The Future of Work: Collaboration, Transparency and Power

An ethnography of collaborative work and creation spaces across post-industrial Asia

What How Why Who

• Exponential increases in @jwaterslynch
• Visual ethnographic methods technological innovation
5
• An ethnographic study of (photo elicitation) will be used Strategic Foresight
five coworking locations Experience Design
to elicit reflections on
across post-industrial Asia. Human Systems Architecture
collaboration, • Disruptive innovation
transparency and power as increasingly changing the www.opensourcecivilisation.com
• The aim is to investigate the dimensions of work from
shared cultural nature of work PhD Candidate
participants.
underpinnings of School of Management
collaborative work spaces • Early adopter College of Business
across ethno-linguistic communities illustrate the
boundaries • This data will then be
analysed through next edge of work practices
• Work from linguistic
anthropology suggests
Sohail Inayutullah’s Types of Futures
Causal Layered Analysis • Coworking spaces are
uncovering unconscious framework looking for deeper
shared metaphors form shared metaphors about work
emerging institutions
the foundations of culture. that build bridges between
work paradigms

The nature of collective activity and social production is changing towards greater...
Ubiquitous

Collaboration Transparency Power Paper

internet in
all devices
becomes
China
obsolete
surpasses
From coordinating people towards known From the positional power of
From reporting to someone USA in PPP
convergent tasks towards collaborating push towards the entrepreneurial Mainstream
towards accountable for something
with others around unknown possibilities power of pull 3D printers
Google
Glass
1800 Coworking

A timeline for the evolution of the collaborative economy Spaces Worldwide

Apps

First Coworking
Spaces &
Hub Islington
2.0

2001 2003 2006 2007 2014 2015 2016 2018

1999 2005 2009 2010 2011
2013 2019