The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) and Near-Time Announce New Approach to Building Innovative Workforce Development Partnerships
Open Source, Collaborative Workforce Development to Build a
Workforce with 21st Century Skills
CHAPEL HILL, N.C.--(Business Wire)--
Today Near-Time and the Institute for Open Economic Networks
(I-Open) announced a new approach to building innovative workforce
development partnerships. Open Source Workforce Development (OSWD)
fosters the collaborative engagement of loosely coupled regional
business leaders with the goal of building a workforce with 21st
century skills. The OSWD methodology is based on the concept of
"Strategic Doing" which was pioneered by I-Open to solve complex
economic development challenges.
Near-Time is a leading enterprise 2.0 platform for content
publishing, community building and cross organizational collaboration.
It is increasingly being used by a range of economic development,
trade and entrepreneurial organizations to offer a hub for information
exchange, membership support and knowledge sharing.
"We are thrilled to extend our partnership with I-Open. Open
source workforce development promises to accelerate job training and
economic development through grass roots collaboration," said Reid
Conrad, CEO of Near-Time.
The Open Source Workforce Development concept was conceived to
offer a solution to the emerging reality that the nation is facing a
major skills shortage. As the Baby Boom generation retires, more
businesses are facing shortages across many industry sectors. In order
to meet these shortages, communities and regions will need to
innovate. They will need to "link and leverage" their assets across
organizational and political boundaries in order to succeed,
especially during an economic downturn.
The "Strategic Doing" process focuses on the discipline of
identifying a few key transformative initiatives and then engaging
diverse community or region participants to make real impacts quickly.
"Competitive communities and regions need new approaches to
integrate their education, economic development and workforce
development investments," according to Ed Morrison, Director of
I-Open. Morrison also serves as Economic Policy Advisor to the Purdue
Center for Regional Development. "We need fast, responsive initiatives
to deliver the skills that globally competitive businesses demand."
"The Near-Time platform provides us the power and the simplicity
we need to make strategic doing a reality," remarked Morrison. "The
platform has fully integrated functionality that promotes
collaboration, not simply social networking. It does not require any
programming to customize, includes both public and non-public pages
that can be turned on and off page-by-page and incorporates a powerful
system of categories and tags to filter information. The platform
integrates an e-commerce engine so emerging networks can become
self-sustaining and allows for sub-networks to form easily within
networks. Near-Time provides the simplicity to meet the needs of the
Baby Boomers and the power to keep sophisticated young adults
engaged."
About I-Open
The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) is a non-profit,
501 (c) (3) corporation based in Cleveland, Ohio. I-Open promotes the
development of new network-based approaches to economic development
and workforce development for communities and regions. These
approaches use Near-Time to leverage the collaborative power of the
Internet.
About Near-Time
Near-Time is a leading on-demand, Enterprise 2.0 platform for
cross organization collaboration. Business professionals can quickly
create rich interaction with their prospects, customers, partners and
suppliers. Near-Time integrates wikis, weblogs and forums to enable
groups to work together more effectively in a secure, hosted
environment. Thousands of organizations in over forty nations use
Near-Time to maximize internal and external collaboration and
publishing. Near-Time's patent pending Premium service leverages the
Near-Time platform to enable organizations to monetize their
communities and content. For more information, go to
http://www.near-time.com/.
Fusion Public Relations
Kathy Archer, 202-898-2000 x108
kathy.archer@fusionpr.com
Copyright Business Wire 2008
