In this video Niklas Zennström (co-founder of Skype) says he’s confident Europe will have technology firms that rival the likes of Facebook in the next 10 years.  Given his background it’s intriguing to me that his views are not more global, although he does mention in the video that it’s less important where a company chooses to become publicly listed.

I find myself wondering whether the ‘tech world’ will become increasingly global, such that it won’t matter where a company is listed and it won’t matter where their employees are situated either. For example, a UK based company I work closely with on the development of the online learning community I manage (I’m resistant to it being labelled an ‘LMS’), has part of its technical team in Roumania.  This is not outsourcing in the traditional sense, this is an extension of the UK team into another country.

Other than the difficulties sometimes presented by time-zone differences and to a lesser extent cultural differences, I can see no reason why teams cannot be made up of individuals from across the globe, continuing to live in their current location but working together in one common ‘place’ online.  I’m sure CERN must have been doing that for years and looking to the education sector the MOOC model has already established how course groups from diverse locations and cultures can work collaboratively.