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The purpose of this paper is to portray an example of how organizations can harness their employees’ insight. The procedure described here can complement traditional methods such as interviews, open forums, round tables and employee surveys, and can assist HR managers to acquire a unique look inside the company.

The described procedure was facilitated at Intel Corporation and was about The Future of Work. 145 Intel employees took part in an online crowd-deliberation with a methodology called Real-Time Imen-Delphi (RTID). The methodology guided them to initiate 689 questions that were then organized into 258 mission statements, which were rated by importance, priority and feasibility.

A main theme was identified to represent the collective notion with regards to The Future of Work. The participants leaned toward the fractal model for a preferred work environment. This model includes employees who will no longer have a single job description, but rather repeatedly sign up for tasks and projects based on their interests, capabilities, availability, aspirations and future beliefs regarding the path their organization needs to take in manufacturing, research and development.

The result provides an example of how organizations can harness their employees’ wisdom to bring to the table cutting-edge ideas, debate their relevancy to the organization, agree collectively on their vision and generate applicable ideas toward realizing their preferred future.

As social media tools evolve and become a central part in organizations, they will seek to involve employees in effective conversations and in decision-making processes. RTID is a solid way with which they can do this.

This paper seeks to discuss past and present paradigm shifts in education and then to explore possible future learning paradigms in the light of the knowledge explosion in the knowledge era that is currently being entered.

New learning paradigms and paradigm shifts are explored.

Learning processes and learning paradigms are still very much founded in a content‐driven and knowledge production paradigm. The rapid developments in information and communication technologies already have and will continue to have a profound impact on information processing, knowledge production and learning paradigms. One needs to acknowledge the increasing role and impact of technology on education and training. One has already experienced enormous challenges in coping with the current overflow of available information. It is difficult to imagine what it will be like when the knowledge economy is in its prime.

Institutions should move away from providing content per se to learners. It is necessary to focus on how to enable learners to find, identify, manipulate and evaluate information and knowledge, to integrate this knowledge in their world of work and life, to solve problems and to communicate this knowledge to others. Teachers and trainers should become coaches and mentors within the knowledge era – the source of how to navigate in the ocean of available information and knowledge – and learners should acquire navigating skills for a navigationist learning paradigm.

This paper stimulates out‐of‐the‐box thinking about current learning paradigms and educational and training practices. It provides a basis to identify the impact of the new knowledge economy on the way one deals with information and knowledge and how one deals with learning content and content production. It emphasizes that the focus should not be on the creation of knowledge per se, but on how to navigate in the ocean of available knowledge and information. It urges readers to anticipate the on future and to explore alternative and appropriate learning paradigms.

An account is given of futures research as a scientifically oriented field of knowledge. Its specific contemporary task as a study of transient change of the human society is described and the futures research approach is outlined. A generalization of the concept of knowledge of the standard sciences is presented as a sine qua non to futurology. The relationship between knowledge and information is elaborated and clarified, which makes it possible to better understand the present era as an information age.