At IBM, for example, 46,000 out of its 115,000 workers in the US were reported to be working at "alternative workplaces" including home. Many companies large and small are following this lead. Moreover, in the free agent economy a rising proportion people global headquarters IS their home office.

There are of course pointed upsides to working from home, not least forgoing frustrating commutes, as well as greater personal flexibility. But some people find it hard to get themselves motivated, and many miss the daily banter and social interactions of the office. This is not a trivial issue - the vagaries of working from home will be a shaping force on society and how companies operate.

One of the approaches more and more freelancers and home workers are taking is to regularly meet locally to work together, creating a pleasant, sociable, collaborative work environment.

A nice article in Strategy + Business titled The Promise of the Cloud Workplace explores this new landscape.

Co-working provides a single solution to multiple organizational problems: the space demands of flexible, multi-geographical workforces; the costs of permanent offices; the potential inconvenience of working at home (especially for employees with children); the inexperience that many employees have with alliances and joint ventures (which are natural outgrowths of shared space); the carbon footprint inherent in a commuting population; and the sheer waste of time, resources, human capability, and energy spent moving people back and forth across a metropolitan area, only to have them on the phone or reading e-mail most of the day.

The article points to a range of examples of co-working facilties, such as Roam Atlanta, the Hat Factory in San Francisco, and Steelcase's Workspring in Chicago. It also mentions the Jelly movement, which provides a forum for people to organize their own work meetups in over 100 cities around the world. Web incubator Pollenizer, just around the corner from me, regularly hosts Jelly gatherings.

These initiatives are just the beginning of what will be a powerful force - new ways to enable people to socialize and share expertise, heartaches and successes, free of the constraints of office, commuting, and sometimes employers. This trend has a long way to go yet.

For the previous three trend maps (shown at the bottom) I collaborated with Richard and we co-branded them with Future Exploration Network, however time pressures this year meant that I haven't directly contributed to the 2010 map. It is still as rich and glorious as ever - spend some time delving into the trends ahead!

MEGATRENDS OF THE TREND MAP
- Ageing
- Power shift Eastwards
- Globalisation
- Localisation
- Digitalisation
- Personalisation
- Volatility
- Individualism
- Environmental change
- Sustainability
- Debt
- Urbanisation

Click on the images below for the original blog posts and full-size pdfs.

2009 Trend Map

2008 Trend Map

2007 Trend Map

For me there is no question that it is now. The coming decade will be the most exciting in human history. The very challenging year of 2009 that we are preparing to bid farewell to helped to tear up the fairly linear progress of the first decade of the century. Now, technological and social change are poised to accelerate far beyond what we have become accustomed to.

A critical uncertainty is how well we will respond to this extraordinary pace of change, both as individuals and as societies. Will we be able to adapt and change, or will severe dysfunctions emerge? Just one dimension is the manifold ethical dilemmas that are raised by gaining extraordinary technological capabilities.

Here are the ten trends that I believe will be most fundamental to the decade ahead. I hope to present these and associated trends in an interactive visual format before long. For now, here are the 10 trends for 2010.

1. Information Intensity
We will soon consume more media than there are waking hours, by virtue of multi-channeling at most times. Billions of people and places will be media producers, including video streaming from most points of view on the world. We are just at the dawn of an incomprehensible daily onslaught of news and information – some valuable, much useless.

2. Collective Intelligence
Yes we are swamped by information. But we are now creating a collective intelligence that will filter and respond to what is worthwhile. Reputation measures will drive who we meet, do business with, and date. Machine translation will enable the people of the planet to communicate. A key question is: If human society is now a global brain, how do we cure our schizophrenia?

3. From Organizations to Networks
The pace of growth of virtual work is phenomenal. By the end of the decade close to half the workforce will be working independently, often across national boundaries. Companies will function on social networks and gaming platforms, professionals will work for many firms or clients. Traditional organizations will be gradually supplanted by shifting networks of expertise and resources.

4. Energy Shift
We don’t know what the climate of the 2010s holds for us. But we do know that the way we use energy will change faster than ever before in human history. Renewable energy sources, electric cars, and strict energy accounting, driven in part by carbon taxes on fossil fuels, will transform large chunks of the economy and how we move about.

5. Culture Jamming
Remix culture will surge, with everybody taking and jamming up slices of everything and anything to express themselves, while intellectual property law fails to keep pace. Every culture on the planet will reach everywhere – the only culture we will know is a global mashed-up emergent culture that changes by the minute.

6. Global Economic Shift
The sheer weight of China’s burgeoning economy together with India’s rise will change the business world’s center of gravity. The Far East will fund the continued profligate spending of the West. The weightless economy based on innovation, media, and professional services will dominate growth.

7. Exponential Bio Technologies
Now that biological and genomic technologies are largely driven by information technologies, they are on the same exponential trajectory. Medicines personalized to the individual, genetic modification of our children, drugs to increase intelligence, and life extension will all become commonplace.

8. Robotic intelligence
Many decades of predictions will finally be matched by technological developments in fields such as language recognition and spatial navigation to create a world in which physical robots and virtual agents interact with us and do our bidding. Household robots, voice conversation bots, and emotional robots that we bond with will be part of our everyday lives.

9. Augmented Humans
More than ever before, we can transcend our human abilities. Traditional memory aids are supplemented by augmented reality glasses or contact lenses, thought interfaces allow us to control machines, exoskeletons give us superhuman power. Machines will not take over humanity… because they will be us.

10. Haves and Have Nots
Across communities, nations, and the world, there is a keen risk of increasing separation between those who have access to technology, tools, and basic needs, and those who do not. This is not inevitable. However it will require concerted action around the world to avoid an increasing schism between us.

If you find these interesting, also have a look at:
The 10 TENsions That Will Define 2010

Continuing my series of my blog posts that have attracted the most interest in 2009, here is my selection of 10 posts on Enterprise 2.0 and organizational effectiveness.

1. Why ‘critical mass’ is intensely relevant to Enterprise 2.0 user adoption
What the diffusion curve means for Enterprise 2.0 adoption initiatives.

2. Enterprise 2.0: Competitive differentiation occurs at the intersection of technology and culture
The harder it is to implement Enterprise 2.0, the greater the potential for competitive differentiation.

3. Pilots as a key instrument for improving organizational performance in a complex world
Why pilots are a key tool in applying complexity thinking to organizations.

4. Largest ever organizational network analysis shows how social networks drive performance
Research shows in detail the role of social networks in organizational effectiveness.

5. An Argument for Heterarchy: creating more effective organizational structures
Heterarchy as a valuable concept in organizational design.

6. 10 DOs and DONTs of organizational change
A very popular post on fundamentals of building more effective organizations.

7. Driving innovation in large professional service firms: Six high-return initiatives
Details on specific high-value initiatives to drive innovation.
1. Develop a systematic innovation strategy.
2. Establish lightweight innovation programs.
3. Set up a program of pilot projects.
4. Implement product development processes.
5. Run industry strategy workshops.
6. Identify and support innovation champions.

8. Uncovering high-value applications of organizational network analysis
Digging deeper into how social network analysis can drive organizational performance.

9. The immense value of expertise location will help drive enterprise social media
The state of expertise location and the role of social media.

10. Six ways technology is transforming small business
Why small business is using technology to leapfrog big business.

As a special bonus, here are links to four posts with free chapters from my book Implementing Enterprise 2.0:

- Free Chapter 2 - Web 2.0 and the Enterprise

- Free Chapter 4 – Key benefits and risks

- Free Chapter 7 – Governance

- Free Chapter 11 - Social Networks In The Enterprise