Lifting Out of Recession with
Competence 2.0
Donald Norris, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
May 20, 2009

Discovering the Paths to Resilience and
Re-imagination
• What brings me together with you, today?
• For the past two decades I have been
exploring the theory and practice of
transforming how we learn and experience
knowledge.
– Transforming Higher Education
– Transforming e-Knowledge
– A Guide to Planning for Change
– Resilience in the Face of Recession
• Today’s economic crisis is stimulating a
fundamental re-imagination of work, learning,
and every sphere of endeavor. Resilience, not
business as usual, is the order of the day.

Today, I begin with two simple theses…
• First, the U.S. is slipping in competitive standing. Our
current approaches to education, training, and workforce
development are inadequate. They are also financially
unsustainable.
• Second, education, training, and workforce development
need to be re-imagined to lift us out of recession. This
can be facilitated through a new approach which we call
Competence 2.0 ®.

“This is not a cycle. It’s a reset.”
Jeffrey Immelt, CEO, General
Electric.

Changing Perspectives on the Global
World of Work and Learning
• The Wealth of Networks - Social Networks
as the New Organizational Model - Yochai
Benkler
• The World Is Flat and Hot, Flat, and
Crowded – New Competences, Green
Everything - Thomas Friedman
• The Big Shift – Organizations Designed for
Scalable Learning - John Seely Brown,
John Hagel, Davison Lang
• The Big Switch – Reinvent All Processes
and Practices to Glocal Orientation -
Ambjorn Naeve

Reinventing Competences to Lift Out of
Recession
• Re-imagine perspectives, practices, and
competences;
• Reinvent all major industries.
Financial services, real estate, education,
health care, agriculture, manufacturing,
energy, transportation and more;
• Continuously refresh competences;
• Compete on fresh competences, broadly
deployed;
• Change the balance of power. Shift from
institutional providers of education, learning,
and workforce development to competence
building in employment-, profession-, trade-,
and industry-based communities of practice.

What Is the DNA of Web 2.0?
• Profoundly networked work and learning settings;
achieving understanding through continuing
conversation;
• Capacity to share, repurpose, recombine
knowledge with previously unobtainable reach and
richness;
• Ability to “mashup” specialized applications
and connect information silos;
• Democratization of knowledge and insight;
• Capacity to scan, detect impending changes,
amplify weak signals;
• Analytics, performance measurement and
enhancement tools;
• Mass customization of work and learning
experiences.

How Can We Discern C2.0 Communities?
• Technologies/Tools
– Social Networking
– Repositories, Observatories, Foresight
– Data Mining and Analytics
• Dynamics
– Intensive Social Engagement
– Secure and Authenticated Communities
– “Free Range” Communities and Vox
Populi
– Co-creation of Knowledge
– Perpetual Learning
– Active Foresight
• Services and Support
– Systems, Services, and Support Architect
– Co-Discover Migration Paths
– Change Management
– Mentoring

What Is Competence 2.0 ®?
Using the Tools and Practices of Web 2.0 to:
• Creates careers with a future, looking ahead to
emerging opportunities and signals;
• Integrate look-ahead tools with rapidly-updated
insights from communities of practice (CoPs);
• Share insights through increasingly smart CoPs
with all groups involved in workforce solutions;
• Embed these capabilities in organizational
structures and empower individuals to take
responsibility for their own competences; and
• Provide feedback mechanisms, advanced
analytics, forecasting processes to interpret
signals and chart successful career paths,
speed up competence development, raise the
alert to new challenges, and project
developmental needs.

Competence 2.0 Reinvents Education,
Training, and Workforce Development
• Enterprise- and industry-wide competence communities to reinvent
practice;
• Nurture embedded competence and leadership development
networks in enterprises of all kinds;
• Green careers networks;
• Sustain employment-focused social networks for transitions of
critical populations;
• Accelerate existing regional work and learning networks;
• Improve performance of at risk-students in traditional institutions;
and
• Improve financial sustainability of US public education.

Emerging Examples of Competence 2.0
• Food Safety Knowledge Network
• Oregon Open Campus
• Hematology Competence Network - EU
• Minnesota State Colleges and Universities - Backpacks to
Briefcases
• California Weatherization and Green Career Network
• Competence 2.0 can be used to transform any learning or workforce
project into a higher performing, more transparent initiative that is
smarter, cheaper, deeper, and greener.
• Competence 2.0 is fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable.

