Future of Education
Realizing learners’ potential across EuropeAn HR Manager Learns About World of Warcraft
I had a discussion with an HR manager the other day and he told me a story about a 19 yr old job applicant.
They went through his CV, discussed all the usual interview questions, until, finally, the HR manager asked the young man he does in his spare time.
The applicant responded “Well, I play World of Warcraft” (which is an online computer game), and he said, I am head of a guild of people from around the world, we play in teams and we set ourselves the targets that we want to reach in the game. And then we go and plan our strategies to reach these objectives. Read the rest of this entry »
Two Paradoxes
The paradox of the knowledge society is that it does not ask students to acquire more knowledge.
It would be an impossible task to keep up with the speed of new knowledge:
Per day, 3.000 new books are published.
The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years.
Image you start a 4 year graduate program in any technical field: Half of what you learned during the first year may be outdated by the time you get your degree.
And it is not only the amount of information that is growing so rapidly, it is also the accessibility. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hardest Thing
“The hardest thing about education is to be ambitious enough.”
Prof. Stephen Heppel
IT Businesses Dwarf Europe’s R&D Spendings
If you take the research spending of Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM and HP combined, they are spending more on R&D than Sweden, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands do. And this is not meant relative, but in absolute numbers (US$).
In fact, if you take Microsoft alone, their R&D budget exceeds the R&D spending of Belgium as a country, in absolute numbers.
Europe Cannot Win The Fast-Food-Battle
Europe has been hit by the worldwide economic crises, and many companies now focus on reducing their cost, lowering their cost structure to survive. A lot of this is true and right.
But we must be clear that Europe can never win the global cost competition. Europe can only win if it climbs up the ladder, higher up in the value chain.
Consequently, productivity is to be defined differently. No longer is it a question of amount of output, but it is a question of value of output, of quality of output. To put differently: If you want to play in “Haute cusine”, it is not about the size of the servings, but about the quality of the recipe. Read the rest of this entry »
