Future of Sourcing - Science http://futureofsourcing.com/tags/science en Gearing Up for the Fifth Industrial Revolution – a Glass Half Full http://futureofsourcing.com/gearing-up-for-the-fifth-industrial-revolution-a-glass-half-full <div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/Robot%20Education.jpg"><a href="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/Robot%20Education.jpg" title="Gearing Up for the Fifth Industrial Revolution – a Glass Half Full" class="colorbox" rel="gallery-node-1077-rRSOT_7Zqbs"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/styles/juicebox_medium/public/articles/Robot%20Education.jpg?itok=nYD60jV2" width="624" height="325" alt="" title="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Two years ago, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its Future of Jobs report &ndash; exploring employment, skills and workforces in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This sparked debate &ndash; and growing concern &ndash; around a changing global employment landscape as the result of disruptive technologies, studded with widening skill gaps, new jobs and job displacement.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>&ldquo;The Fourth Industrial Revolution, combined with other socio-economic and demographic changes, will transform labour markets in the next five years, leading to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies.&rdquo;&nbsp;</em></p> <p style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-align: right;">-WEF Future of Jobs report, Jan 2016</span><span style="text-align: right;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Recently, at a London-based robotics event, attendees were asked the same question that the WEF did: did your job exist when you were in primary school? The 67% &lsquo;no&rsquo; response was hardly a surprise &ndash; the job landscape is evolving constantly, so it&rsquo;s naïve to expect to be on a career path set during our early school years.&nbsp;</p> <p>Headlines of this type are often strongly associated with ideas of robots replacing humans in every profession &ndash; although clearly there are always roles more suited to humans and their capacity for empathy. But rather than accepting this pessimism as truth, let&rsquo;s embrace the new generation of jobs that automation will offer us.&nbsp;</p> <p>We grumble at the fact that our current careers may not have been mapped out for us at infant school, instead of celebrating the fact that we somehow emerged prepared for the jobs we have today. To ease our fear, it might help to recognise that tomorrow&rsquo;s workforce is more than capable of taking the same path if we guide them wisely: the fact that government is now backing education initiatives that will support children in their future professional lives is a leap in the right direction.&nbsp;</p> <p>Last year, a group of liberated educators took steps to evolve the curriculum so that children are prepared for a future with automation - the creation of new qualifications and courses dedicated to human centric skills such as leadership and collaboration was evidence of this.&nbsp;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s refreshing to hear that 2018 is set to see government beginning to back educational initiatives with cyber skills training; hopefully the next step is more government funding surrounding training for the jobs students will need in the age of increasing automation.&nbsp;</p> <p>In addition, we&rsquo;ll need to address the current gap of skills needed for robotics and Artifical Intelligence (AI) by investing in software development, systems design, engineering, programming and data science amongst other areas, to ensure workforces of today &ndash; and tomorrow &ndash; are skilled to take charge in the robotics world. Taking into consideration the hole in numbers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects currently in university, we have a five-year lag in students moving into this area.&nbsp;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s time for government to get smarter when it comes to incentivising students in this direction &ndash; this doesn&rsquo;t necessarily require radical thinking. How about reducing tuition fees for STEM subjects as a start, and creating conversion routes from other subjects?&nbsp;</p> <p>Until then, we must focus on educating students in a way that will help them collaborate with AI in the years to come. The essence of roles that will be filled by children currently in primary school will be their humanity. Curriculum must continue evolving so that the members of the future&rsquo;s workforce leave school with skills that focus on adaptability, collaboration and resilience. Instead of focusing only on the retention of facts, it&rsquo;s time to teach how to question these facts.&nbsp;</p> <p>If we can build on current momentum and continue to bridge the gaps to encourage new &lsquo;age of automation&rsquo; careers, headlines in 2018 and beyond might look more optimistic, pointing towards a future where robots and humans work collaboratively to deliver improved services and bright new opportunities. It&rsquo;s up to us to decide how full &ndash; or empty &ndash; the glass looks when it comes to the future of jobs.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Science</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/technology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Technology</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/engineering-and-mathematics-stem" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/artificial-intelligence-ai" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Artificial Intelligence (AI)</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/workforce-management" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Workforce Management</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/education" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Education</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/innovation-technology-it" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Innovation Technology (IT)</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-addthis field-type-addthis field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style " addthis:title="Gearing Up for the Fifth Industrial Revolution &amp;ndash; a Glass Half Full - Future of Sourcing" addthis:url="http://futureofsourcing.com/gearing-up-for-the-fifth-industrial-revolution-a-glass-half-full"><a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_linkedin"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_facebook"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_twitter"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_googleplus"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_pinterest_share"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_reddit"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_email"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_print"></a> </div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-region