Milestones in the Development of Knowledge Work

This is the second in a series of posts about the future of the knowledge work. They are based on an article I did with Chris Carbone that was published in the Spring 2013 issue of Employment Relations Today. Last time, we talked about how we scoped knowledge work using a domain map.

This time, to help ground readers in the topic and to provide context to how we arrived at where we are today, key milestones in the development of knowledge work are highlighted below. We’re going back further than a typical project. A rule of thumb is one ought to look back as far as one is looking forward. In this case, we chose to go back a bit further – to the roots!

Although the concept was introduced as early as 1959, key enabling developments such as telecommuting and personal computing kick off in the 1970s. Outsourcing was a key development of the 1980s. The launch of the web was the most significant development of the 1990s, although several other important developments that hit their stride in the 2000s begin in the 1990s: smart devices, E-commerce, and virtual collaboration. The emergence of various social media stands out as a key development in knowledge work over the last decade.

Milestones in the Development of Knowledge Work

Industrial Revolution

• Late 18th and early 19th centuries: Work meant “going to work”; the Industrial Revolution created the clear separation between work and home.

Knowledge Workers

• 1959: Peter Drucker coined the term knowledge workers. “Knowledge workers require that the demands be made on them by knowledge rather than by people. They require a performance-oriented organization rather than an authority-oriented organization….”[i]

Telecommuting

• 1970: Jack Niles coined the term telecommuting in response to the realization that the world’s fossil fuels were finite and that energy conservation was necessary.
• 1990: Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required nation’s most polluted regions to reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles by up to 13%.
• 2000: Number of US workers teleworking more than eight hours per week hit 6 million.
• 2009: Number of US workers teleworking more than eight hours per week hit 14 million.

Personal Computing

• 1977: Release of Apple II.
• 1981: Release of IBM PC “5150” and MS-DOS.
• 1987: Release of PowerPoint.
• 1992: Release of IBM ThinkPad 700 laptop.

1993: Release of Intel’s Pentium chip processor.

Outsourcing

• Thomas Friedman noted that, “The PC, the Internet, and fiber-optic cable had created the possibility of a whole new form of collaboration and horizontal value creation: outsourcing.” [ii]

• 1980s: Outsourcing started with blue-collar jobs.

1990s: Outsourcing expanded to white-collar jobs.
World Wide Web

• 1990: Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web.
• 1994: Release of Mosaic Netscape browser.
• 1994: AOL 2.0 featured USENET and Web access.

Smart Devices

• 1996: Palm popularized “PDAs.”
• 1999: Release of BlackBerry handheld e-mail device.
• 2007: Release of first iPhone.
• 2008: Release of code for and first phone based on the Android open-source mobile software platform.
• 2010: Release of first iPad.

E-Commerce

• 1995: EBay was  founded.
• 2001: Napster was shut down, ending “free” music.
• 2003: Amazon posted first net profit.
• 2003: iTunes store opened.

Virtual Collaboration

• 1990s: Development of Groupware (e.g., Lotus Notes) applications.
• 2004: Release of web-based project management tools (e.g., Basecamp).
• 2006: Cisco’s Telepresence linked two separate physical rooms.
• 2007: Second Life membership reached 10 million.
• 2011: IBM’s Smarter Computing framework and Apple’s iCloud were launched.

Social Media

• 2003: Release of del.icio.us for social bookmarking.
• 2003: Launch of LinkedIn for professional networking
• 2004: Launch of Flickr for image sharing.
• 2004: Launch of Facebook.
• 2006: Launch of Twitter.
• 2011: 156 million public blogs in existence.

Andy Hines

[i] Drucker, P. (1959). The landmarks of tomorrow. New York: Harper & Brothers.

 

[ii] Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.