Universities Helping and Starting High Schools:

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High schools face many challenges.  First, the fluctuating high school drop out rate in the US (around 8-10% over all), especially in the largest urban areas (as high as 50% or more), is setting off alarm bells with many stakeholders.   Part of the solution is universities getting more involved in high schools.   Second, funding shortages mean some of the most innovative programs get cut.  Again, universities are coming to the rescue:   http://www.silive.com/eastshore/weekly/index.ssf?/base/news/1246541427170200.xml&coll=1

What is the likely evolution of high schools and universities?  Universities are more and more recognized for their importance in local and regional economics.  As cities seek mechanisms to cope with high high school drop out rates, universities become an increasingly logical partner to help address the problems of meaningful projects that help students reach higher levels of educational attainment.    Graduating seniors from the top universities in  the US see an important opportunity to give back.

Teach for America  –  12% of All Ivy League Seniors Attracted —   http://tinyurl.com/2eyxsv

Amazing people

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Some of the Amazing People I Know: Many people amaze me — let me give two examples — one outside IBM and one inside IBM.

Outside IBM, one person who is a constant source of wonder to me for his energy and activities is Prof. Jay Kandampully  Ohio State University, Professor of Services Management , Editor: Journal of Service Management , Editor: International Journal Managing Service Quality (http: www.emeraldinsight.com/msq.htm), New Book – Services Management: (http://www.pearsoned.com.au/1862505098), and New Conference –  International Research Symposium in Service Management (IRSSM) in Mauritius 2010   (http://www.uom.ac.mu/sites/irssm/).

Inside of IBM, I am amazed by Sew Bun Foong (IBM Singapore), an IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO of IBM Singapore and the broader ASEAN region (for the IBM Software Group), he is also a certified IT Architect, member of the IBM Academy of Technology, and Open Group Distinguished Certified Engineer.   Also, Sew Bun Foong is our service science lead for Singapore, and has help worked with the Singapore government to develop a deep appreciation for  T-shaped skills as discussed in many service science related presentations and papers.    The demand for T-shaped people in Singapore is quite large, and there is even a policy mandate adopted by the Government of Singapore and one of the important recommendations from the Economic Strategic Committee: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_485346.html

Sew Bun Foong is also Chair of the National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF) Steering Committee on behalf of the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).  In NICF, they are currently developing competencies, job roles and working with leading training partners for service science skills upgrading.  Check out http://www.nicf.sg for more details and competencies/course/job roles descriptions.  In addition, WDA is defining new competencies and courses upgrading for T-shaped skills beyond infocomm industry, while NICF focuses on infocomm industry.  In the meantime, those interested in opportunities in Singapore need to think about acquiring the right skills, and might want to  check http://www.iss.nus.edu.sg and STMI (announced http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_499394.html) for current service science related course upgrades; these two institutions work closely with industry practitioners.

Upcoming, a national employee conference is being organized by the Singapore National Employee Federation with a strong focus on T-shaped skills and innovation in service economy.  Several members of the Singapore SSME Council (industry partners, government and universities) will share insights regarding T-shaped skills and sustained service innovation in the service economy.  For more information see.  http://www.sgemployers.com/public/seminar/conference/conference20100728.jsp

I am seeing more and more discussion of T-shaped people in the US as well, most recently in the EE Times, when the Dean of Stanford Engineering, Prof. James Plummer was interviewed and said ” Regarding changes in education, Plummer said, “We’ve got to give students a skill set to prepare for a multi-company career. A lot of what we are doing now is creating T-shaped people. The vertical part is deep technical education and the horizontal part is a set of softer skills-creativity, innovation, the entrepreneurial way to look at work, how to speak and think creatively.”

IBM wins IEEE Employer Professional Development award

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NEWS: The IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) voted to recognize IBM Corporation’s exceptional achievements in professional development by awarding IBM the 2010 IEEE Educational Activities Board Employer Professional Development Award with the following citation:

“for sustained excellence, innovative approaches and continuous improvement in learning for its 400,000 employees working in 170 countries worldwide”

This award was established by the IEEE EAB to provide recognition for employer professional development.

