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Foreword

It has been a great pleasure and honor to work with Pierre Giorgini and the Catholic University of Lille during his tenure. Pierre is not only a well-known and well-respected author on the subject of the contributing society, he is also a highly committed actor of this revolution, in particular in the pedagogical field. And it is this point that I would like to highlight in this Foreword.

Pierre has been a pioneer in both Hauts-de-France and Europe. He brought together the faculty and student body, and began to establish a roadmap for how they could transition the Catholic University of Lille into a fully operational Third Industrial Revolution smart digital infrastructure that would combine communication, renewable electricity, mobility and logistics in a single platform. It is an extraordinary accomplishment, but as far as I am concerned, what is equally interesting is his method for transforming pedagogy and curriculum.

The most important thing is how we rethink the mission of a university. Clearly, Pierre set up the infrastructure to rely on solar energy. The university now has a smart digital infrastructure, allowing the school to go off grid and be able to have zero marginal cost solar energy.

What is particularly interesting is that his accomplishment has come with a change in mindset. What he saw was the necessity of preparing young people for a more distributed, laterally scaled education which was more in line with the infrastructure that was installed.

For example, students at the Catholic University of Lille have increasingly learned in teams. And with these teams, each student has to take responsibility in sharing knowledge with each other as a collective experience.

Not only do students learn in teams where they teach each other, but this new approach to learning also encourages teachers to collaborate across disciplines, exposing students to interdisciplinary learning. Young people thus exercise complex and critical thinking so that they can begin to reason systemically. This approach to learning is distributed, laterally scaled and empowered, so that everybody participates and learns from each other.

And finally, students are encouraged to volunteer in the community, to share their skills with their neighbors and work alongside local businesses, non-profit organizations and governments. This approach breaks open the walls of the university and allows for an open relationship between students and their neighbors. There is no division between the school and the community. It becomes one learning community. These are extraordinary accomplishments.

We need more people like Pierre. Pierre’s contribution is already helping to change the approach to higher education in other regions of France, and hopefully in the future around the world.

Jeremy RIFKIN

June 2021