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The purpose of this article is to define a framework for projecting future leading-edge alpha societies based on the principle of requisite variety. Alpha societies are advanced as a platform for creating future forms of work and workforce preparation premised on continuous creativity, invention, design and innovation.

The principle of requisite variety is presented as the basis for a structured schema that incorporates trends and developments in anticipatory behaviors, systems thinking, creativity, design and innovation to produce a strategy for continuous leading-edge learning and performance.

Growing global hypercompetition requires real-time ability to create and deliver world-class ideas and value-adding products and services in the shortest possible timeframes. This challenge requires societies, enterprises and individuals that are capable of continuously expanding and expressing their internal variety and complexity while rapidly decreasing the gaps between learning and doing.

The principle of requisite variety has been well known to cybernetics and systems communities since 1956. However, literature linking the principle of requisite variety to the future of learning and work is not well developed.

This article establishes requisite variety generation as a valuable resource for twenty-first century societies and economies engaged in producing leading-edge outcomes.

The requisite variety framework developed in this article is intended to enhance the ability of leading-edge societies to continuously leapfrog existing educational, social and economic trajectories.

The author defines the future of education and work in terms of enhancing individual, enterprise and societal abilities to absorb, generate and exploit variety, complexity and ambiguity.

This paper addresses the persisting problem of stagnant productivity in the education sector and its contribution to escalating costs. An approach to improving learning productivity is proposed which emphasizes the integration of ICT, service learning, experiential learning, and cooperative learning. Thus, the fundamental theme of this paper is to link these four learning domains as a basic strategy to improve the quality and productivity of education and at the same time to reduce costs or limit cost increases. The advances in ICT and the concomitant “death of distance” greatly strengthen the potential for teachers to become facilitators to organize creative autonomous learning in diverse settings. Concrete examples are described from diverse cultural settings such as South Africa, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Chile, Japan, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Oregon. The paper concludes by offering a number of specific recommendations to improve learning productivity.

This article aims to look at the last 30 years of Library Hi Tech to identify which topics have continued and what priorities have changed.

The methodology is a review in which the author looks back at articles from each of the past decades to discuss how they represent core topics for the journal.

When Library Hi Tech first appeared 30 years ago, the key topics involved how to make our work as librarians more efficient. Today the question has become: how do we make it easier for those using our resources?

Key future issues for the library community, as well as for Library Hi Tech, include not only how to preserve digital information over long periods, but how humans interact with computers and digital resources, and how the human physical environment – in this case the library buildings – can adapt. This paper is of value in looking at the implications of these issues.

Explains that international mobility forms an integral part of the academic work of most faculty members. Considers some implications of faculty mobility in cyberspace and some of the constraints of the virtual world. Formulates recommendations for the enhancement of faculty mobility in the virtual world at the international and department levels. Discusses new cultural, social and educational challenges related to virtual mobility. Concludes that through virtual mobility, the real collaborative links become even more efficient and that real mobility is an added value to virtual mobility and vice versa.

What happens to export markets when the nations in which customers reside experience a sudden, unanticipated change in a relevant aspect of the environment? Which goods exported to these nations tend to be affected more than others? The study reported in this paper examines the impact that the oil shock of the 1970s had on world export markets. This sudden environmental change caused some nations to obtain sudden wealth and others to experience instant economic problems. The findings of the study illustrate the range of consequences for export markets that can occur, depending on the manner in which nations are affected by sudden change.

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

A discussion on how file sharing software can assist communications between teachers and students. Explains how Peer‐to‐peer networking can benefit education and improve student feedback.

Discusses whether, in ten years, campus‐based, nation‐funded, local student oriented universities will exist, and introduces the notion of huge multinational players into the educational market.

Outsourcing is defined as the procurement of products or services from sources that are external to the organization. Firms should consider outsourcing when it is believed that certain support functions can be completed faster, cheaper, or better by an outside organization. Tasks that are not core competencies of the organization are candidates for being contracted out. However, any skill or knowledge that allows you to serve your customer base better, that deals directly with the product or service you are trying to put out of the door, is one that must remain in‐house. Today, the outsourcing of selected organizational activities is an integral part of corporate strategy. For corporations, benefits of outsourcing are substantial: reduced costs, expanded services and expertise. Outsourcing allows companies to refocus their resources on their core business. Corporations can buy technology from a vendor that would be too expensive for them to replicate internally. For outsourcing to be successful the decision needs to be an informed one. Effective management of the outsourcing relationships is an organizational imperative.