Arjen van Berkum | Technology & Contract Management Evangelist

27 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

What would be a fair income gap?

An entrepreneur risks bankruptcy and an executive on payroll is fully protected by collective labour agreement. How honest is our income tax policy, comparing the situations of entrepreneurs, executives and employees for example? Salaries and extras should depend on the risk taking and the (possible) outcome. How is this incorporated in today’s society? More and more organisations are freezing salaries and strike out bonuses. Often a good thing, because in most cases there doesn’t seem to be any relation between the amount of money and the performance. In years of financial crisis, increasing lay-offs and redundancies by reorganisations rewards for the already well paid executives may seem unbelievable unfair, even inhuman in public eyes. What seems to be totally overlooked are the circumstances in which people work; in this case not the environmental circumstances, but the financial arrangements. We are ignoring the risk component that people are or aren’t dealing with. Risk should play a crucial role in how income taxes and discharge arrangements are settled. Not only to minimise the income gap, but also to establish fair play on the labour market.

17 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

The CIO ’s X-factor is being a great mentor in the learning ecosystem

In my previous blog I shared my idea of the try-and-fail strategy and how I thought leadership and education are connected. The blurring lines between functional and theoretical technology as well as those between industries play a crucial role in the evolution of the educational system. Or at least, the evolution this system should go through. Up to now innovations in education seem to be held back by a legacy of traditional believes and standards. When I was discussing this subject with peers after publishing ‘This technology era needs leaders that fail’, I received some nice input that stirred up quit some thoughts about this subject. My conclusion: leaders in education and technology should join forces and develop a new approach, one that is applicable in both learning providers and organisations. But an educational system and business world forming a collaboration that can be the solid, sustainable base for ecosystems raises two questions. First, are the current schools geared to cultivate engaged students? Second, is attendance at school a prerequisite for successful education? No and no, I would say. But let’s start at the beginning of this line of reasoning.

Are you with me?

8 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

This technology era needs leaders that fail

95 % of everything changes. Constantly. What is the most fundamental change of this decade? Probably the blurring lines between functional and theoretical technology. A lot of theories that seemed unattainable in the past, are now being developed into – sometimes astonishing – functional designs, smart solutions. The transition time between theory and real life applications is becoming shorter. Our ecosystems are more or less enforcing this evolution to take place and society seems to quickly adopt the new developments that this evolution brings along. But are we able to live up to that accelerating cycle? Will the human capital of our businesses be up to speed in time? No, at this point not yet. We need to drastically modernise our education system, that incorporates the societal and entrepreneurial consequences of this technology era. After all, if the future is about talent, the battlefield will be the schools and universities.

1 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum 1 Comment

Integrated consciousness is every leader’s next challenge

Two famous books I’ve read contain a lot of knowledge on some theories in relation to the economy, the society and the labour market. For a long time, those books have kept a lot of smart minds busy analysing and finding evidence to either defend or contradict the statements made by the writers Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Brilliant minds in their time. In my opinion those books should be mandatory in our education system for some basic understanding about the mentioned subjects. Nonetheless, I think we are heading towards a new era that will invalidate both theories – or at least for a greater part. Still, if you take some crucial core elements out of both theories and you put them together with today’s developments in technology and information management, we could end up with a new theory, a next level. Let’s call it ‘integrated consciousness’ for now. Are you wondering what I mean by that? Read on!

26 maart 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

Test your technology maturity in the evolution of 2015

In February Accenture released their Technology Vision 2015, which can provide leaders of organisations relevant ideas to stretch boundaries in their journey to become a digital business. What was standing out for me in the first place, was the alliance of the trends. It shapes the ideal business. The Internet of Me is the demanding party that forces the delivery of results in an outcome economy. This economy is built in a platform-based ecosystem, that runs on software which continuously learns and adapts and is operated by a workforce that entails the flawless collaboration of humans and machines. It starts with people and it ends with people. Although society saw technology often as the evil destroying monster in the past, it is now (hopefully) starting to realise that it is in fact our salvage. The vicious circle of people can connect through ideas; innovative thoughts. Around it there are the technologies, platforms, tools, devices and interfaces that help those people operate, innovate and improve.

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