organizational change

Reflections on “The world is changing. Here’s how companies must adapt.” [Kaeser]

On 01/03/2019, in 21st century, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, bots, business, Canada, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education, education reform, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, ethics, Europe, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, India, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, MBA, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, platforms, policy, political science, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

The world is changing. Here’s how companies must adapt. — from weforum.org by Joe Kaeser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens AG

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Although we have only seen the beginning, one thing is already clear: the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the greatest transformation human civilization has ever known. As far-reaching as the previous industrial revolutions were, they never set free such enormous transformative power.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is transforming practically every human activity...its scope, speed and reach are unprecedented.
…
Enormous power (Insert from DSC: What I was trying to get at here) entails enormous risk. Yes, the stakes are high.

“And make no mistake about it: we are now writing the code that will shape our collective future.” CEO of Siemens AG

…

Contrary to Milton Friedman’s maxim, the business of business should not just be business. Shareholder value alone should not be the yardstick. Instead, we should make stakeholder value, or better yet, social value, the benchmark for a company’s performance.

Today, stakeholders…rightfully expect companies to assume greater social responsibility, for example, by protecting the climate, fighting for social justice, aiding refugees, and training and educating workers. The business of business should be to create value for society.

…

This seamless integration of the virtual and the physical worlds in so-called cyber-physical systems – that is the giant leap we see today. It eclipses everything that has happened in industry so far. As in previous industrial revolutions but on a much larger scale, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will eliminate millions of jobs and create millions of new jobs.

“…because the Fourth Industrial Revolution runs on knowledge, we need a concurrent revolution in training and education.
…
If the workforce doesn’t keep up with advances in knowledge throughout their lives, how will the millions of new jobs be filled?”

Joe Kaeser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens AG

From DSC:
At least three critically important things jump out at me here:

We are quickly approaching a time when people will need to be able to reinvent themselves quickly and cost-effectively, especially those with families and who are working in their (still existing) jobs. (Or have we already entered this period of time…?)
There is a need to help people identify which jobs are safe to reinvent themselves to — at least for the next 5-10 years.
Citizens across the globe — and their relevant legislatures, governments, and law schools — need to help close the gap between emerging technologies and whether those technologies should even be rolled out, and if so, how and with which features.

What freedoms and rights should individuals have in the digital age?

Joe Kaeser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens AG

5 questions we should be asking about automation and jobs — from hbr.org by Jed Kolko

Excerpts:

Will workers whose jobs are automated be able to transition to new jobs?*
Who will bear the burden of automation?
How will automation affect the supply of labor?
How will automation affect wages, and how will wages affect automation?
How will automation change job searching?

From DSC:
For those Economics profs and students out there, I’m posted this with you in mind; also highly applicable and relevant to MBA programs.

* I would add a few follow-up questions to question #1 above:

To which jobs should they transition to?
Who can help identify the jobs that might be safe for 5-10 years?
If you have a family to feed, how are you going to be able to reinvent yourself quickly and as efficiently/flexibly as possible? (Yes…constant, online-based learning comes to my mind as well, as campus-based education is great, but very time-consuming.)

Also see:

We Still Don’t Know Much About the Jobs the AI Economy Will Make — or Take — from medium.com by Rachel Metz with MIT Technology Review
Experts think companies need to invest in workers the way they do for other core aspects of their business they’re looking to future-proof

One big problem that could have lasting effects, she thinks, is a mismatch between the skills companies need in new employees and those that employees have or know that they can readily acquire. To fix this, she said, companies need to start investing in their workers the way they do their supply chains.

Per LinkedIn:

Putting robots to work is becoming more and more popular, particularly in Europe. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Slovakian workers face a 62% median probability that their job will be automated “in the near future.” Workers in Eastern Europe face the biggest likelihood of having their jobs overtaken by machines, with the textile, agriculture and manufacturing industries seen as the most vulnerable. • Here’s what people are saying.

Robot Ready: Human+ Skills for the Future of Work — from economicmodeling.com

Key Findings

In Robot-Ready, we examine several striking insights:

1. Human skills—like leadership, communication, and problem solving—are among the most in-demand skills in the labor market.

2. Human skills are applied differently across career fields. To be effective, liberal arts grads must adapt their skills to the job at hand.

3. Liberal art grads should add technical skills. There is considerable demand for workers who complement their human skills with basic technical skills like data analysis and digital fluency.

