Europe ready and flexible, businesses and people are not

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2006 – 2008 In 2006 and 2007 the corporate organisational chart (matrix organisations) and how people work are still not very different as twenty years ago. Only office workers are better equipped nowadays with technological more advanced devices. People are still going from their home to their office building to perform their jobs everyday. Meetings are still taking place in the meetings rooms of the office or via telephone conference. The actual realisation of most of the work is still limited to your office building and your home. The lack of global technology standards in the fields of wireless internet also requires workers to work either at the office or at home.

At the beginning of 2007, the market for mobile devices is still very fragmented which leads to a large scale introduction of another mobile technology protocol HSDPA across the most mobile technology advance countries (UK, Scandinavian, Germany and the Netherlands). At the end of 2007 there are three dominant mobile protocols in Europe respectively: GPRS, UMTS and HSDPA.

2008 – 2010 In mid 2008, a renewed and revitalised European constitution is being accepted by all European Union members. This opens up a window of new economic opportunities for the creation of more economical synergy between Western and Eastern Europe members. This new constitution enables the acceleration of a high liberalisation of labour laws and the creation of a favourable internal market climate across Europe. Most offices in Eastern Europe get connected with Western Europe via a fixed high bandwidth internet network. The lower transaction costs wrought by the internet open up the possibility of new ways of sharing information and collaboration among corporate that was unthinkable in the previous century.

Plenty of internet start-ups in Europe are starting to penetrate the market of collaboration software. This new generation of collaboration software can be used on multiple devices (mobile, PC, PDA, Tablet PC, etc) all supported with video capabilities via the internet. In the same year Gartner estimates the worldwide collaboration software market in 2015 to reach a market value of €7 billion. The emergence of an arsenal of autonomous internet start-ups within the collaboration software space causes the introduction of even more mobile technology protocols. Whereas in 2007 were three dominant mobile technology protocols, at the end of 2009, the European market is now being dominated by six mobile technology protocols: GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA, WiBro, HSUPA and WiMax. All these different protocols lead to technology divergence instead of the expected technology convergence.

Manufacturing jobs throughout Europe are going the way of agricultural employment did after the Second World War (i.e., disappearing fast); a whole new category of “creative labour” is emerging in Europe. Because of all aforementioned changes, corporations are struggling with their old-fashioned organisational structures to utilise and reap benefits from the emergence of the creative class.

2010 – 2012 In 2010 corporations are re-evaluating their corporate models to create new competencies and capabilities around the emerging creative class. Most notable the aspects around the mobility of the actual work and the locations of offices are evaluated on their viability. The further integration of Europe results in the fact that highly skilled labour is not only available anymore in Western Europe but increasingly in other parts of Europe as well. For example in Hungary, Poland, Latvia and Estonia. This stimulates the use of collaboration software to support their cross-cultural teams and a further decentralisation of the companies’ office locations to other European regions.

At the end of 2010, the workforce is starting to collaborate more openly and effectively, both inside and outside the organisation. This doesn’t mean the end of extreme competition in high volatile markets, but actually quite the reverse. As a result, individuals are beginning to assemble new business models that facilitate open and collaborative forms of work based on the idea of sharing common resources to the benefit of all, also called “Open Business”. This is mainly inspired by such examples as the Human Genome Project’s use of open data to help everyone in biotech compete more efficiently.

At the end of 2011, the typical headquarter as we know it now has simply disappears. Similar tasks will be performed by different people across multiple physical offices within Europe. High speed data networks via the internet make it possible that all these locations are seemingly interconnected with each other. The workers in these companies are still performing their work either at the office or at home but now they are working in cross functional teams that are spread over different geographical office locations. This leads to a steep increase of in-company travel between the different geographical locations across Europe.

Europe is on its way to become the most competitive world economy because of the aforementioned developments. Most dominant in this interplay is the favourable landscape regarding the European internal market. Alongside a new road-pricing (pay-as-you-drive) law is being accepted by many members of the EU which causes decrease in car usage throughout Europe

2012 - 2015 In 2012 the creative class enabled by cross-cultural teams becomes the main driver behind the flourishing European economy. In light of the flourishing European economy, European companies are prospering as well. After the acquisition of Matsushita Electric Industrial by ABB, it overtakes General Electric in terms of market value. As result of the prospering European economy it faces an incredible period of job creation which results in a job demand surplus. Therefore, the competition for talent moves towards a stage at global scale, especially as more and more work is performed by cross cultural teams at different geographical locations.

At the end of 2013 the pace of European integration and as the workforce has become more and more cultural diverse, the number of culture clashes within companies increases as well. People start to struggle with the fast pace over the last years and rigorous integration of the EU. European companies are still flourishing because they make use of the fact that people want more certainty. In result of that, they decentralise the offices even more across Europe, in fact corporations are effectively mobilising the work tasks instead of moving the people around.

Outward looking corporations such as Unilever, IBM and Nokia are preparing for the age of Open Business; they become the early adopters and most successful companies in their industry. Most notable Nokia becomes the text book example on how to structure itself along the concept of Open Business and to capitalise on the opportunities of cross-cultural teams across many different geographical areas. Within Nokia, the today’s youngsters (20-25 years) join the ranks of middle-management; they will upend the way business is performed. This new way of working is mainly centred around their experiences of “playing” with instant-messaging, blogs, chat-groups, play-lists, peer-to-peer downloads and online multi-player video games. They will use the principles of these technologies to work together and share their knowledge and aims in much the same way as they swap songs and videos illegally over the internet today. This new way of collaboration and performing business among highly decentralised office locations is perfectly normal among Nokia’s tomorrow’s workforce.

This new way of working is still heavily supported by working at fixed decentralised office locations but flexible working times are the rule. Simply because of collaboration and coordination of cross-cultural teams between different time zones requires flexible working hours. Corporations realise that a highly mobile workforce and mobility (working from anywhere, anytime, anyplace) will not necessarily lead in higher productivity. Academic confirmation on this matter was already given by the Stockholm School of Economics in 2012 and later confirmed by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2014. They argue that only for a small number of jobs such as (consultants, account managers and sales persons) a high mobility (working in the train, aeroplane and coach) will increase productivity.

For the majority of the workforce where team work is the centre of the daily activities, working in a more formal setting in an optimum designed office is still preferable. The integration of the EU and all the technological innovations has made the world “smaller”, but the majority of people in organisations hold on to the benefits of unambiguous collaboration software and physical contact still prevail above working from anywhere, anytime. This year in- and inter- company travel increases again.