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Rethinking The European ICT Agenda
by PricewaterhouseCoopers Ten ICT-breakthroughs for reaching Lisbon goals The Hague, August 2004 Management summaryEurope has set itself the highest target, it wants to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy, to have sustained and accelerated economic growth with full employment and a modernised social protection system. But everyone agrees that the Lisbon targets are still far away. Structurally, the economic growth rate and worker productivity are lower than in many comparable countries such as the USA. The key technology to stimulate growth in Europe is ICT. Although the ICT developments in the last decade have been spectacular, the potential contribution of ICT to economic growth and the quality of life is still enormous. However, it is necessary to take account of the ICT paradigm of today and proven best practices in an international setting to achieve the best results in the future. There are several countries that are very successful with their creation and implementation of ICT. The few that were investigated in this study: Korea, India, China, USA and Japan all outperform the EU in many respects. These countries have bold initiatives and dare to improve their position in the field of ICT with proactive industrial policies. Europe too can be successful. Present policies are very useful but not instrumental enough to enable Europe to catch up with other economic powers. We have to reconsider the present policies to identify the issues that are obstructing further progress and consider further the breakthroughs that could be achieved. In this study we have identified ten of such potential breakthroughs. Breakthrough 1: Shift the e-Business and e-Government policy from the connectivity to taking up complex ICT applications A crucial condition for more economic growth is a broad deployment and use of ICT by enterprises and public institutions. Therefore the EU needs national strategies that focus on flanking investments in skills and organizational transformation. Special attention is needed for small and medium-sized enterprises Breakthrough 2: Standardize ICT environments in Europe to trigger and enable new business Standardization is a prerequisite for a broad deployment and use of ICT, and will trigger and enable new business. Pan-European interoperable solutions for electronic authentication and electronic payments are needed to boost innovation and economic growth significantly. Breakthrough 3: Accelerate the introduction of disruptive technologies The speed with which new technologies are accepted and put to work has a serious impact on economic growth. The EU needs to play a key role by accelerating the introduction of new (disruptive) technologies like smart tags and Voice-over IP. Breakthrough 4: Realize the vision of ‘any content, anytime, anywhere, any platform’ Content is considered an important engine for future economic growth and employment. The EU needs to fuel this engine by realizing the vision of ‘any content, anytime, anywhere, any platform’ by e.g. introducting multiplatform access for content producers and new digital rights management regimes. Breakthrough 5: Go for global platform leadership in the ICT industry An excellent and competitive European ICT industry is a crucial condition for economic growth and employment. The EU needs to define a strategy towards global leadership in specific areas, for example by stimulating a (new) European standards policy (in cooperation with the market) and making an explicit choice for e.g. the future of 3G mobile telecom in Europe. Breakthrough 6: Develop a strategic response to job migration to low-wage countries Economic growth and employment can be seriously affected by the accelerated job migration to low-wage countries. The EU needs to develop a strategic response. Breakthrough 7: Remove barriers for the development of an innovating European electronic communications sector The electronic communications sector is a proven source for economic growth and employment. The EU needs to anticipate in an early stage the barriers for investments in next generation networks. Breakthrough 8: Move to a new and flexible model of spectrum allocation The spectrum is one of the major battlefields for innovation and new business. Modernization of spectrum policies will have a large economic impact. Therefore the EU urgently needs to make its rigid spectrum allocation model flexible. Breakthrough 9: Enforce real solutions for consumer confidence and security A crucial condition for a broad deployment and use of ICT by business and consumers is user confidence. Therefore the EU needs to enforce structural solutions for viruses and spam by creating liabilities, give priority to cybercrime within law enforcement and ensure the availability of critical infrastructures. Breakthrough 10: Shift e-Inclusion policy from ‘access for all’ to ‘skills for all’ A crucial step for a broad deployment and use of ICT by consumers is that Europe’s e-Inclusion policy does not only focus on broadband access, but also on the skills Europeans need to participate in the information society. Therefore the EU needs to redefine the current universal service obligation and adopt strategies for improving ICT skills. The full report is available: click here
Tim Harper on NanoWater