field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/regions/global" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Global</a></div></div></div> Fri, 26 Jan 2018 20:16:18 +0000 Kit Cox 1077 at http://futureofsourcing.com http://futureofsourcing.com/gearing-up-for-the-fifth-industrial-revolution-a-glass-half-full#comments Julian Simon: forget conventional wisdom http://futureofsourcing.com/julian-simon-forget-conventional-wisdom <div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/FOS%20Digital_Kate%20Vitasek_Slider%20Graphic%20%281%29%20%281%29_106.png"><a href="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/FOS%20Digital_Kate%20Vitasek_Slider%20Graphic%20%281%29%20%281%29_106.png" title="Julian Simon: forget conventional wisdom" class="colorbox" rel="gallery-node-1136-rRSOT_7Zqbs"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/styles/juicebox_medium/public/articles/FOS%20Digital_Kate%20Vitasek_Slider%20Graphic%20%281%29%20%281%29_106.png?itok=zavKHh3w" width="624" height="325" alt="" title="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>This month&rsquo;s column remembers Julian L. Simon, a PhD business economist. Simon is famous (or maybe infamous) for being &lsquo;The Doomslayer&rsquo; because he devoted his life to counter the purveyors of doom and gloom who bemoan global deterioration from overpopulation and resource drains.</p> <p>Simon, who held a PhD in business economics from the University of Chicago and was Professor of Business Administration at the University of Maryland until his death in 1998, challenged the doom-and-gloom crowd by seeking out truths with facts in his columns and articles in&nbsp;<em>Science</em>&nbsp;(which he wrote as &lsquo;The Doomslayer&rsquo;),&nbsp;<em>Social Science Quarterly</em>,&nbsp;<em>The Wall Street Journal</em>&nbsp;and other publications.</p> <p style="margin-left:30px;"><em>&ldquo;False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment is published widely in the face of contrary evidence. For example, the world supply of arable land has actually been increasing, the scarcity of natural resources including food and energy has been decreasing, and basic measures of US environmental quality show positive trends. The aggregate data show no long-run negative effect of population growth upon standard of living. Models that embody forces omitted in the past, especially the influence of population size upon productivity increase, suggest a long-run positive effect of additional people.&rdquo;</em></p> <p>While he wrote these words over 30 years ago, today is today and we have global warming and peak oil. Specifically, Simon showed through facts and statistics that the world was indeed not coming to end. He in essence was a &ldquo;Doomslayer&rdquo; to those who professed the world was going to&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket" target="_blank">hell in a handbasket</a>.</p> <p>I love Simon&rsquo;s viewpoint on life and I think we can all learn from it. His basic premise, as I see it, was simple and included three key points:</p> <ol> <li>Mankind &ndash; when faced with a problem &ndash; tends to innovate and solve tough problems.</li> <li>People need to always challenge the &ldquo;conventional wisdom&rdquo; by closely examining facts. What may seem like doom and gloom might in fact be hyperbole.</li> <li>Things are almost never as bad as they seem (nor for that matter are they as good as they seem).</li> </ol> <p>I&rsquo;m not sure if Simon&rsquo;s arguments are as valid now as perhaps they were then. And since he passed in 1998 I have not heard of anyone pursuing his passion as a Doomslayer to counter-fact global warming and peak oil.</p> <p>What appeals to me about Simon&rsquo;s work is his&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vestedoutsourcing.com/" target="_blank">Vested</a>&nbsp;mindset of sorts: base your decisions and your performance on measurable facts. Abundance will come from flexibility, innovation and a willingness to veer away from conventional approaches. Always thinking in zero-sum terms will probably mean that you chalk up a lot of zeroes in your endeavours.</p> <p>I &mdash; like Simon &mdash; believe that innovation always prevails; that&rsquo;s how humans and business prevail. Simon believed that Malthusian models &ldquo;simply do not comprehend key elements of people &ndash; the imaginative and creative.&rdquo; He added that the &ldquo;material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely&hellip; Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today&rsquo;s Western living standards.&rdquo;</p> <p>Knowing what we know now, is Simon&rsquo;s view a bit hard to swallow here in 2012?&nbsp; Perhaps it feels a little too Pollyannaish? Maybe, but there&rsquo;s also a message for even the most jaded and sceptical among us to consider: the real power of optimism and the creative, imaginative and innovative power of people.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Science</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/social-science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Social Science</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/vested-outsourcing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vested Outsourcing</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/business-economics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Business Economics</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-addthis field-type-addthis field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style " addthis:title="Julian Simon: forget conventional wisdom - Future of Sourcing" addthis:url="http://futureofsourcing.com/julian-simon-forget-conventional-wisdom"><a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_linkedin"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_facebook"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_twitter"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_googleplus"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_pinterest_share"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_reddit"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_email"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_print"></a> </div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-region field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/regions/global" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Global</a></div></div></div> Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:00:00 +0000 Kate Vitasek 1136 at http://futureofsourcing.com http://futureofsourcing.com/julian-simon-forget-conventional-wisdom#comments