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Dan Holtshouse started the Knowledge Initiative at Xerox ten years ago with the CEO's backing and positioned the initiative as a strategic imperative reporting into the Chief Strategy Office. Under Dan's mentorship, the Xerox Knowledge Management program has been cited as a benchmark for implementation in large global enterprises and has received over a dozen awards for knowledge management (KM) excellence. The knowledge theme at Xerox has been largely institutionalized around knowledge sharing with the granddaddy Eureka System in the large service organization still running continuously for over ten years.

This aim of this paper is to discuss knowledge management's (KM) long‐term relationship and support of the enterprise of the future over the next ten to 15 years.

Several topic areas are identified in knowledge management that can provide important support to the enterprise of the future's productivity and growth goals.

Advances in the areas of raising the value of work, advancing workplace/workspace performance, reducing and streamlining work complexity, and early detection of emerging market changes/disruptions are identified as being among some of the leading future KM capabilities needed by future enterprises.

The paper contains useful information on directions for development of future KM capabilities.

This is the knowledge age and, to put it in Peter Drucker's language, knowledge workers and their knowledge are a vital component of this economy. Yet, so little is really known about these workers. New research is needed to better understand the issues surrounding the recruitment, productivity, deployment, and retention of these workers. This research aims to address this issue.

The research was conducted through a 35‐part questionnaire administered in mid‐2008 to 125 business and government executives/professionals located in North America, Europe, and South America.

The research delineates two major work groups by age: 25 years old; and 26‐40 years old. The top two preference findings for 25‐year olds include: recruitment – flexi‐work and cultural diversity; retention – education/training and communities and networks; valued skills – team/collaboration and specialized technical; and technologies – collaboration tools and e‐mail, search, portals. The top two preference findings for 26‐40‐year olds include: recruitment – flexi‐work and job security; retention – communities and networks and documentation; valued skills – project management and strategic thinking; and technologies – collaboration tools and e‐mail, search, portals. Finally, measuring performance improvement metrics for these workers were: improved quality of output, task execution speed, and high‐impact innovation (as opposed to cost reduction and work elimination); innovation (25 years); and superior decision‐making/risk assessment capabilities (26‐40 years)

This field research provides a management framework for helping organizational leadership to make strategic decisions on how to build a more competitive and attractive workplace over the next ten years.

The purpose of this paper is to convey background and historical settings on the evolution of knowledge management research and practices since the late 1990s in programs of The George Washington University (GWU), Washington, DC. The settings aim to support the papers of a special issue of the journal for exploring the future of knowledge workers in the twenty‐first century.

The paper uses historical data drawn from dissertations, books, discussions and active participation through a ten‐year community of interest (COI) comprising scholars and practitioners. This COI functions within the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (GWU‐IKI) and the inputs are augmented with references to literature on KM and knowledge workers.

The overall viewpoint leverages off the theme that the youngest of the workforce generations, the Millennials, born since 1981, are 76 million strong and rapidly coming of age. Furthermore, through a natural process of evolution, they are already coping with the virtual real time, simultaneous, social networking of the cloud computing, cyberspace demands that are generally seen as being overwhelming and beyond the “normal” human capacities for many in the older generations.

Viewpoints expressed on the multigenerational group of current and future knowledge workers, i.e. Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, GenXers and Millennials are extremely narrow and summary in nature. Reference to these segments of the workforce is limited to the context of this background setting, but extensive literature and active media coverage openly exists for each generation.

The paper gives readers insights into the contents of the 11 papers comprising the special issue. Future traits, skills, aptitudes of workers, challenges of projected multi‐dimensional environments, real life practices for culture transformations, and emphasis on lifelong learning to cope with the escalating changes of the connected global society are highlighted.

Children quickly adapt to change and often become the language and culture guides to adults in foreign environments. The Millennials, youngest generation of knowledge workers, will guide the global workforce through the chaos, complexity and intellectual capacity overburden of the early twenty‐first century cyber‐socialization.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the results of the first enterprise of the future industry roundtable. The purpose of the roundtable was to identify the major areas of research needed to help organizations transform themselves in order to achieve sustainable performance in a flat world.

The agenda consisted of individual presentations by thought leaders, followed by a roundtable discussion.

The group concluded that in order to help organizations transform themselves, a focused research effort was required in the following four areas; transformation through the co‐creation of new business ecosystems and strategies; new, non‐hierarchical organizational designs; creating ideal environments for attracting, retaining, and growing talent; integrating a myriad of technology components into a unified infrastructure.

Enterprise transformation is an expensive and risky undertaking. These findings provide an initial set of the most critical research areas needed for successful transformation. Decision makers can use these results as a guide for planning their future research agenda.

Wouldn't Stack love to open a book and find a map of the new millennium. It doesn't have to be 100% right, but someone needs to take a stab at drawing one. We need a map, even if it's only a rough outline: Business boundaries are shifting, and the very definition of what it means to be a company is changing.