McKinsey: Business needs to deal with youth unemployment — from cnbc.com by Lawrence Delevingne

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

One of the world’s elite management consultants said businesses should pay attention to lagging youth employment.

“One of the biggest issues we think that we are facing in our times is the issue about youth unemployment,” Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Co., said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.

“It’s something that business needs to be worried about. It’s not something that’s a side show,” Barton added. “If we don’t deal with it we’re not going to be able to operate in the way we need to. We need to own it more.”

Dangote said that some modes of education were outdated, and graduates have seen their jobs supplanted by advances in technology. The solution, he said, is to increase vocational and technical training and entrepreneurship.

Barton agreed that more training was important, especially short term programs.

 

From DSC:
A few thoughts on this one:

  1. I was glad to see this call out to business to get more involved with helping equip our youth — a WIN-WIN situation for sure.
    .
  2. Speaking of WIN-WIN situations…are there mutually-beneficial opportunities for business and higher ed here? (i.e., higher ed collaborating more aggressively with the corporate world in order to provide more of these short term programs?) I wonder if the need for these short term solutions is one of the reasons why we’re seeing more bootcamps and similar alternatives popping up?
    .
  3. Those in the corporate/business world need to be more involved with — and pulse-checking trends involving — higher education. While those in higher education need to be more involved with — and pulse-checking trends involving — K-12.  As it is, we’re seeing gaps in the continuum on a number of different levels. Quoting from the McKinsey piece above, “Most people don’t know what jobs are available, and if they do, they’re out of date in terms of where they are,” Barton said. “There are big mismatches that are going on.”

 

 

 

IBM Awards University of Texas at Austin Top Spot in Watson Competition — from indiaeducationdiary.in

Excerpts/applications (emphasis and numbering via DSC):

New York: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the first winner of its Watson University Competition, part of the company’s partnership with top universities through its cognitive computing academic initiative. The winning team of student entrepreneurs from the University of Texas at Austin will receive $100,000 in total in seed funding to help launch a business based on their Watson app, which offers the promise of improved citizen services.

The University of Texas at Austin took home top honors with a new app called 1) CallScout, designed to give Texas residents fast and easy access to information about social services in their area. Many of Texas’ 27 million residents rely on the state’s social services – such as transportation, healthcare, nutrition programs and housing assistance – though they can have difficulty finding the right information.

“These academic competitions expose students to a new era of computing, helps them build valuable professional skills, and provides an opportunity for young entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life.”


Two other innovative projects rounded out the top three finalists in the competition. Students from the University of Toronto took second place with 2) “Ross,” an app that allows users to ask Watson legal questions related to their case work, speeding research and guiding lawyers to pertinent information to help their case. In third place, students from the University of California, Berkeley, designed a new app called 3) “Patent Fox” that conceptualizes patent ideas, simplifies queries, streamlines filing processes and provides confidence-ranked, evidence-based results.

“Through this program we have been able to create a unique experience that not only enabled our students to develop skills in cognitive computing, app development and team work, but also in business development.”
 

Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the organization for a rapidly changing world — from by Josh Bersin
This year our Predictions for 2015 has some hard-hitting new ideas to consider – in this article I will give you some highlights, and you can download the report here.

Excerpts:
As we look at 2015, we see five fundamental shifts which dramatically impact corporate talent, leadership, and HR strategies.

1. Technology has removed the barrier between work and life.

2. Employee engagement, culture, and leadership are lifeline issues.
…ultimately employee engagement is all a business has.

3. Learning, capabilities, and skills are the currency of success.
and once you attract these people you must give them a compelling learning environment to stay current, as technology advances at an accelerating rate. L&D organizations and strategies have not kept up, and we are in an era where corporate learning is going through as much change is we witnessed in the early 2000s when e-learning hit the scene.

