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This paper presents a synoptic account of the emerging knowledge‐based forms of intelligent working and the new approaches to the management of space and time, so that groups, teams and individuals can work independently of location, time and place. The challenge for facility management and facility design is to provide fast response agile systems and short duration business space and infrastructure to provide high quality work‐space and work‐time settings to support the knowledge‐based businesses of the future.

Unwarranted allocation of personal space and the accumulation of personal ‘stuff’ can become impediments to business agility, turning conventional offices into ‘millstones’ which suppress an organisation’s ability to change direction smartly in the face of new competition and other business forces. Workplace design needs to cater for perpetual change of occupancy, organisation, work processes and messages about the business. Tangible assets should be dynamic, adaptable and even portable. Setting aside arguments in favour of ‘showpiece’ corporate headquarters, this paper advocates that what is needed to help business units to stay competitive is a ‘minimalist workspace’ ‐ kept free of ‘stuff’ that clutters and impedes quick and inexpensive adaptation to local needs, every few months rather than every few years. The minimalist workplace does not need to be bland or impersonal. Imaginative design and minute attention to detail of the physical environment and the tools, technology and support services can produce attractive and ‘liveable’ environments which can successfully accommodate personal preference and promote a sense of belonging as well as mobility. This paper outlines four ‘golden rules’ for best practice in the minimalist workplace, demanding more proactive space management and more intelligent real estate design and specification to cater for greater utilisation of facilities.

Organisations cannot effectively implement advanced workplace strategies and investment projects without clearly communicated vision, prioritised objectives and appropriate performance metrics. With any business strategy and investment project, the objectives and metrics selected will combine both quantitative and qualitative elements and aim to achieve both internal and external impact. This multidimensionality of objectives indicates the use of a balanced scorecard system of measurement. This paper argues that a coherent evaluation and feedback system should be an integral part of any workplace change programme, and that time and expenditure should be budgeted for learning from prototyping or piloting, review, adaptation and communication of feedback. Without such a learning loop, real estate professionals will fail to convince business leaders of how changes in corporate workplaces contribute to business success.

Many organisations have increased collaborative performance by introducing new technologies and new processes; by integrating these with innovations in the working environment they can catalyse additional and sustained improvements in collaborative performance. If planned, designed and managed as an integrated system encompassing people, process and place issues, the workplace environment can be a powerful catalyst for business change.

Based on a presentation entitled “Modernising government workplaces”, looks at how modernisation can help in increasing productivity in the workplace. Examines public buildings as economic and social assets and factors of productivity while taking into account the work of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). Concludes that CABE should set up an independent research body that produces evidence‐based knowledge, applied in educational programmes at universities, commercial training bodies and professional institutes, and which provides evidence‐based knowledge, not just experience‐based learning.

This paper provides initial findings from a pilot to introduce graduate mental health workers into primary care, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) across three localities in the north west of England in the UK. The progress of the pilot was monitored by gathering information from students, managers, supervisors and mentors regularly throughout the 12 month period, during which the pilot cohort were being formally trained. The potential of the new role of primary care graduate mental health workers to address problems of volume and access to services, particularly how the role might contribute to developing nonspecialist primary care services, is considered.

Haworth Press, the well known publishers in the library and information science field, have recently cottoned on to an interesting idea: devote a special issue of one of their journals to a special theme, and at the same time produce a hardback book, reasonably priced, that reproduces the articles. The idea is to appeal to a market other than the libraries that will typically subscribe to the Haworth journals. Success depends upon the collection of chapters forming a coherent whole. This book, reproduced from a special issue of The Reference Librarian, partly succeeds. The 150 page hardback book comprises seven articles, from five different authors (two authors supply two articles each) with an editor's introduction. The articles are fairly typical journal articles, reporting research results; some could easily have graced the pages of Online and CD‐ROM Review. The articles vary somewhat in length and style, but generally either review the literature of a particular topic, or describe some recent research work. The title is somewhat misleading, as the book is NOT comprehensive; a better subtitle would have been ‘Aspects of Use and User Behavior’.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a typology for classification of the digital goods business (DGB), analyzing its characteristics with selected cases, to suggest an evolution strategy appropriate for today's digital business economy, and to address the research implications.

Based on a focus group interview, the study identified and classified the DGB models into four types in terms of sales channels and service methods, and further proposed five evolution strategies for the DGM.

The paper proposes five evolution strategies for the DGB: from streaming direct to streaming intermediary; from download direct to download intermediary; from download intermediary to streaming intermediary; from download direct to streaming direct; and from download direct to streaming intermediary. These evaluation strategies will be suitably applicable to the type of digital goods for which a business strives.

As the study is exploratory in nature, further research will be required to empirically confirm the findings of the underlying study regarding various DGBs, such as software, games, and movies. In addition, as the proposed typology reflects only the current state of the DGB industry, a further elaboration of the typology may also prove necessary in the future as technologies and the DGB industry evolve.

Providing a useful theoretical foundation for future DGB studies and valuable insight into practical applications in the ever‐growing DGB field, the paper delivers transitional strategic insights based on digital goods taxonomy. This strategic implication can be applicable to analyzing and explaining current DGB cases.

To assess the relative value of the 2000 version of the ISO 9000 series of quality management system standards in comparison with the 1994 version.

A total of 773 organisations in The Netherlands which have all been certified to the ISO 9000 standard were surveyed (a response rate of 21.4 per cent) and of these only 22 had not yet converted to the 2000 version of the standard.

Amongst the major findings is an overall positive perception of the value of the ISO 9000 (2000) quality system standard and a consistently higher appreciation of the 2000 version compared with the 1994 version.

Adds to the body of knowledge concerning the ISO 9000 series with particular focus on The Netherlands and the 2000 version of the standard.