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About half a century ago, Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker" to describe a new class of employee whose basic means of production was no longer capital, land, or labor but, rather, the productive use of knowledge. Today, these knowledge workers, who might better be called professionals, represent a large and growing percentage of the employees of the world's biggest corporations. In industries such as financial services, health care, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media and entertainment, professionals now account for 25 percent or more of the workforce and, in some cases, undertake most typical key line activities. These talented people are the innovators of new business ideas. They make it possible for companies to deal with today's rapidly changing and uncertain business environment, and they produce and manage the intangible assets that are the primary way companies in a wide array of industries create value.

I can't tell you how many companies I have worked with that have encouraged or tolerated a large degree of geographic dispersal among employees and management teams. "We're virtual, and proud of it," one told me. "It doesn't matter where you live anymore," many employees of virtualized companies have argued. "We travel all the time anyway," has been another frequent mantra.

Was there more to Mark Hurd's exit from HP last week than the claims of sexual harassment and expense code improprieties? In his Talking Business column in Friday's New York Times, Joe Nocera digs deeper into the reasons for the decision by HP's board to send their CEO packing. Hurd led a remarkable turnaround at what became the world's biggest computer company under his stewardship, making HP what Fortune write Adam Lashinsky called "the benchmark for efficiency in an industry known more for its whiz-bang appeal than its operational excellence." So why was the board quick to end his tenure?

A couple of weeks back I (Gary Hamel) provided you with a synopsis of Vineet Nayar's new book, "Employees First, Customers Second," which has been recently published by Harvard Business School Press. In it, Vineet, CEO of HCL Technologies, talks about the progress his company has made in making managers more accountable to those on the front lines. Having posted my summary, I invited you to submit your questions to Vineet, and many of you did, along with plenty of piquant comments. Herewith, Vineet's reply. He begins by providing a bit of context, and then takes on a few of the most-asked queries.

Collaboration is the mantra of the Enterprise 2.0 movement, but organisational boundaries complicate adoption and progress. Therefore, we need someone who takes a holistic view of what is needed to get employees to work across silos. Good idea?

Our current economy is highly dynamic and the needs for more flexibility, adaptability and continuous change are continuously increasing. Yet, not all parties have equal strenghts and rights in this game.

Why companies like Best Buy design their office spaces to encourage more employee interactions

Increasingly, Web 2.0 solutions are making inroads into the enterprise. However, both employers and employees still have to discover what are the mutual rights, obligations and associated risks.

A recent survey conducted by Proofpoint found that 8% of companies had terminated employees due to social media usage (common causes including sharing sensitive information on a network). And while the statistic seems significant, it only underscores one of several upcoming challenges nearly every organization will face as changes in people, process and technology fueled by the collective movement we call social media begin to transform business. Here are a few challenges that every organization should be planning for right now. If you aren't you will be.

In a recent post I promised that I'd lay out a blueprint for building a company that's as nimble as change itself-and I will, but first I'd like to share an anecdote about a simple experiment in workplace freedom.

Internal collaboration is almost universally viewed as good for an organization. Leaders routinely challenge employees to tear down silos, transcend boundaries, and work together in cross-unit teams. And although such initiatives often meet with resistance because they place an extra burden on individuals, the potential benefits of collaboration are significant: innovative cross-unit product development, increased sales through cross-selling, the transfer of best practices that reduce costs.

We give a lot of talks and presentations about the ways and places companies and their employees learn the fastest. We call these learning environments creation spaces - places where individuals and teams interact and collaborate within a broader learning ecology so that performance accelerates.

After having participated in about 15 different re-design projects over the years, one key observation is that the complexity of the re-design challenge often exceeds the ability of individual managers and teams. There are simply too many known and unknown variables and too many shifting parameters for the human brain to make logical and consistent decisions. At the same time, I have observed the relative scarcity of analytical tools. Critical decisions affecting thousands of employees are sometimes based largely on intuitive reasoning.

The employees are a company's most valuable assets. So they say. But do they really understand what it means?

The economy is doing rather well over here in Europe, but organisations are facing growing problems while looking for additional resources. Are people no longer interested in work?

Formalizing a company's ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value.

A Towers Watson global workforce study found that only 20% of employees are truly engaged in their work - heart and soul. As a student of management, I'm depressed by the fact that so many people find work depressing.