4.  HR as a function is at a crossroads and must reinvent itself.

5.  Data is now integral to all decisions HR must make.

 

 

 

 

Ten Trends in Data Science 2015 — from linkedin.com by Kurt Cagle

Excerpt:

Data Science Teams
I see the emergence within organizations of data science teams. Typically, such teams will be made up of a number of different specialties:

  • Integrator. A programmer or DBA that specializes in data ingestion and ETL from multiple different sources. Their domain will tend to be services and databases, and as databases become data application platforms, their role primarily shifts from being responsible for schemas to being responsible for building APIs. Primary focus: Data Acquisition
  • Data Translation Specialist. This will typically be a person focused on Hadoop, Map/Reduce and similar intermediate processing necessary to take raw data and clean it, transform it, and simplify it. They will work with both integrators and ontologists, Primary Focus: Data Acquiisition
  • Ontologist. The ontologist is a data architect specializing in building canonical models, working with different models, and establishing relationships between data sets. They will often have semantics or UML backgrounds. Primary focus: Data Awareness.
  • Curators. These people are responsible for the long term management, sourcing and provenance of data. This role is often held by librarians or archivists. They will often work closely with the ontologists. Primary Focus: Data Awareness.
  • Stochastic Analyst (Data Scientist?). This role is becoming a specialist one, in which people versed with increasingly sophisticated stochastic and semantic analysis tools take the contextual data and extraction trends, patterns and anti-patterns from this. They usually have a strong mathematical or statistical background, and will typically work with domain experts. Primary Focus: Data Analysis
  • Domain Expert. Typically these are analysts who know their particular domain, but aren’t necessarily expert on informatics. These may be financial specialists, business analysts, researchers, and so forth, depending upon the specific enterprise focus. Primary Focus: Data Analysis
  • Visualizers. These are typically going to be web interface developers with skills in areas such as SVG or Canvas and the suites of visualization tools that are emerging in this area. Their role is typically to take the data at hand and turn it into usable, meaningful information. They will work closely with both domain experts and stochastic analysts, as well as with the ontologist to better coerce the information coming from the data systems into meaningful patterns. Primary Focus:Data Analysis
  • Data Science Manager. This person is responsible for managing the team, understanding all of the domains reasonably well enough to interface with the client, and coordinating efforts. This person also is frequently the point person for establishing governance. Primary Focus: All.

 

 

Infographic: What’s Hot in Data Science in 2015 — from data-informed.com; with thanks to Michael Caveretta’s tweet on this

 

 

Michigan State Wants a Big Data Professor on Campus — from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith; back from Nov 2014
Explosive growth in the data science field is pushing higher education to extend its analytics expertise.

Excerpt:

There is a torrent of information flooding today’s higher education institutions. Michigan State University is hoping to find Big Data experts to turn it into results.

Putting Big Data to use in an educational setting takes a special set of skills. MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences recently held a search for an assistant professor of Big Data and health, a position that will lead courses on data analytics and IT in the Department of Media and Information.

“We seek a scholar conducting cutting-edge social and/or technical research utilizing big data approaches — including theory-building, analytics, applications, and effects,” according to MSU’s job listing, which has expired, but is still available on LinkedIn.

 

 

 

Is Data Science a buzzword? Modern Data Scientist defined — from marketingdistillery.com by Krzysztof Zawadzki

 

.       

 

From DSC: Those working in higher ed – take note of this 12 week bootcamp:  

.

..   12week-boot-camp-data-scientist   .          

 .

 

Should Big Data Skills Be Taught in K–12 Classrooms? — from by D. Frank Smith
A new report recommends that schools begin preparing students to think like data scientists at an earlier age.

Excerpt:

The skills necessary for the data analytics jobs of tomorrow aren’t being taught in K–12 schools today, according to a new report released by the Education Development Center, Inc.’s (EDC) Oceans of Data Institute. The Profile of the Big-Data Enabled Specialist projects a workforce shortage for data-driven positions. Based on a 2011 McKinsey & Co. report cited by the Oceans of Data Institute, ”By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.”              

 

Difference between Data Scientist and Data Analyst — from edureka.co; again, with thanks to Michael Caveretta’s tweet on this

Excerpt: .

Qualifications of Data Scientist and Data Analyst

    .

