Manage Change in Real-Time
As Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus (1), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an NAE member states, there are now two frontiers of engineering to do with scale and increasing complexity. The first has to do with the small and fast the so- called bio/nano/info. This melds physical, life, and information sciences, offers stunning, unexplored possibilities and transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Out of this melding come products and processes that drive a new round of entrepreneurship. As biologists and neuroscientists discover the immense complexity of even the simplest living systems, engineers and computer scientists become indispensable to research in life sciences. The language in the life sciences today is about circuits, networks, and pathways. The other frontier has to do with larger systems of great complexity. This is the world of energy, environment, manufacturing, product development, logistics, and communications. This frontier addresses the most daunting challenges to sustaining the future of the world in which information technology, the Internet, World Wide Web, and computers are the air engineers breathe - simply there to be used, a means, not an end.
At the same time the global engineering workforce is in the midst of an unstoppable and radical transformation. Understanding the rapidly changing workforce trends is critical as these characterize the next generation of talent from which organizations will draw for years to come. Historically, engineering training and professional development has responded to workforce needs for each new technology that has appeared on the scene. Now technology changes so quickly that the challenge is to keep engineering workforce development aligned to this change. Expertise in a single discipline, or technology, is no longer the Holy Grail for either a rewarded or rewarding career. The modern engineer and employer needs to thrive through change in real-time or risk becoming a commodity on the global market instead of an enabler of wealth creation under the knowledge economy. The former is bought cheaply; the latter is highly valued across the world.
To participate in and harness knowledge under this changing paradigm engineering firms need to:
- Shift from information (expressed as facts abstractly and/or statistically) to tacit knowledge which drives their day to day practices
- Shift from knowledge at a point in time to knowledge driving economic value and effective participation in real-time knowledge flows
- Move from knowledge transfer to knowledge creation
- Link to learning systems that help engineers to develop their talent much more rapidly to meet real-time needs-driven skills
- Shift focus from infinite growth and technological development to sustainability and technological innovation.
By linking engineering workforce hiring, development and management to broad workplace trends, demographics , skills and competencies the engineering 360edge suite offers one of kind SAAS (software deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the Internet) to help engineering employers embrace predictive workforce monitoring and strategic talent decision-making in real-time to meet emerging next generation talent management demands.