stickiness factors do you have around your company’s value chain, what services do you have that are world-class and can command a premium for high value service experience)?

3.) What alternative global production and go to market channels can you execute upon to increase your profitability? (Our assessment is that you cannot compete effectively on labor wages against the developing countries and with a percentage of the overall business costs tied up in labor and equipment a real re-think is required for long-term economic survival for the entire NA Manufacturing industry.)

3.) What is your organizational capability to attract, develop and retain talent? (with the perfect demographic baby boomer retirement storm arriving rapidly, how well positioned is your organization to source the best and the brightest)? To see a copy of a research white paper, we wrote on this topic, see http://www.helixcommerce.com/pdfs/perfectstorm.pdf.

The stakes are very high as Manufacturing in the United States alone generates about $1.4 trillion, and accounts for nearly three quarters of the US’s industrial research and development (R&D), two-thirds of its total exports of goods and services, and supports more than 20 million. Over 45 percent of U.S. manufacturing output is traded internationally, either as imports or exports, significantly higher than the mere 3 percent that the rest of the U.S.business trades internationally. This trade exposure has also doubled in 20 years. Because of the global nature of manufacturing, prices in manufacturing are generally flat and declining. In the past decade, manufacturing prices have increased by only 4 percent,while prices in construction, health care, education, and other non-manufacturing industries have soared by nearly 60 percent in Germany,China, and Brazil, not in a neighbouring city or in another state. Profits in these sectors plunged by an unprecedented 67 percent between 2000 and 2003.

In Canada, the outlook is just as dismal. Since 2002, an estimated quarter million jobs were lost across Canada due to plant closures Manufacturing accounts for 17 percent of the Canadian economy and 15 percent of the workforce, with 95 percent working full-time and wages 22 percent higher than the national average. Every dollar of manufacturing output generates $3.05 in total economic activity, with shipments exceeding $600 billion in 2006, accounting for two-thirds of Canada’s total exports of goods and services. Manufacturing also accounts for 30 percent of tax revenues paid to all levels of governments.

A recent OECD report reinforces that the international trend is towards knowledge-based economies, and investment in science, technology, and innovation have become key factors in economic growth. China, Mexico, Eastern Europe,Brazil ,and India are expected to absorb a growing share of the world’s manufacturing activity. Staying competitive requires becoming part of “open innovation systems” through global networking, plus shifting to global supply chains that produce specialized components.

We are in a C level change in the Manufacturing Sector. To not create a global production system for manufacturing will only result in demise. The global landscape has changed, new market realities are codified, and the rules of the game have simply shifted.

CEO’s and Board Directors need to execute change brilliantly. The stakes are at an all time high. Yet despite the doom and gloom there are viable alternative growth pathways all around us. It simply starts with a new vision and the courage to change! Although the focus in this article is on the manufacturing sector, CEO’s cannot be complacent in any industry in North America - as lower cost centres for every industry type will come under seige - simply due to the incredible labour pool available in India, China, and other rapidly developing nations.

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