by Rocky Rawstern, Nanotechnology Now Please talk about NanoWater, the reasons behind it, and the goals and timeframe. Why water, as opposed to food or shelter, or other basic needs? NanoWater is a very simple idea that grew out of a meeting with Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the World NanoEconomic Congress in Washington DC last year. He made the only speech I have ever seen that got a standing ovation at a nanotech conference, with the simple message that perhaps technology could do something positive. We followed this up with a visit to Israel just before Christmas last year to understand at first-hand the problems facing countries with scarce water resources. I agree that food and shelter are important global issues, as are energy and disease. Although water issues affect most of the world’s population, I wouldn’t claim that water is any more important or urgent than any of the other issues. However, there are two compelling reasons for the nanowater initiative. Firstly, lack of clean, affordable water is not a problem confined to the developing world. Southern Europe, Israel, the Western United States, the Middle East and areas of South-East Asia such as Singapore all suffer from increasing pressure on scarce water resources. While any number of programs are looking at ameliorating the situation in the developing world, the real solutions to addressing water issues will come from the countries above. These are all rich countries whose economies and future prosperity could be damaged by lack of access to water. If there is a solution to be found, it will be driven by economics, not charity. Secondly, water remediation is already available in the form of filters, desalination technologies, and water recovery systems. The reason we have a water problem is because these technologies are not yet cheap enough, either in terms of efficiency, maintenance, or the energy required to operate them. Nanotechnology is already being applied across a wide range of areas that can be either be used directly, or adapted for use in the water industry. In addition, almost every application of nanotechnology in industry is being driven by the economics of the bottom line. So the question becomes, can we use nanotechnology to make water remediation more efficient, and ultimately more economically viable? Preliminary results indicate that we can. Why now? Who is behind it? Who is participating? Well here’s an odd thing. Everyone agrees that the application of nanotechnology to water is a good thing, but no one has any money to fund a project, so many of the projects that have been discussed over the past year are still sitting on the launch pad. One of the reasons for this is that governments and companies around the world have not yet made the connection between nanotechnology and water, and as such there are no funds being made available specifically for this area. NanoWater is an initiative designed to bring together the nanotechnology community with the water industry, to find common ground. This is something that the European NanoBusiness Association did with the Textiles industry at EuroNanoTex, and a number of fruitful collaborations have already emerged. We are not demanding government handouts before we start to do anything; we are starting by determining whether the water industry can benefit from nanotechnology. As with any other technology, if there is a Dollar, a Euro or a Yen to made, then we’ll see widespread adoption. By bringing nanotechnology to Europe’s largest water industry trade show, we hope to find out where the economic sweet spot is. If we can drive down the cost of water treatment or desalination by a just few percent, the effects will be widespread and global. We are very close to the tipping point, and NanoWater is designed to give the industry the nudge it needs. How does our understanding of nanoscale phenomena relate to more and cleaner drinking water? Nanofiltration technologies are well-established, and in recent years have seen a large number of developments offering improved systems. Improvements in filtration technologies, especially with regard to increasing throughput, improving selectivity and reducing clogging, could have a major impact on the economics of existing filtration applications for both liquids and gases, and create new capabilities with enormous value for major industries such as the pharmaceutical sector, or even the power generation industry (sequestration of CO2, for example). The fundamental capabilities being developed along the way are applicable to a wide variety of industries. Examples of this are capabilities in self-assembly and hierarchical self-assembly, which offer potential for novel and cheap manufacturer of a wide variety of materials, or improvements in electrospinning of fibbers, which can be applied in areas ranging from textiles to biomaterials. Thus, though filtration itself may seem rather prosaic, the spin-offs from the capabilities developed can be expected to be very broad. Meanwhile, contamination of groundwater from both industrial and natural sources is a huge and growing problem around the world. Arsenic contamination, for example, has recently been shown by Australian researchers to be much more widespread than previously thought, with people at serious risk in 17 countries around the world. This situation is not helped by the standard kit for testing arsenic, which is proving less than reliable at the concentration levels where health starts to be at risk (cheaper and more sensitive detection is another area where nanotechnology will have significant impact). Recent years have seen great advances in macromolecular chemistry and active surfaces with applicability to decontamination; switchable chemical specificity is the key here. The physical substrates used for such developments can vary from plain surfaces (often nanostructured) to nanoporous materials (as described in the previous section) to nanoparticles. Similar physical configurations are also benefiting catalysis, and this area has also seen great improvements from the use of nanoparticles. The