New directions for ISPI : following the new geography of jobs
"Being in favor of job creation and ignoring employing organizations is like being pro-eggs and anti-chicken.”
Gov. Tim Pawlenty
A recent set of articles and books by Berkeley economist and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Enrico Moretti provides some thought-provoking insights about the trends of our knowledge-based, globalized economy and the ways ISPI can serve it better.
The slow-paced “jobless recovery” after the 2008 crisis and the growing gap between decaying blue-collar-based communities “coming apart” and thriving new Silicon Valley-like “brain hubs” like those described by Moretti’s research and Gonzalo Rodriguez Villanueva Yaqui Valley ecosystem (www.yaquivalley.mx) show a new opportunity and challenge for ISPI.
The opportunity for ISPI has been in plain sight in front of us since 1998 -when we first went virtual-:
ISPI has the brain power of a global network of seasoned experts that can deliver value serving entrepreneurial communities and startups with virtually delivered, real project-focused PI programs and activities instead of just annual onsite conferences.
The challenge is to change the traditional mindset and our way of conducting the business of ISPI from a focus on annual, on-site conferences to a wider concept reaching underserved global constituencies.
If we can shift our focus to this new direction, we’ll be able to free financial resources from hotels and airfares to content and experts.
Moreover, we’ll be increasing exponentially the value we can deliver, by making all our experts and brain power available to all possible users and -quite importantly- to organizations and communities as well as individuals.
The old and the new model are not mutually exclusive.
They can (and should) work “in tandem” with the condition that we put our “horses” -our expert roster- ahead of the carts -conferences or online programs- instead of behind.
Pushing carts tends to obstruct the vision.
So this is an invitation to all of you, fellow long time and new members of ISPI to come together and explore these new possibilities.
The Performance Improvement Institute has been doing some preliminary work with its programs in Spanish (www.imdonline.org) since 2005.
Now, we open the PII doors also in its English option: www.piionline.org to all of you to exchange and produce valuable knowledge and value-adding contributions to our organizations and their clients.