 

 

The Data Scientist’s Toolbox — course from coursera.org

 

TheDataScientistToolbox-Coursera-Dec2014

 

 

The 25 Hottest Skills That Got People Hired in 2014 — from linkedin.com

Excerpts:

  • Statistical analysis and data mining
  • Business intelligence
  • Data engineering and data warehousing

 

 

 

16 analytic disciplines compared to data science — from datasciencecentral.com by Vincent Granville

Excerpt:

What are the differences between data science, data mining, machine learning, statistics, operations research, and so on?

Here I compare several analytic disciplines that overlap, to explain the differences and common denominators. Sometimes differences exist for nothing else other than historical reasons. Sometimes the differences are real and subtle. I also provide typical job titles, types of analyses, and industries traditionally attached to each discipline. Underlined domains are main sub-domains. It would be great if someone can add an historical perspective to my article.

 

 

Tech 2015: Deep Learning And Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World — from forbes.com by Anthony Wing Kosner; with thanks to Pedro for his tweet on this

Excerpt:

Despite what Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk say, hostile Artificial Intelligence is not going to destroy the world anytime soon. What is certain to happen, however, is the continued ascent of the practical applications of AI, namely deep learning and machine intelligence. The word is spreading in all corners of the tech industry that the biggest part of big data, the unstructured part, possesses learnable patterns that we now have the computing power and algorithmic leverage to discern—and in short order.

The effects of this technology will change the economics of virtually every industry.

 

 

The rise of machines that learn — from infoworld.com by Eric Knorr; with thanks to Oliver Hansen for his tweet on this
A new big data analytics startup, Adatao, reminds us that we’re just at the beginning of a new phase of computing when systems become much, much smarter

 

 

 

Shivon Zilis, Machine Intelligence Landscape

 

 

Data Science Dojo@DataScienceDojo
Stanford startup focused on all things data science.

 

 

The 2 Types Of Data Scientists Everyone Should Know About — from datasciencecentroal.com by Bernard Marr

Excerpt:

It depends entirely on how broadly you categorize them. In reality, of course – there are as many “types” of data scientist as there are people working in data science. I’ve worked with a lot, and have yet to meet two who are identical.

But what I have done here is separate data scientists into groups, containing individuals who share similar skills, methods, outlooks and responsibilities. Then I grouped those groups together, again and again, until I was left with just two quite distinctly different groups.

I’ve decided to call these two types strategic data scientists and operational data scientists.

 

 

Deep learning Reading List — from jmozah.github.io

 

 

 

6 things you can learn from LeWeb Day One — from nextberlin.eu by Adam Tinworth

Excerpt:

1. The sharing economy is bigger than you think
2. The secret of wearable will be simplicity
3. We all wear clothes, but we don’t all wear jewellery or watches
4. Yandex started life searching floppy disks
5. The clock is ticking on the classic office suite of software
6. Games make you a cognitive superhuman

 

What is LeWeb?

Excerpt:

LeWeb in a nutshell
Founded in 2004 by French entrepreneurs Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur, LeWeb is an internationally-renowned conference for digital innovation where visionaries, startups, tech companies, brands and leading media converge to explore today’s hottest trends and define the future of internet-driven business.

 
 Excerpt:

Our latest report explores the relationship between the corporate learning experience and the education system.‘Business and education’ addresses such issues as engaging Gen Y, MOOCs and corporate learning, academic research for learning strategy, and learning analytics and puts the commercial partner right at the heart of some of today’s most crucial conversations around learning.

 

BusinessAndEducation-Dec2014

 

Contents:

Introduction
Rebecca Stromeyer, Managing Director, ICWE GmbH
Jon Kennard, Editor, TrainingZone.co.uk
Ian Myson , Director of Partnerships and Product Management, CMI

Making the link between academia and corporate learning
Anita Pincas, Visiting Fellow, Institute of Education

Digital Higher Education through partnership
Gilly Salmon, Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Western Australia
Ben Mackenzie, Director, Learning Transformations at Swinburne
University of Technology

Big Data and Analytics in Education and Corporate Learning
Ger Driesen, Consultant, Challenge Leadership Development Academy

How to engage Generation Y in the workplace
Martin Couzins, Founder, LearnPatch

Ten ways MOOCs can underpin your corporate learning strategy
Donald Clark, Founder, Epic Group Ltd

 

From DSC:
I’m posting this item in support of such collaborations. As I mentioned the other day, we need stronger, more well-thought out spectrums of growth/scaffolding and collaborations amongst the worlds of K-12, higher ed, and the corporate world.

