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This article takes a very positive stance on Canada's current offshoring climate. Currently 50% of Canadian companies surveyed are outsourcing at least 10% of their work, creating an industry worth between $2.5 and $3 billion in Canada. But, according to the article, Canadian companies are offshoring not only because of cost efficiency and good productivity, but out of necessity. Apparently there are just not enough Canadians willing or able to fill all of the jobs that IT companies are offering. I have a hard time believing what this article says is true, since it is coming from the vice President of i-Gate Canada himself (one of the most successful outsourcing companies in Canada). I would like to see more research to support his words.

This article gives a summary of Charles Handy's work and theories. I looked it up to get more info on the "upside down" models mentioned in week 4's course notes. They are explained toward the end of the article.

I am particularly interested in working with at risk youth. It has been identified that youth unemployment and underemployment is in fact rising and is, amazingly, higher than during the recession! This article talks about medium and large companies getting on board to help young people gain skills during high school and/or post-secondary in order to add practical experience to their resume, along with their debt-inducing education. It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming years.

EconomicDevelopment.Org is a hub of economic development news and resources from around the world. As a community of experts, professionals and members of the public, they seek to engage in conversation about issues and ideas surrounding economic development and its impact on people and places around the globe. They have a page specifically for the 'workforce' and trends and issues happening in the world of work. This initiative grew out of a longstanding commitment by Millier Dickinson Blais, a Canadian economic development consulting firm, to contribute to the growth of the economic development profession and generate discussion around issues and developments in the industry. The most comprehensive economic development site *Beyond the flow of news, with information and links to relevant resources *Bringing together leading contributors to share insightful and thought-provoking content *Facilitating exchange and interactions within a community of industry peers

I recently attended a parent student council meeting and the principle indicated that there are a lot of schools paying attention to the works of Dr. Tony Wagner in order to enhance innovation skills within the high schools in Ontario. He also has a book called "Creating Innovators". Really interesting, think I am going to purchase it to read over the holidays!

Just the way open source is supposed to work is the subtitle, an accurate reflection of the current state of open source software and the fact that it currently continues to advance in software development in the 21st century.

This article works as one of the best examples to understand the new trends, the global chaining which has extensively been elaborated by Friendman in his book The World is Flat. When the Starbucks face a cost problem in its operational system, the company applied certain improvement steps and made drastic changes: a plan for organization, simplifying the complex, "one world, one logistics system," and earning the company's confidence.

Salman Sakir's article is relevant to the issues raised in Friedman's book The World is Flat in which Friedman in a sense laments over the impact of globalization upon the developed countries, the USA for him, because the developing countries like Brazil and Asian countries like China and India have a massive work labour influence upon the West. Sakir focuses on both the positive and negative aspects of globalization, one of the five forces in Gratton's The Shift and a form of global economy as discussed by Stanford in his Economics for Everyone. Because of low wage and easy availability of experts/labour in the developing countries, foreign investments have been attracted by those Asian and developing countries where the jobs have been created for the locals. On the other hand, the citizens of the developed counters of the West and the North America have consumed the products from the developing countries in a reasonably lower price. Poverty ratio has been decreased in the developing countries which have also been integrated by the phenomenon of globalization. These are positive impacts. But in the developed countries, manufacturing industries have been moved out. so unemployment rate is ever increasing, Sakir highlights these aspects of globalization in this article.

In part III, Gratton speaks to the positive affects of the five forces on one's lives. Demographics are mentioned. As mandatory retirement has been abolished in many jurisdictions, the changing demographics of workers living longer and thus having the ability to work longer may have positive and negative effects. This link is a survey of UK firms on the impact of mandatory retirement and the specific qualitative issues that may arise, such as enhancing customer service and employee performance, as well as the difficulties including less 'headroom' for younger workers and performance decline

This article provides a few helpful questions for those who are having difficulty differentiating between their own personal self and their organization. Employees often come to embody their organizational values and goals, especially if they are congruent with their own personal views. However, employees who are unaware of their self-disposition are likely to find they are unable to identify themselves outside of their organizational/working self. This article provides a few questions that clients, or any employee, can ask themselves to see whether or not they have lost sight of their personal values and traits that are unique to their person. These questions also have guiding descriptions, and provide advice on how to become self-aware.

This article reiterates what The Shift argues throughout the section on becoming an innovative connector. It also provides a few helpful tools and ideas for starting, and building your own network, and emphasizes the importance in doing so. Although the article is brief, it provides significant information about how the process of networking works, as well as diminishes the negative views towards the career development tool. The article not only relays different means of establishing networks - suggesting conferences, or contacting former employers, or classmates - but it also includes strategies specific to both the outgoing and shy personality types. It offers sequential goals, in which people branch out and meet 3 new people at an event, but also offers less-threatening options such as meeting only 1 new person at a time. Because the article is on a school website, there are also opportunities to explore the website further, for information unrelated to networking altogether. This article is also a helpful resource for future career research and exploration.

In "The Shift", Gratton mentions 'the traditional deal at work: to be paid, to consume stuff and bring happiness'. In the future, we need to make choices to live a more balanced life. Our experiences will bring us more satisfaction and happiness than buying things with money. This guide may help us see the benefits of owning and wanting less.

I'm not sure how this works, but here is the annotated link, it is easier to read if you can look at the acutal annotated website...perhaps I did something wrong. https://diigo.com/030tpr The Seed & Plant Sanctuary for Canada is a charitable organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of heritage seeds, and maintaining, evaluating and keeping records for all the edible, medicinal and useful crops that can be grown in Canada.

Formerly called "Working in Canada," includes trends, news, and predictions, as well as region-based reports and career-exploration tools.

When I was reading The Shift this week, I found my comprehension of Grafton's technological projections somewhat limited because I don't have a very vast knowledge of current technology. Particularly, she mentioned The Cloud often in the text, and its ability to make technology and software much more accessible and affordable for people across the globe. I needed a simple breakdown of what The Cloud really is, so what better place to go then HowStuffWorks? This article breaks down The Cloud as a "web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for her or his job" and highlighted its key aspects in a way that I could fully understand. I like how it also brings up the Dark Side of cloud computing- the inevitability that it will eliminate the need for many IT jobs (a concern that Grafton has also highlighted for the future), and then the issue of privacy (Grafton mentions mistrust of leadership as prevalent in the future). Since dark projections are the topic of the week, its worth thinking about the implications of posting all of our personal information online... Can we trust our governments and multi-nationals with that kind of information?

This resource looks specifically at self-employment. I thought it would be a good website to post because self-employment is a growing form of work.

I thought this was a particularly interesting website as it touches on a lot of things that Friedman has mentioned in his book; including the focus on this weeks readings on education and a knowledge-based economy. It has articles outlining how China is overtaking the U.S in terms of how much money is spent on science and technology funding for example, showing how the developing countries are catching up with us in terms of their high-skilled, more innovative work.

Richard Paul's article is about the increasing need, in this intertwined, globalized world for us to foster critical thinking in our children. As we have already learned from both 'The World is Flat' and 'The Shift', in this flattened world, simply obtaining basic skills or knowing the answers to certain questions will not be enough. Paul argues that our current K-12 school system is not breeding creative students, and is not giving students a chance in the ever-changing work landscape. He maintains that in order to keep up with globalization, we need to be fostering in our children the ability to problem solve creatively, to anticipate patterns and meanings, to think abstractly, to ask 'why', and to be able to communicate, collaborate, and negotiate with others.