4. Human+ skills are at work in a variety of fields. Human skills help liberal arts grads thrive in many career areas, including marketing, public relations, technology, and sales.

The top learning trends for 2019: Towards a digital-human workforce — from hrdive.com; a sponsored posting by Shelley Osborne, Head of L&D at Udemy

Excerpt:

New digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools are rapidly changing the way we work, develop products, and interact with our customers. Intelligent automation tools augment what people do at work and will redefine what’s possible.

As organizations navigate this complex digital transformation, learning & development (L&D) leaders are tasked with keeping employees up to speed with the ever-evolving skills ecosystem.

To uncover emerging trends and predict what’s required for 2019, we surveyed 400 L&D leaders to find out what they’re doing to prepare their workforce for this digital transformation.

With the rise of automation, the world of work is experiencing the largest job transition since the shift from agriculture to manufacturing jobs during the Industrial Revolution. “By 2030, as many as 375 million workers—or roughly 14 percent of the global workforce—may need to switch occupational categories as digitization, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence disrupt the world of work,” according to McKinsey Global Institute.

Digital transformation reality check: 10 trends — from enterprisersproject.com by Stephanie Overby
2019 is the year when CIOs scrutinize investments, work even more closely with the CEO, and look to AI to shape strategy. What other trends will prove key?

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

6. Technology convergence expands
Lines have already begun to blur between software development and IT operations thanks to the widespread adoption of DevOps. Meanwhile, IT and operational technology are also coming together in data-centric industries like manufacturing and logistics.

“A third convergence – that many are feeling but not yet articulating will have a profound impact on how CIOs structure and staff their organizations, design their architectures, build their budgets, and govern their operations – is the convergence of applications and infrastructure,” says Edwards. “In the digital age, it is nearly impossible to build a strategy for infrastructure that doesn’t include a substantial number of considerations for applications and vice versa.”

Most IT organizations still have heads of infrastructure and applications managing their own teams, but that may begin to change.

While most IT organizations still have heads of infrastructure and applications managing their own teams, that may begin to change as trends like software-defined infrastructure grow. “In 2019, CIOs will need to begin to grapple with the challenges to their operating models when the lines within the traditional IT tower blur and sometimes fade,” Edwards says.

“The global companies that failed to adapt to change.” [Rao] | DC: Higher ed likely has something to learn here.

On 11/05/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, MBA, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, organizational change, pace of change, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, training / L&D, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The global companies that failed to adapt to change. — from trainingmag.com by Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Eastman Kodak, a leader for many years, filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Blockbuster Video became defunct in 2013. Similarly, Borders — one of the largest book retailers in the U.S. — went out of business in 2011. Why did these companies, which once had great brands, ultimately fail? It is because they failed to adapt to change. Additionally, they failed to unlearn and relearn.
…
Former GE CEO Jack Welch once remarked, “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” Thus, accept change before the change is thrust on you.
…
Leaders must adopt tools and techniques to adapt to change. Here is a blueprint to embrace change effectively:

Keep the vision right and straight, and articulate it effectively.
Create organizational culture conducive to bring about change.
Communicate clearly about the need to change.
Enlighten people about the implications of the status quo.
Show them benefits once the change is implemented.
Coordinate all stakeholders effectively.
Remove the roadblocks by allaying their apprehensions.
Show them small gains to ensure that entire change takes place smoothly without any resistance.

From DSC:
Though I’m not on board with all of the perspectives in that article, institutions of traditional higher education likely have something to learn from the failures of these companies….while there’s still time to change and to innovate.

2 items re: AI’s potential impact/place within education

On 11/03/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, IT in HE, languages and translation, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, microlearning, mobile learning, more voice more choice more control, Natural Language Processing (NLP), New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Robots won’t replace instructors, 2 Penn State educators argue. Instead, they’ll help them be ‘more human.’ — from edsurge.com by Tina Nazerian

Excerpt:

Specifically, it will help them prepare for and teach their courses through several phases—ideation, design, assessment, facilitation, reflection and research. The two described a few prototypes they’ve built to show what that might look like.

Also see:

The future of education: Online, free, and with AI teachers? — from fool.com by Simon Erickson
Duolingo is using artificial intelligence to teach 300 million people a foreign language for free. Will this be the future of education?

Excerpts:

While it might not get a lot of investor attention, education is actually one of America’s largest markets.