 

Changing role of the CLO — from business-standard.com by Gurprriet Singh

Excerpt:

The ownership for keeping skills and competencies sharpened will move to the employee. With the emergence of MOOCs, social media enabled knowledge and connections, which facilitate you to identify and appoint mentors across dimensions and distance, the role of L&D as the provider of knowledge and provider of resource is soon becoming extinct. Individuals need to own their own development and leverage the resources available in social media. Just recently, IBM cut salaries by 10 per cent, of employees who had not kept their skills updated.

As Jack Welch said, “If the rate of change inside your organisation is slower than the rate of change outside, the end is near”. In such a scenario, the thinking and orientation must shift from being able to manage change TO being able to change on a dime which means Dynamism. The role of L&D thus becomes key in influencing the above cultural pillars. And to do so, is to select for the relevant traits, focus on interventions that help hone those traits. Traits and skills are honed by Experience. And that brings me to the 70:20:10.

 

From DSC:
I think Gurprriet is right when he says that there’s a shift in the ownership of our learning.  We as individuals need to own our own development and leverage social media, MOOCs, online and/or F2F-based courses, other informal/on-the-job resources, our personal learning networks, and our Communities of Practice.  Given the pace of change, each of us needs to be constantly building/expanding our own learning ecosystems.  We need to be self-directed, lifelong learners (for me, this is where learning hubs and learning from our living rooms will also play a role in the future). One approach might be for those in L&D/corporate training-related functions to help employees know what’s out there — introduce them to the streams of content that are constantly flowing by. Encourage them to participate, teach them how to contribute, outline some of the elements of a solid learning ecosystem, create smaller learning hubs within a company.


 

Automation, jobs, and the future of work — from mckinsey.com
A group of economists, tech entrepreneurs, and academics discuss whether technological advances will automate tasks more quickly than the United States can create jobs.

Excerpt:

The topic of job displacement has, throughout US history, ignited frustration over technological advances and their tendency to make traditional jobs obsolete; artisans protested textile mills in the early 19th century, for example. In recent years, start-ups and the high-tech industry have become the focus of this discussion. A recent Pew Research Center study found that technology experts are almost evenly split on whether robots and artificial intelligence will displace a significant number of jobs over the next decade, so there is plenty of room for debate.

What follows is an edited transcript plus video clips of a conversation on this topic, moderated by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui and MGI director James Manyika. The participants were Martin Baily, senior fellow, economic studies, Brookings Institution; Richard Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics, Harvard University; Curtis Carlson, former president and CEO, SRI International; Reid Hoffman, partner, Greylock; Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media; Matt Slaughter, associate dean of faculty, Tuck School of Business; Laura Tyson, professor of business administration and economics, Haas Business and Public Policy Group, University of California, Berkeley; and Vivek Wadhwa, fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University.

It’s quite clear, in the US in recent years, that we’re not creating enough good jobs. People care a lot about their W-2s—what incomes are they earning? If you segment this by educational attainment, 96.2 percent of the US workforce since 2000 is in an educational cohort whose total money earnings, inflation adjusted, have been falling, not rising.

What’s happening with the technology, which is skill biased and labor saving, is that it’s eliminating middle-income jobs but is complementary to high skills. The jobs are high-income jobs because some smart people have to work with the technology. But there’s a very large number of people who are being pushed down into lower-income jobs.

Maybe we’re looking at the wrong symptoms as opposed to looking at the fundamentals—we are not innovating at the speed of the economy. We are not adapting fast enough

 

Financial planning gets virtual reality — from by Michael Liedtke

 

 

Also see:

This teacher taught his class a powerful lesson about privilege — from buzzfeed.com by Nathan Pyle
With a recycling bin and some scrap paper.