increase in surface area is the obvious improvement here, but there is more to it than that – some groups (e.g. Hydrocarbon Technologies Inc.) have development particles that always present the same crystalline face to the reactants, which can improve yield considerably, and some materials have been found to become catalytic as nanoparticles when they weren’t previously. This applies especially to photocatalysts, a vibrant and promising area of R&D. The value of detection technology for water purification is clear – knowing what the contaminants are. Special value can be seen in defense against biowarfare through contamination of water supplies. The key factors are price and sensitivity, both of which are going to be improved considerably by nanotechnology. Is anyone using nanotechnology in water remediation and filtration now? Is it cost-effective? Is it scalable? We are just seeing the first products emerging from companies such as Inframat, Argonide and Fluxxion. Much of filtration tends to be a materials issue – how do we produce materials that can remove contaminants, how do we keep them from clogging, and how can we control the pore size? Nanotechnology is enabling us to do just that. On the detection front, NanoSight in the UK has a system that can detect waterborne nanoparticles and viruses in real time. While these companies are the vanguard of water related nanotechnology applications, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The billions of dollars of government funding that has been going into academic establishments around the world is on the verge of releasing a flood of new technologies, some of which will find applications in the water industry. As for whether these technologies are scalable, we’ll soon find out. In studying and perfecting methods for water remediation and filtration, what spin-offs are possible? What’s in it for big business? As we have discussed, if there is a buck to be made, business will be interested. Another way to look at this question is to ask what spin-offs are there for companies developing nanotechnology for other applications? Our research indicates that there are a wide variety of nanotechnologies being developed, very few of them specifically for water, which will find applications in the water industry. What do you expect to come out of the NanoWater 2004 conference? It is a start. We don’t expect to see safe, affordable water across the globe in the timescales that some nanotech pundits have claimed we will see for a cure for cancer. We have to be realistic. By bringing the water industry into contact with the nanotechnology community, in the presence of policy and decision-makers, we can define where the technologies intersect. After that, it is up to industry and governments to fund the research and deploy the technologies. Let’s take this one step at a time. The bottom line should be to use (nano)technology to achieve something positive. If there is money to be made at the same time, then we have a better chance of success.
Europe’s water: An indicator-based assessment
by European Environment Agency Foreword Progress is being made in improving the quality and quantity of Europe ’s water resources, particularly in the European Union. Much of this improvement has been made through measures aimed at reducing the pressures on Europe’s water from households and industry, often introduced through European policy initiatives. However, many of Europe’s groundwater bodies, rivers, lakes, estuaries, and coastal and marine waters are still significantly impacted by human activities. For example, pollutant concentrations remain above, and water levels below, natural or sustainable levels. In many parts of Europe this leads to a degradation of aquatic ecosystems and dependent terrestrial ecosystems such as wetlands, and to drinking and bathing water that sometimes fail human health standards. The EU water framework directive represents a major advance in European policy with the concepts of ecological status and water management at the river basin level being included in a legislative framework for the first time. Ecological status must include an assessment of the biological communities, habitat and hydrological characteristics of water bodies as well as the traditional physico-chemical determinands. For the first time, measures will have to be targeted at maintaining sustainable water levels and flows and at maintaining and restoring riparian habitats. The success of the water framework directive in achieving its objectives will be dependent on proper implementation by countries.The European Commission is therefore developing a common implementation strategy for the new directive with EU Member States and accession countries. The achievement of good ecological status for surface waters and good groundwater status will require Foreword measures aimed at the agricultural sector in particular. Agriculture has a significant, and in many areas the most significant, impact on Europe ’s waters. This is reflected, for example, in the continued high concentrations of nitrates and pesticides in surface and groundwaters and in the over-abstraction of water resources for irrigation. It is now recognised that environmental protection needs to be integrated into sectoral policies and legislation (such as the common agriculture policy). Another area of concern is the lack of appropriate and adequate information on the effects of many chemical substances on aquatic life and human health. Thousands of chemicals are being produced in, and used by, modern society. Many end up in the aquatic environment. Most have not had formal risk assessments, as progress has been very slow in assessing existing chemicals, which is required by legislation. In