The 2010 IEEE EAB Award Presentation Ceremony will take place during the IEEE Board of Directors Meeting Series in New Brunswick, NJ, USA on 19 November 2010. Attendees will include the IEEE President, members of the IEEE Board of Directors, and other IEEE Officers and companions.

2010 IBM CEO Study

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The CEO study is posted:  http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html

This year, IBM interviewed student (our future leaders!) from around the world. A couple of key points were:

  • Students are at least twice as likely to focus on globalization and sustainability issues as CEOs
  • Students see scarcity of resources as a challenge they will need to address during their lifetimes
  • From CEOs:  Creativity is the #1 leadership quality
  • For Students, creativity is consistently seen as the #1 leadership quality, but students’ emphasis is on global thinking and sustainability
  • Fewer than 4 in 10 students believe their education has prepared them well to address the new realities of a shared planet

Go take a look at the whole report.

7 New Skills Every Worker Needs

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Read the article here:  from USNews & World Report

Agility  /  Skills Combos  /  Tacit skills  /  A broad vision  /Analytics

Curiosity  /  Self Reliance

I don’t think these are NEW; they should look familiar to promoters of service science.  They really spell out more details about the breadth – the horizontal part of the T shape skills we’ve been discussing for years.  I suppose they are new to people who haven’t realized what’s needed these days.

K-12 panel & home schooling

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Home Schooling: In preparation for a K-12 education panel I will participate in, I was looking for some help to understand home-schooling in the Bay Area of Northern California (Silicon Valley)….   Marlene Turner, Associate Dean College of Business at San Jose State University helped by providing me with some perspective and then some pointers: “Getting a read on homeschooling is interesting because homeschooling comes in many flavors and varieties, ranging from classical education to religion-centered approaches to gifted education to “unschooling.”   I’ve listed some web sites that may provide useful overviews.

(1) Homeschool Association of California – a major association of homeschoolers that sponsors an annual conference; the “Getting Started” section of the web site may be helpful:  http://www.hsc.org/home.php

(2) A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling:  very popular website with a variety of information about homeschooling methods, curricula, age-related issues; developed by Ann Zeise, homeschooler in Milpitas:  http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/index.htm

(3) National Center for Education Statistics:  DOE site tracking education trends; has information about participation in homeschooling:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/section1/indicator06.asp

(4) Wes Beach:  Located in Santa Cruz, Wes is a nationally recognized authority on homeschooling and self-directed learning; his web site only gives a brief overview of his perspective but it may be instructive:  http://www2.cruzio.com/~beachhi/home.html

(5) Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth:  one of the first distance learning programs for elementary and high school students; recently started an online high school:  http://epgy.stanford.edu/”

Very helpful perspective and pointers indeed.

City & university shared services

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Shared Service and Shared Governance: Ever since I mentioned that the City of San Jose, CA and the university SJSU have shared service and shared governance of their libraries at the Martin Luther King Library in San Jose — I have been finding out that other places also/already do the same shared service and shared governance for libraries.  For example, the cities and some universities in Marin County, California do it as well – see http://www.marinet.info/ On the same cloud (compute infrastructure) they have MarinMAP (http://mmgis.marinmap.org/dnn4/ )and Marin Law Enforcement Data System (MLEDS)

Short takes – week of July 23

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Conference on Service Innovation (UK) London Business School Sept 22-23, 2010 http://www.msi.org/conferences/conferences.cfm?conf=109

IBM Almaden Institute on Health (US) http://www.almaden.ibm.com/institute

SPLASH Health Modeling Project (US)   http://www.almaden.ibm.com/asr/projects/splash

Global Forces: An Introduction (WW) McKinsey Quarterly http://www.msi.org/conferences/conferences.cfm?conf=109