Food Safety Knowledge Network
• Partnership between College of
Agriculture and Natural Resources at
MSU and CIES – Food Business Forum
• Internationally recognized competences
– 24 food groups
• Collaborative and inclusive co-creation
of food safety governance system
• High quality, low-cost training and
education
• Open educational resources
• Attracting funding and grant support
-CIES Global Food Safety Initiative,
Hewlett Foundation, MSU, UNIDO, and
USAID.

Food Safety Knowledge Network
(Continued)
• Planned C2.0 Elements- social networking
and open educational resources to achieve
– Faster, Smarter, Fresher
– Cheaper, Sharper, Clearer,
– Deeper, Surer, Truer
– Broader, Greener, Richer
• Additional C2.0 Elements
– Competence repository and observatory
elements
– Analytics on practices, performance, attitudes,
“what works”
– Perpetual research bed for food safety
outcomes and practices
– Trip wires and weak signals
– ePortfolio/future career track tools
– Many voices – the wisdom of crowds
compared to expert opinion

Derivative Opportunities for MSU
• Demonstration of MSU’s Brand
– Quality
– Inclusiveness
– Connectivity
• Apply to Other Industry-based communities of
practice
• Test Bed for Perpetual Research, Environmental
Scanning, and Scenarios
• Use Competences to Support “Breadbasket for
the Arab World”
• Talent, Competence, and Leadership
Development Enterprise based on C2.0
Communities - Spin-off company
• Food Safety Green Careers Network
• Creating Solutions to Lift Michigan Out of
Recession – apply to workforce issues

So let’s pause and reflect on
Competence 2.0
Communities of Practice…

Higher Education’s Choice: Innovate or Decline
• Globalization has increased competition and
American competitiveness is declining.
• Colleges and universities face increasing diversity
and demographic challenges. Remediation levels are
unsustainable.
• The financial model for higher education is broken
and unsustainable:
– Drop-out and failure rates waste our investment in
education
– Public financing of higher education continues to
decline and tuition growth exceeds the CPI
– We have failed to use technology to reduce the cost of
learning
– Recession-driven cuts in funding require budget cuts
and diminish capacity.
– Family finances are depleted and will lose more
ground.

Innovate to Change Practices and
Establish Financial Sustainability
• Without profound innovation, merely
increasing access and student affordability
will be institutionally unsustainable.
• Financial sustainability can be achieved, but
only by changing current practices –
substantially – in K-12, postsecondary
education, and workforce-based learning.
• New enterprises will emerge, exercising
ever-greater influence, but traditional
learning providers will also have to change
their ways.
• How can we do it?

A Foundation for Financial Sustainability
• Insert graphic

Leveraging Partnerships and Innovations
• Every state has key leverage
points and initiatives
– PK-16/20 initiatives,
– School/work transitions
– K-12 reformation
– Serving the Underserved
• Consider the case of Minnesota/
Minnesota State Colleges and
Universities in the next slide

Tales from the Future, 2020
• Lakendra Tyree, 11th grader, George
Mason High School
• Pete Lindsey, green careers technician,
Dominion Power
• Frank Dorsey, BAS student, GMU Loudoun
• Hadley Curtis, financial services officer,
Capital One
• Jose Rodriguez, 1st year middle school
teacher, Loudoun County
• Susan Kelman, biomedical engineer,
Nanotech Systems, Prince William County

Thriving in the Sustainability Economy
• Integrating activities, not siloing – sustainability strategy throughout;
• Systems thinking – understanding, designing, and building integrated
systems;
• High collaboration partnering – trust/interest alignment;
• Learning: Knowledge Sharing – capacity to see, absorb, signals of all kinds;
• Communication: Understanding information’s new currency – managing and
capitalizing on transparency of unprecedented information flows;
• Valuing the long term – scenario planning, trend sensing;
• Management and reporting – metrics, methods for self-assessment, sharing
performance - sustainability scorecard; and
• Experimenting, not planning – expeditionary, enable organizational
adaptation and manage portfolio of experiments.
Adapted from MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2009

So let’s pause and reflect on
achieving Financial Sustainability as
we re-imagine education, training, and
workforce development, using C2.0…

Resources
• A Guide to Planning for Change,
Donald M. Norris and Nick L. Poulton,
2008.
• “Resilience in the Face of Change:
Education, Training, and Workforce
Development for the Post-Recession
Economy, “ Donald M. Norris and Paul
Lefrere, 2009
• “Case Study: The Food Safety
Knowledge Network”, Donald M. Norris,
2009.
• “Thriving in the Sustainability
Economy,” MIT Sloan Management
Review, May 2009.

Donald M. Norris, Ph.D.
President
Strategic Initiatives, Inc.
703. 450. 5255
dmn@strategicinitiatives.com