 

He concluded by saying, "The closer you were to the recycling bin, the better your odds. This is what privilege looks like. Did you notice how the only ones who complained about fairness were in the back of the room?"

Nathan W. Pyle / Via buzzfeed.com

From DSC:
This teacher taught an important lesson using materials already in the room; a great idea/approach/illustration here.

Looking at the recent piece entitled, “The Faces of American Debt,” such financial training would be very helpful — for individuals in their financial planning, and for us in higher ed to see the very real implications of the high cost of college. 

 

 

Believe the IoT Hype or Perish: Equipping Today’s Graduates for Tomorrow’s Tech — from wired.com by Peter Hirst

Excerpt:

Meeting the IoT Higher Education Challenge
People who come to MIT Sloan or other MIT Schools to further their professional education tend to have strong technical and engineering backgrounds. The pace of evolution and disruption of business models in their industries is accelerating continuously. We need to equip our graduates with tools that enable them to learn, re-learn, and un-learn many times over throughout their careers to remain successful. And we need to become more efficient, affordable, relevant and timely in the delivery of our programs.

Closing the Talent Gap
As Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn, Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Services pointed out recently in her post-conference blog post, “there are over 11 million unemployed people in the U.S. today, yet 45 percent of employers cannot find qualified candidates for open jobs.” At the Forum, she presented startling findings from Cisco’s 2014 Annual Security Report. The report incorporates data from CareerBuilder, IBSG and Bureau of Labor and Statistics and projects a one-million shortage of qualified workers in the Internet security industry in the next five years and two million jobs needed in the information technology and communications in the next ten. What can top higher-education institutions and leading technology companies do to help fix this disparity?

 

 

Also see:

The Internet of Things World Forum Unites Industry Leaders in Chicago to Accelerate the Adoption of IoT Business Models — from newsroom.cisco.com
Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) leaders announce new IoT Reference Model and IoTWF Talent Consortium

Excerpt:

Cisco and other key players are creating an Industry Talent Consortium to address this major skills gap, with the objective of having all of the key players work together to identify skill gaps, find talent with the right background to up-skill or re-skill, create and implement the necessary training and certification programs, and hire that talent for the jobs that will power the Internet of Everything.

Key founding partners supporting the program include:

  • Academia: The New York Academy of Sciences, MIT, Stanford
  • Human Capital Solution Providers: Careerbuilder
  • Employers: Rockwell Automation, Davra Networks, GE, Cisco
  • Change Agents: Cisco, Xerox, Rockwell Automation, Udacity, Pearson, Knod
 

Synthesis, capabilities, and overlooked insights: Next frontiers for strategists — from mckinsey.com by Fred Gluck, Michael Jacobides, & Dan Simpson
The founder of McKinsey’s Strategy Practice, a London Business School professor, and a chief strategist turned professor describe pain points and possibilities for strategists on the leading edge.

Excerpts:

I think of strategic planning as the job of collecting and analyzing the enormous amounts of data that characterize the modern world and monitoring changes in markets and the competitive environment. This process, which requires frameworks and concepts, is where academics can contribute most in the way of ideas, and strategic-planning groups can add the most value. Strategic planning, defined in this way, provides the raw material and factual basis for strategic thinking and opportunistic decision making.

This is the essence of strategic thinking and strategic management: it’s where creativity is paramount and insights take place, and it’s not something that should be limited to an annual strategic-planning process.

Personally, I think this concern is overdone. The real danger is “gray rhinos”: while hard to miss in the zoo, they are surprisingly difficult to spot in the South African bush, obscured as they are by the vegetation. By the time they’re visible, they are already storming toward you, leaving little chance to react. As academics, our job is to help managers tune into the rustling leaves or cracking twigs of an approaching challenge—or opportunity—before it’s upon them. To do that, we must focus on the parts of the environment that matter most and make sure the tools we carry are fit for the purpose.