particular, there is a growing awareness of the issue of chemicals with endocrine mimicking effects. The EU will incorporate the 10 acceding countries in 2004. Water quality in the acceding countries is often different from that in current 15 EU Member States, reflecting differences in the socio-economic structures and development of the regions. For example, there is less polluting agriculture but poorer wastewater treatment in the acceding countries than in EU Member States. Industry and agriculture has generally been in decline in the acceding countries during the transition to market-oriented economies. Agricultural practices are not so intensive in these countries as in current EU Member States. If acceding countries aim to achieve EU levels of agricultural production then, potentially, water quality and quantity will deteriorate, e.g. nitrate concentrations in surface and groundwaters will increase, as will the nitrate load on Europe’s seas. It is, therefore, essential that the development of the economies of acceding countries within the EU is accompanied by the appropriate development and implementation of measures that safeguard the future quality and quantity of water in these countries. It is my hope that this report provides an overview of the current issues affecting Europe’s water and some insights into how it can be better protected and restored in future. Gordon McInnesInterim Executive Director The full report is available: click here
Vision 20/20: Future Scenarios
by Australian Communication Authority Vision 20/20: Future Scenarios for the Communications Industry – Implications for Regulation International Road Test ReportMay–June 2004 Executive summaryTwo representatives from the Vision 20/20 team undertook an international road test of the preliminary outcomes of the project to date. It was also an opportunity to discuss strategic implications with relevant experts and agencies. OverviewThe international road test provided new insights on emerging technologies, business models and social issues, as well as feedback about the trends and drivers of change identified in the Vision 20/20 outcomes to date. The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) received broad support for the timeliness of the project and its scope and objectives. We were encouraged to promote international awareness and consultation for the Vision 20/20 preliminary report, and to facilitate international participation in the project. The ACA was invited to collaborate with international agencies and organisations that have an interest in strategic communications analysis. This consultation was also valuable for identifying gaps in our thinking, for highlighting issues that require development, and for testing the plausibility of certain aspects of our scenarios. New insights on emerging technologies, or issues that need more emphasisThere are potentially radical changes in network architecture that may develop in the period to 2020, such as cooperative radio networks that are energy and spectrum efficient, and quantum communications. New forms of communication are expected through developments in enhanced and augmented reality, and telepresence – video conferencing with more sophisticated video capture through holographics – that were suggested as being more likely than advanced forms of artificial intelligence. Social issuesGovernments are likely to be placed under more pressure by the community to design and implement effective measures to deal with the potentially harmful drivers of broadband, such as pornography, gambling, gaming and cyber crime. The potential for negative community reaction to complexity, pervasive monitoring and being ‘always online, always connected’ needs more emphasis. While trends suggest consumers may have more choice, people are often overwhelmed by it. Some of the negative reactions that could slow down the pace of change include people taking ‘information holidays’ and online avoidance. Industry structure and emerging business modelsWhile the dominance of the broadcasting model may be challenged by peer-to-peer Internet-based video-streaming, mainstream media may continue to survive through superior product quality. Decentralisation and distribution of communications systems may destroy older business models and allow innovative services to develop. However, over time, the cycle could be repeated with the more successful business models building economies of scale and scope, moving towards centralisation and market dominance. Trusted brands that manage multiple devices and applications, providing integrated customer services, could also develop. The need for flexibility and responsiveness may drive ‘de-massification’, where very large enterprises continue to set the rules but operations are transferred to fully-owned subsidiaries. Information management and data storage services are likely to be growth areas in response to the volume of information available and the need to process and control it. Regulatory challengesRegulators that have a limited knowledge of communications systems run the risk of imposing unworkable regulations, or being manipulated by those willing to exploit knowledge-based weaknesses. An understanding of the system as a whole is necessary to manage systems-wide issues. Regulatory policy should therefore be developed with the nature of the architecture in mind. For example, the development of an open source, seamless and near-ubiquitous communications system would necessitate industry cooperation. The regulatory framework should promote cooperation. The trend to Internet-based communications will continue to drive the need for international collaboration in areas such as security, law enforcement, content, digital rights and identity management. Guaranteeing continuity of supply is important now and the demand for it is likely to increase, with resulting increased pressure on the government and the market to ensure uninterrupted service. The boundaries that define the communications sector will shift over time – how must the regulatory framework also evolve? You can download the full report [*.pdf]: click here
The Challenge of Multiculturalism after Westernalization
by Dae Ryeong Kim While the history of culture might be as long as the history of human civilization, it was during the nineteenth century that the word, “culture” began to be circulated in its modern sense. Expanding the modern civilization to the world, and facing the strong resistance from traditional cultures throughout the world, the Europeans began to recognize the reality of the diversity of culture. While the Enlightenment had been the force to motivate the Westerners to expand the western civilization to the rest of the world, it was, ironically, this very process of westernalization that has trigged the reaction of the multiculturalism in the western societies in postmodernity. In order to illuminate the origin of multiculturalism, one needs to explore the post-Enlightenment world first. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans were speaking of their own age as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. And this new confidence had explosive power. As Lesslie Newbigin vividly describes it, here was a new prospect for the whole human race. The light that had dawn in Europe now had to be spread throughout the world. The Dark Ages might have passed in Europe, but there were still dark continents where the light had not penetrated. Human reason was essentially the same everywhere, and all human beings, whatever their race or creed, could be taught to share the benefits of its unfettered use. Here was a task worthy of the supreme dedication of the peoples of Europe. In short, Europeans in this century had a motivation to westernize the rest of the world because they found their mission in civilizing the world. First, however, there was the expansion of modernism in Europe accelerated by the French Revolution. The vision of liberation of the right of every human being to justice and freedom, had to be translated into the realities of politics. “Liberty” and “equality” were the watchwords, with “fraternity” a somewhat muted third cry. France was the first place where the explosion took place, but the Napoleonic wars carried many of the new ideas into the rest of Europe. Nothing in Europe would ever be the same.
Secularization in a Context of Advanced Modernity
by Liliane Voye As described by Dobbelaere (1981), secularization – considered as a process on the macro-level – is in general still an unquestionable fact in Europe. Functional differentiation is persisting; the organized world is based on impersonal roles and on contractual patterns. The privatization of religion signifies not only that institutional religion loses its capacity to exercise an impact on public affairs but also that religion is considered as a matter of personal choice. This choice is enlarged by the numerous opportunities which have appeared in the “religious market” and, among other things, by the development of New Religious Movements. Such a context stimulates the relativization of religious messages, and their acceptance appears to be more and more oriented to a “this worldly” end, to the immanent level of everyday reality. However, at the same time that unbelief is growing and the numbers of the unchurched are increasing (Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1995b; Dobbelaere and Jagodzinski 1995), different facts testify that religion is not absent from the scene. Considering Europe, we can see that many individuals seem to set up some kind of “religious patchwork,” using various existing resources which they compose according to their own needs, views, and experiences (Voye 1995). At different levels, it appears also that the religious reference is used to affirm a territorial identity (Voye 1996) and so to differentiate oneself from others considered as dangerous or inferior or simply as different. We may also see that the autonomy of the different functions – notably, the political and the juridical functions – is not always as radical as it was supposed to be in the first phase of modernity. Taking into account this apparent paradox – the confirmation of the process of secularization and the effective presence of religious references not only at the individual level but also at the macro level – I advance some reflections which – considering the European case and the Catholic church – might suggest that the actual situation is not exactly the same as it was twenty-five years ago, i.e., when Dobbelaere defined secularization as he did. We are no longer in the heart of a triumphant modernity, and this induces different effects in the religious field as in any other field. To develop this point of view, I will discuss some aspects of what I will call “advanced modernity” – considered more as a factual situation than as a theory and I will try to show how these aspects modify the position of the religious field, without invalidating the effects of secularization. In contrast to what is often suggested, there is no retour, no return to a pre-modern situation. I suggest, rather, that institutional religion may no longer presume to impose its views, its doctrine, its morals, its rules, either in public affairs or on individuals who claim their autonomy. To be listened to, religious spokespersons have to modify their discourse and its presentation. The religious actor has also to re-legitimize some religious