The U.S. has 20 million undergraduates enrolled in colleges and universities right now and another 3 million enrolled in graduate programs. Those undergrads paid an average of $17,237 for tuition, room, and board at public institutions in the 2016-17 school year and $44,551 for private institutions. Graduate education varies widely by area of focus, but the average amount paid for tuition alone was $24,812 last year.

Add all of those up, and America’s students are paying more than half a trillion dollars each year for their education! And that doesn’t even include the interest amassed for student loans, the college-branded merchandise, or all the money spent on beer and coffee.

Keeping the costs down
Several companies are trying to find ways to make college more affordable and accessible.

But after we launched, we have so many users that nowadays if the system wants to figure out whether it should teach plurals before adjectives or adjectives before plurals, it just runs a test with about 50,000 people. So for the next 50,000 people that sign up, which takes about six hours for 50,000 new users to come to Duolingo, to half of them it teaches plurals before adjectives. To the other half it teaches adjectives before plurals. And then it measures which ones learn better. And so once and for all it can figure out, ah it turns out for this particular language to teach plurals before adjectives for example.

So every week the system is improving. It’s making itself better at teaching by learning from our learners. So it’s doing that just based on huge amounts of data. And this is why it’s become so successful I think at teaching and why we have so many users.

From DSC:
I see AI helping learners, instructors, teachers, and trainers. I see AI being a tool to help do some of the heavy lifting, but people still like to learn with other people…with actual human beings. That said, a next generation learning platform could be far more responsive than what today’s traditional institutions of higher education are delivering.

Can a culture of change improve innovation? [Whitehurst]

On 10/27/2018, in 21st century, business, change, ideas, innovation, organizational change, pace of change, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

Can a culture of change improve innovation? — from washingtonpost.com by Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer, Red Hat

Excerpts:

Plenty of executives lay awake at night wondering how they can keep up with the waves of digital disruption that continue to shake every industry out there. Everyone wants to know how they can get their organization to innovate better and faster.

But this is more than a technology problem. Businesses can’t simply buy a solution off the shelf. Instead, leaders need to encourage people to think and act differently. And to do that, they need to rethink the way they organize to get work done.
…
But the pace of digital transformation today has made Industrial Era thinking and planning obsolete when it comes to overcoming the challenges an organization faces.

Automation requires processes to change; digital transformation requires people to change.

We’re talking about building an organizational culture that embraces innovative thinking and behaviors. But you can’t change culture overnight, because it’s an output, not an input.

1. Planning must be replaced by configuring for constant change…

2. Prescription must be replaced by enablement…

3. Execution must be replaced by engagement…

Organizations today need to spend less time charting long-term courses and more time fostering teams configured to respond effectively to constant change.

From DSC:
That last quote reminds me of the need for more TrimTab Groups within higher education:

To higher ed: When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. [Christian]

On 09/25/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accreditation, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Mixed Reality (MR), more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, robotics, science, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. What do I mean by that?

Consider this quote from an article that Jeanne Meister wrote out at Forbes entitled, “The Future of Work: Three New HR Roles in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:”*

This emphasis on learning new skills in the age of AI is reinforced by the most recent report on the future of work from McKinsey which suggests that as many as 375 million workers around the world may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills because approximately 60% of jobs will have least one-third of their work activities able to be automated.

Go scan the job openings and you will likely see many that have to do with technology, and increasingly, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, big data, cloud-based services, robotics, automation, bots, algorithm development, blockchain, and more.

From Robert Half’s 2019 Technology Salary Guide

How many of us have those kinds of skills? Did we get that training in the community colleges, colleges, and universities that we went to? Highly unlikely — even if you graduated from one of those institutions only 5-10 years ago. And many of those institutions are often moving at the pace of a nice leisurely walk, with some moving at a jog, even fewer are sprinting. But all of them are now being asked to enter a race track that’s moving at 180mph. Higher ed — and society at large — are not used to moving at this pace.

This is why I think that higher education and its regional accrediting organizations are going to either need to up their game hugely — and go through a paradigm shift in the required thinking/programming/curricula/level of responsiveness — or watch while alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education increasingly attract their learners away from them.

This is also, why I think we’ll see an online-based, next generation learning platform take place. It will be much more nimble — able to offer up-to-the minute, in-demand skills and competencies.

