Today's Smart Connected Workplace is more about experiences and less about devices. Technology is acting as our digital concierge or a helpful assistant, providing information to us when we need it. According to Brandon Buckingham, Smart Connected director for Steelcase, this is a new workplace where technology enables better experiences that allow us to navigate place, time, resources and commitments seamlessly. At the same time, it offers the influencers of how space is used, planned for and acquired detailed information to inform their choices. And, as data is aggregated over time, it provides insights into key workplace issues like culture, innovation and engagement.

Every day, we're confronted with reports on the impact that intelligent systems and algorithms will have on low skilled or process driven roles, whether that's Uber drivers, accountants or legal professionals. But we tend to think that the so-called'creative' professions, such as design and the arts, will always require the human touch. After all, computers can't be creative – can they? Definitions of creativity have evolved over the centuries and, up until the Renaissance, the power to create was generally considered the preserve of the gods. When Plato is asked in The Republic: "Will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?", he answers: "Certainly not, he merely imitates."

When David Stinson finished high school, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1977, the first thing he did was get a job building houses. After a few years, though, the business slowed. Stinson was then twenty-four, with two children to support. As he explained over lunch recently, that meant finding a job at one of the two companies in the area that offered secure, blue-collar work. "Either I'll be working at General Motors or I'll be working at Steelcase by the end of the year," he vowed in 1984.

Ford Motor Co. this week tapped Jim Hackett--a former office furniture chief executive who has been running its ride- and vehicle-sharing division since March 2016--to assume leadership of the company. Hackett's assignment: to transform the 114-year-old automaker from a company that designs and sells vehicles driven by their owners into one that makes autonomous vehicles (see "What to Know Before You Get In a Self-Driving Car"). Today carmakers sell to individual drivers through an extensive network of dealers, which makes profits both selling and servicing cars. In a world of self-driving vehicles, individuals could stop buying cars, and instead use fleets owned and operated by a third party. Ford and its competitors could become the manufacturer and third-party owner, a seller of rides as well as vehicles.

Ford is to install the head of its driverless cars division as chief executive, as the company that pioneered the assembly line looks to the next stage of the industry's evolution. The Detroit-based carmaker is expected to sack the chief executive, Mark Fields, and overhaul its senior management team, according to a report from Forbes. The reported changes come amid growing misgivings among investors about the company's recent financial performance and its future prospects. Fields will be replaced by Jim Hackett, who runs the "smart mobility" unit that houses Ford's autonomous vehicle projects and is said to be highly rated by executive chairman Bill Ford Jr. Ford's shares have fallen by 37% during Fields' tenure,and has now been overtaken in stock market value by newcomer Tesla, which specialises in electric cars and is testing driverless vehicles. The 114-year-old company has also been outpaced by traditional rivals such as General Motors, which posted rising first-quarter profit earlier this year, even as Ford's own earnings slumped. Hackett's appointment indicates a firmer commitment to driverless vehicles from the company whose founder Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line production method that dominated the 20th century.

Darktrace, the leader in Enterprise Immune System technology, presented a radical vision of cyber defense at InfoSec World 2016, Orlando, yesterday, where'immune system'-inspired technology can automatically find and respond to evolving cyber-threats. IT Security Architect at Steelcase, Stuart Berman, joined Sean O'Connor, Director at Darktrace on the conference stage as a guest speaker, to discuss how enterprises can tackle the cyber security challenges of tomorrow. As one of the world's leading manufacturers of corporate office environments, Steelcase is known for embracing new technology and innovation, and was quick to recognize the importance of adopting new models of security. Speaking at the InfoSec World Conference in Florida yesterday, Stuart Berman, who has over 20 years' experience in information security, shared his views on the future of cyber defense. "Math and machine learning are an important part of advanced threat defense, in the context of today's fast-moving, distributed work environments," Berman commented.