National Information Exchange Model (US) http://www.niem.gov/

Kuali Rice (WW) http://www.kuali.org/rice

Bay Area Council (US) Focus economic development  http://www.bayareacouncil.org/

Jobs and Policy Design (US)  Labors New Critic  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/business/28union.html

Investment and Policy Design (US) Private Equity Funds http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/business/24private.html

The Outsourced City (US) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/sheriffs-dept-to-patrol-maywood-while-city-employees-now-face-lay-offs.html

Target Operating Models (US)  Holistic Modeling http://www.slideshare.net/rmuse70/operating-model-1511642

Target Operating Models (US)  Holistic Modeling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_model

Free Virtual School (US) Kahn Academy  http://www.khanacademy.org/

Funding University Innovation (US) http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/29/venture-capital-incubators-technology-breakthroughs-universities.html?partner=technology_newsletter

T-Shaped People (US) Stanford Engineering http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700329&pgno=3

DEEP-QA (US) Watson http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/16/magazine/watson-trivia-game.html?th&emc=th

Skills-Jobs Mismatch (US) http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/15/jobs

Skills-Jobs Mismatch (EU) http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/Files/6103_en.pdf

Wired for Speed (Singapore, South Korea) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/technology/15iht-rtechbroad.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

Trendanlyzer (Sweden) Ecological and quality of life interactions http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trendalyzer/

Connecting Dehli and Mumbai (India) http://www.dmicdc.com/

Connecting Universites with Dual Faculty (China, US) Industrial Engineering http://www.ie.tsinghua.edu.cn/Salvendy/

Gov 2.0 (US) http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010

LINKS Service Quality Management Simulation (WW) http://www.LINKS-simulations.com

Inheriting a complex world (WW) http://www.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/futureleaders.html

Corporate Responsibility (WW) IBM 2009 http://bit.ly/lAAYt

What’s Happening in Service Innovation (UK) http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/csirn/

Syracuse Center of Excellence (US) Environment & Sustainability http://www.syracusecoe.org/coe/

Using IT to create a more sustainable world (US) ITIF http://www.itif.org/events/using-it-create-more-sustainable-world

Service Week (UK) Cambridge University Sept 21-26 http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/service/events/serviceweek/

We have the Tandberg telepresence (now acquired by Cisco) — so interoperation is on the way…. Telepresence at IBM Almaden Research Center (US) 6 Person Tandberg (bought by Cisco) http://www.tandberg.com/telepresence/
Telepresence Comes in Sizes (WW) Some bigger and some smaller  http://www.ivci.com/videoconferencing-tandberg-telepresence.html

My dream (WW) High QoS Connections http://www.nlr.net/telepresence-faq.php

Merging Service Systems: Shared Service and Shared Governance

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Merging Service Systems:  Shared Service and Shared Governance, benefit from Upskilling Jobs and Strengthening Regional Identity :     When most people hear the word’s “shared service and shared governance” they hear “staff reductions” and political obstacles start emerging left and right.   In spite of this challenge, overcoming these political obstacles can lead to award winning results, as when the city of San Jose and the San Jose State University merged their library systems. “National League of Cities James C. Howland Awards for Municipal Enrichment  ….an award winning idea for cities (2005)… http://www.library.sjsu.edu/about/news/story_05-12-07.htm …. Continue reading ‘Merging Service Systems: Shared Service and Shared Governance’ »

Northern California Gateway Partnership

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Gateway Partnership: I like the Gateway Partnership in the Northern California Bay Area (Silicon Valley). Christopher Wu, Partnership Manager at CSU East Bay (California State University)  explains the

Vision: A region with successful students, productive citizens, and  thriving cities.

Mission: To create a world class system of education that ensures every student  will succeed in 21st century careers.

Goals: Every child will:

•Be PREPARED for school

•SUCCEED academically and be ready for meaningful work and/or college

•ENROLL in postsecondary education

•GRADUATE from postsecondary education

•ENTER a productive career