In all of these areas, what really excites me is the prospect of a stronger link between practitioners and academics, so we can leverage the research we’ve done and shape the research we need to do. Together, we can simplify reality without distorting it and uncover the social laws that we don’t yet understand but shape our world.

What, in retrospect, is ascribed to poor execution instead has its roots in an unexpectedly large gap between a company’s capabilities and the ones needed to deliver the strategy successfully.

 

From DSC:
In reading the above article, I couldn’t help but think of some of the similarities between futurism/futures studies and strategic planning/thinking.  To me, they both involve — at least in part — some pulse checking. Pulse checking various landscapes.  Looking out to see what’s coming down the pike, and if those developments might be useful to one’s organization.  Helping others hear “the rustling leaves or cracking twigs of an approaching challenge—or opportunity—before it’s upon them.”  I try to do this for higher education.  But the windows of opportunity don’t stay open forever.  Vision and action are required.

Also, I appreciated McKinsey’s work here because they are open to — and trying to — better integrate the work of academics with the business world; they shouldn’t be separate in my mind.

 

Also see:

 

 

 

 

 

smart-creatives---google-presentation-from-oct-2014

 

From DSC:
Another slide mentioned the importance of asking:

  • What’s changed?
  • What assumptions are people making that are no longer true?
  • Why does everything feel like it’s speeding up?

People in higher ed would be wise to ask these questions.

 
 

From DSC:
The following article from McKinsey would be a source of a great assignment for students and faculty members who are studying Economics
(and I could also add those studying Social Work, Healthcare, Political Science, and some other fields):

  • Redefining capitalism — from mckinsey.com by Eric Beinhocker and Nick Hanauer | September 2014
    Despite its ability to generate prosperity, capitalism is under attack. By shaking up our long-held assumptions about how and why the system works, we can improve it.

 

Potential questions:

  • What are the basic tenets of capitalism?
  • How is it taught?
  • What are the main points that the authors want you to grapple with?
  • Do you agree or disagree with their main points?  If so, why?  Do you have some resources that back up your viewpoints?
  • What are your views on capitalism and what it should achieve?
  • Do robotics, algorithms, and automation impact any of your arguments/perspectives?

 

Excerpt:

What problems do you solve?
Once we understand that the solutions capitalism produces are what creates real prosperity in people’s lives, and that the rate at which we create solutions is true economic growth, then it becomes obvious that entrepreneurs and business leaders bear a major part of both the credit and the responsibility for creating societal prosperity. But standard measures of business’s contribution—profits, growth rates, and shareholder value—are poor proxies. Businesses contribute to society by creating and making available products and services that improve people’s lives in tangible ways, while simultaneously providing employment that enables people to afford the products and services of other businesses. It sounds basic, and it is, but our economic theories and metrics don’t frame things this way.

Today our culture celebrates money and wealth as the benchmarks of success. This has been reinforced by the prevailing theory. Suppose that instead we celebrated innovative solutions to human problems. Imagine being at a party and rather than being asked, “What do you do?”—code for how much money do you make and what status do you have—you were asked, “What problems do you solve?” Both capitalism and our society would be the better for it.

 

Everyone is an entrepreneur in this e-conomy — — from usatoday.com by Steve Strauss

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

That we all work when, where and how we want is not news, of course. Neither is it news that the not-so-great recession transformed work and business, too. Large corporations realized that they didn’t need to keep all those full-time employees with the attendant healthcare costs and other benefits when they could get most of what they wanted by hiring part-timers and independent contractors.

What is news is that all of this change has created a new dynamic. Old traits like loyalty and experience are rapidly being trumped by a different and new set of values such as individual initiative and the need for creativity.

And what this means is that now, today, we all better think of ourselves as entrepreneurs.

 

From DSC:
I had posted an item earlier today on AI and wondered how such trends affect our curricula. But this posting really speaks to the need to develop our entrepreneurial sides.  For students, I would recommend taking (at least some) courses that:

  • Teach you how to run your own business
  • Foster your creativity and sense of innovation
  • Show you how to pivot on a dime / on a moment’s notice
  • Teach you how to learn
 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian