---
type: Web Page
title: "Innovation and the new workforce"
canonical: https://jimcarroll.com/2007/05/innovation-and-the-new-workforce/
updated: 2021-12-31T14:46:59+00:00
---

# Innovation and the new workforce

![hurry.jpg](/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/hurry1.jpg)I’m keynoting the annual IHRIM (International Human Resource Information Management) professional association in about an hour here in Houston, TX; I’ll have an audience of about 1,000 or so.

My talk today broadly revolves around the issue of “what’s happening with our workforce.” I’m taking the audience on a tour of the key drivers which impact organizations today, whether business or government,

- **velocity**: business is just plain fast, and our workforce must cope with that

- **change capacity**: there’s a big disconnect in how quickly some people can deal with rapid change compared to others

- **idea instantaneity**: we’re in a new world in which ideas or issues can quickly speed out of control, or work to our advantage

- **knowledgeability**: in which global insight is increasing at a furious pace, leading to ever larger pools of knowledge

- **innovation opportunity**: such rates of discovery lead to massive new opportunities with bringing new products and services to market

- **idea discovery**: our interconnected world now allows unique ideas to gain a global audience in a flash

- **consumer spontaneity**: the low attention span consumer is fleeting when it comes to loyalty to brand

- **business intensity**: operational excellence is the name of the game, given an economy which simply runs “fast”

- **skills availability**: all these trends that it is going to be more difficult to access skills

My key point for the audience: When we are thinking about deployment of skills , we must be thinking about:

- Attracting the right skills …… at the right time … for the right purpose

- Providing for business flexibility in a time of rapid change

- Establishing a constantly shifting, evolving “workforce on demand”

- Enabling this with sophisticated tools, infrastructure and skills access capabilities – managed by folks such as the IHRIM

These are issues I’ve covered extensively in my analysis, **Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills** here  /wp-content/uploads/2010/04/HRTrends.pdf