dimensions, which, during modernity, were eliminated or at least reduced in order to rationalize religion. To survive or to have a chance still to play a role in society, the religious actor will offer himself as a resource for other systems, i.e., to develop its “performances” (Luhmann 1990) – by showing its capacity to solve problems generated in other fields but not solved there. And we shall see that the political field in particular, at various levels, not only accepts this but sometimes requires it directly. In this perspective, I review several points that I consider a consequence of a context of advanced modernity, without pretending to be exhaustive. A first characteristic is the relative scepticism toward science, because of its “perverse effects,” its incapacity to solve every problem (contrary to what was hoped for during modernity), and its long-term character. This induces two possibilities for religious performances: one on the level of the political field, which is supposed to regulate science and its applications, and one on the individual level. Then, I will take into account the disrepute into which the state has fallen and the correlative growing importance of Europe, on the one side, and of “regions,” “nations,” and different particular identifications on the other. For these last two levels, the Catholic church is foremost in offering its resources. I will then consider the actual trend which tends to evolve from laws considered as general and substantial to laws which take into account particular and situational aspects – among others, those of religious diversity. At the same time, the state, being in search of allies, tends to reaffirm its ancient collusion with the main Christian religions. The full article is available: click here
Report: the future of the European Knowledge Society
by Menno Scheers, Club of Amsterdam The Club of Amsterdam organised a conference about ‘the future of the European Knowledge Society’ on January 28, 2004. This report will give you a brief summary of the topics and the discussion between the panel and the participants of the Club of Amsterdam. The participants of the event filled out a questionnaire; you can find the results in the report. Wanda van Kerkvoorden (CEO, SOLV New Business Advocaten) was the host of this evening. Five speakers gave an introduction to stimulate the discussion. Wendy L. Schultz (Futurist, Oxford, UK) said that futurists support people to explore the future in order to make decisions. In case of the European Knowledge Society they would research what the design questions are for a knowledge society: What is it, who are involved in designing, what are the guiding values and what are the goals and the assumptions? It’s difficult to say what kind of people will live in the knowledge society. At this moment we live for example in a print society with books. Digital media will change communication. Our concept of the knowledge society is print based. Hypertext and hypermedia will stimulate other ways of thinking. This will result in achieving non linear thinking. In 2048 the last linear thinker dies. We are raised to think from A to B to C. Children will be raised in thinking from A to multiple points. The cultural change will take a whole generation. The next generation needs to be involved in designing the knowledge society. According to Paul Iske (Chief Knowledge Officer, ABN Amro Bank, Corporate Finance) we should try to make people more smart and organisations more intelligent. Most companies state that they don’t have problems with fully using the intellectual capital of their employees. Research in those organisations often tells the opposite. 66% of the participants said that their organisation / company is exploring the possibilities of knowledge management. 29% had the feeling that the knowledge they currently have is fully utilised in their current position. All participants at the conference thought that companies and organisations should develop better possibilities for life long learning. Knowledge is a reusable and surpassable experience according to René Gude (Managing Director, The International School for Philosophy). Even monkeys have a presentation of past, present and future. Humans have speech. The knowledge society started when apes started to walk and talk and became humans. Europe should create strong cities. People should be aware that they live in a globalised world. We should think like Athens (wealth of knowledge on a small geographical scale) and act like Romans (wealth of bureaucratic organisation and exploitation on a large geographical scale). Frans Nauta (CEO, Stichting Nederland Kennisland, Secretary, Dutch Innovation Platform) said that The Netherlands is not doing very well in developing the knowledge economy. The Netherlands didn’t develop new multinational companies in the new economy like Finland and Ireland. The Netherlands should focus on several sectors and try to become leading in those sectors. 81% of the visitors thought that knowledge based innovation would be one of the main priorities of their organisation / company in the future. 76% thought that the Dutch and European government should make a bigger effort to stimulate knowledge development. All people should profit from the knowledge society according to Thomas Thijssen (Chief Learning Officer, Club of Amsterdam). A lot of attention is given to the knowledge economy and its knowledge workers. But will non workers profit from the knowledge society as well? Will for example more babies survive? We need to share the work that needs to be done applying all our talents. We have to develop a full engagement society. 66% thought that the shift to a knowledge society would really change their lives.
