Sophia: the new working methods

Part-time, interim management, network organisation: the Deuxième Vie association opens the debate about the great changes at work, on Thursday November 22nd at the CICA in Sophia.

Part-time work, interim management, network organisation, multiplication of SOHO (Small Office, Home Office): the way we work has changed because the technological revolution is speeding up. The Deuxième Vie association will deal with this change during the debate-conference on the theme of the "New working methods". This meeting which will take place at Sophia Antipolis CICA on Thursday November 22nd will tackle three aspects of these changes before the debate is opened.First aspect: time sharing work. Jean-Pierre Donche and Robert Chaillot, two entrepreneurs from the Riviera have set up the PACT a few years ago. A PACT (Programme Azuréen de Collaboration pour le Temps Partagé (Collaboration Program for time sharing), sustained by the CCI, the DRIRE and other ten institutional partners. The PACT puts time sharing competences at SMEs' disposal (a marketing manager who works one, two or three days a week in various companies). The aim is to allow those companies to get the competences they need without putting the budget off balance. Robert Chaillot should present this concept while executives who work time sharing with the PACT will talk about their experience.Second aspect: Interim Management. A team of managers will work in a company for a limited time. Patrick Mataix, the founder of CEO Europe (previously, he, holder of a MBA from the INSEAD, had founded another start-up, VistaPrint), has drawn his inspiration from a concept born in the United-States and which has been particularly successful in England in the 80's. For those who will in charge of the position of interim manager, it is also a new vision of work that the concept puts forward. The interim CEO no longer considers the career prospects within the company as a priority, but he gives more credits to experience, personal development and career evolution through various missions and new challenges.Third aspect: from the industrial society to the information society. How will the information society fundamentally change the way we work ? On this theme, Ahmet Aykaç, the director of Theseus in Sophia, is fascinating. At the head of one of the best ten European MBAs, a MBA specialised in management through new technologies, Ahmet Aykaç has studied the point of the way we work and the social laws. With other professors, he has launched out a great research program about the change of work and relations at work in face of NICT upheaval. His opinion ? Not only work but also relations to work will change. But the current situation of social laws will explode under the breakthrough of the knowledge economy. A mutation as important as what our ancestors have experienced in the 19th century, when they have passed from the agricultural era to the industrial society.Sophia Antipolis, the laboratory of evolutions at work. The Deuxième Vie association has been launched out last year in Sophia Antipolis in order to tackle the point of more than 45 year old people in the working world. This point is even more relevant in this beginning of 21st century because of several major changes: life extension and its consequences, the problem of retirement financing and the relevance of the retirement concept; upheaval of new communication technologies with the transition from the industrial society to the information society, a transition which has already begun.As far as the new technologies are concerned, Sophia Antipolis is great laboratory for the future evolutions. And this explains how important is the reflection opened by the Deuxième Vie association presided by Günter Schmidt Taube, the former director of Andersen Consulting Sophia Antipolis (which is today Accenture) and one of the pillars of the best start-ups in Sophia Antipolis. The debate-conference will be conducted by Jean-Pierre Largillet (SophiaNet.com).Contact- Information and access plan to the CICA on www.deuxiemevie.org- Free entrance but prerequisite registration by e-mail to info@deuxiemevie.org