Breaking the boundaries between academic degrees and lifelong learning
by Thomas J.P. Thijssen, Fons T.J. Vernooij Designing demand driven lifelong learning processes for employees Keywords: educational design, didactics, lifelong learning, innovation, collaborative technologies, assessment tools, personal development, demand driven Many educational institutes and their staff, struggle with the issue of capturing the market of lifelong learning, whilst continuing to offer traditional courses. Whereas traditional courses are more or less fixed in curricula and cover certain topics in a planned period of time, lifelong learning requires agreements between teachers and students on specific topics related to competencies acquired before. Students with working experiences are mostly skilled in self-regulated learning processes. Education has to benefit from that. Yet many post-academic courses are built around the same educational processes as the regular academic courses for those between the ages of 17 and 25. Those courses are supply driven and not demand driven and they are separated from the working context. They offer more general modules, which by definition are not relevant for the individual student. Moreover, the costs of these traditional forms of education are high, both in time and money. This paper explores the design problems and generates the outline of a transformation framework to build lifelong learning processes in a demand driven way. The framework includes relevant components for students to regulate their own learning processes and ensure they are integrated in their work processes. The student, the coach and the assessor can continuously monitor the desired learning outcomes, by using assessment tools. Tools for mass-customisation and automation (collaborative technologies) make it possible to support large numbers of students in their learning processes. This will be demonstrated by experiences from the Netherlands at the Johan Cruijff University, the Centre for Post initial Education (CPE) and the Network University, all three vested in Amsterdam. 1. Introduction There are two main reasons for people who finished their regular education to continue learning when they have found a job. One is that they want to improve their competencies, understood as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitude (Parry, 1996; Stoof and others, 2001). They want as well to prepare themselves for a career. The second reason is that working situations are changing fast. New developments in information and communication technology create changes in the working situation. In order to keep up with these changes further education is required. This may either be conceived as an improvement in acquired competencies or as an extension of certificates acquired. In both situations the question arises whether this additional learning should be supply driven or demand driven. Supply driven learning can be understood as learning situations where the supplier develops a course or seminar, based on its own market research, resulting in an offer to customers. As far as universities and business schools are concerned they have material available from their bachelor, master or Ph-D program. For some employees this might just be what they are looking for, but for many these courses are too abstract and too little applicable in their own working situation. They have other learning goals, related to the job they have or the position they want to acquire. For them another approach would be more suitable: demand driven learning. In this approach the learning goals of the learner, or maybe a group of learners are the starting point for the design of a course. The learner himself is in control of the learning process. There are many concepts used to describe the learning demands of people who finished their initial education. One is life long learning. The national research network for new approaches to lifelong learning describes working definitions for formal schooling, further education and informal learning (Livingstone, 1998). In this paper we will use the definition of lifelong learning in the sense of further education. In addition to that we limit ourselves to work related lifelong learning, excluding such fine courses as for instance violin studies and sailing. One important distinction is that we will explore lifelong learning as a demand driven learning activity of further education whereby the learner is in control. When this concept is used in this contribution, it is restricted to situations where an employee is working on his employability. Therefore, an employer is involved in most of these cases. Employer and employee have both common interests and personal interests in describing the specific learning outcomes and in creating a learning situation. They each have their own value chain with input of effort, time and money and output in terms of competencies for the employee that can contribute to the productivity of the company. We will use the concept of the value chain (Porter, 1985) to describe the processes of creating value through learning/teaching activities. Once the learning goals are stated a supplier is looked for or the employer might develop a course by his own personnel department. If a university or business school is approached to make an offer, then a third value chain becomes involved, that is the value chain of the institute (Thijssen, Maes, & Vernooij, 2001). As a well-organized institute it will try to reduce its costs and look for existing material as the basis for an offer. That is where demand driven learning can collide with supply driven learning. In this contribution we will explore the value chains of the learners, the companies and the educational institutions. We introduce as well the home front as a separate role, that is the relatives and friends of the learner, that are influenced in their social lives, because of the time the learner invests in his learning. The three value chains and the role of the home front are explored in order to find the research questions today that are required to find the answers tomorrow. It reports on the journey towards designing demand driven education that forces educators to rethink their role in learning processes and break through the boundaries of formal schooling. The aim is to present a fresh way of looking at design problems and inspiring educators by sharing experiences. First we will describe the various value chains and make an inventory on conflicting interests and problems. We formulate design goals at the end of this section. In section 2 we will introduce a framework for designing demand driven life long learning for employees. In section 3 we will share some insights on experiments with new educational design and in section 4 we list the learning points from these experiments for educational institutions. We conclude with recommendations for further exploratory research. We will first describe the characteristics of the value chain of the Learner and explore the role of the home front. Secondly we will embark on describing the value chain of the company. By comparing these value chains we can identify conflicts of interest and specific problems. Then we will describe the value chain of the traditional educational institute en we will explore how this value chain fits the needs of the two other value chains. Based on this analysis we can formulate our design goals. You can download the full article as a *.doc file: click here