The below graphic is from:
Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

* Three New HR Roles To Create Compelling Employee Experiences
These new HR roles include:

IBM: Vice President, Data, AI & Offering Strategy, HR
Kraft Heinz Senior Vice President Global HR, Performance and IT
SunTrust Senior Vice President Employee Wellbeing & Benefits

What do these three roles have in common? All have been created in the last three years and acknowledge the growing importance of a company’s commitment to create a compelling employee experience by using data, research, and predictive analytics to better serve the needs of employees. In each case, the employee assuming the new role also brought a new set of skills and capabilities into HR. And importantly, the new roles created in HR address a common vision: create a compelling employee experience that mirrors a company’s customer experience.

An excerpt from McKinsey Global Institute | Notes from the Frontier | Modeling the Impact of AI on the World Economy

Workers.
A widening gap may also unfold at the level of individual workers. Demand for jobs could shift away from repetitive tasks toward those that are socially and cognitively driven and others that involve activities that are hard to automate and require more digital skills.12 Job profiles characterized by repetitive tasks and activities that require low digital skills may experience the largest decline as a share of total employment, from some 40 percent to near 30 percent by 2030. The largest gain in share may be in nonrepetitive activities and those that require high digital skills, rising from some 40 percent to more than 50 percent. These shifts in employment would have an impact on wages. We simulate that around 13 percent of the total wage bill could shift to categories requiring nonrepetitive and high digital skills, where incomes could rise, while workers in the repetitive and low digital skills categories may potentially experience stagnation or even a cut in their wages. The share of the total wage bill of the latter group could decline from 33 to 20 percent.13 Direct consequences of this widening gap in employment and wages would be an intensifying war for people, particularly those skilled in developing and utilizing AI tools, and structural excess supply for a still relatively high portion of people lacking the digital and cognitive skills necessary to work with machines.

Better Brainstorming [Gregersen; hbr.org]

On 04/07/2018, in creativity, ideas, innovation, leadership, organizational change, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, strategy, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Better Brainstorming — from hbr.org by Hal Gregersen

Excerpt:

Brainstorming for questions, not answers, wasn’t something I’d tried before.
…
Underlying the approach is a broader recognition that fresh questions often beget novel—even transformative—insights. Consider this example from the field of psychology: Before 1998 virtually all well-trained psychologists focused on attacking the roots of mental disorders and deficits, on the assumption that well-being came down to the absence of those negative conditions. But then Martin Seligman became president of the American Psychological Association, and he reframed things for his colleagues. What if, he asked in a speech at the APA’s annual meeting, well-being is just as driven by the presence of certain positive conditions—keys to flourishing that could be recognized, measured, and cultivated? With that question, the positive psychology movement was born.
…

Brainstorming for questions rather than answers makes it easier to push past cognitive biases and venture into uncharted territory.

…
The methodology I’ve developed is essentially a process for recasting problems in valuable new ways. It helps people adopt a more creative habit of thinking and, when they’re looking for breakthroughs, gives them a sense of control. There’s actually something they can do other than sit and wait for a bolt from the blue. Here, I’ll describe how and why this approach works. You can use it anytime you (in a group or individually) are feeling stuck or trying to imagine new possibilities. And if you make it a regular practice in your organization, it can foster a stronger culture of collective problem solving and truth seeking.

“The Changing Landscape of Online Education: A Deeper Dive” [Quality Matters & Eduventures Research]

On 03/28/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, distance education, higher education, instructional design, leadership, online learning, organizational change, strategy, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

The Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE)

QM and Eduventures have teamed up to conduct a multi-year study to examine the changing landscape of online education, provide results to those who can use them and help those involved with online education place their institution within a broader context and possibly influence strategic decisions and organizational changes. Please complete the form on this page to gain access to the 2018 CHLOE 2 Report.

The third iteration of CHLOE is scheduled for April 2018 and focuses on in-depth coverage of issues such as governance of online programs, blended learning and the influence of subject matter on the design and delivery of online programs. If you are a Chief Online Officer and wish to participate in the next CHLOE Survey, or if you wish to nominate the COO at your institution, please contact QM’s Manager of Research & Development Barbra Burch.

Date Published: Tue, 03/27/2018

Also see:

Online Learning’s Complex, Fractured Landscape — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman — references new report from Quality Matters & Eduventures Research entitled “The Changing Landscape of Online Education: A Deeper Dive”
Survey of chief online officers shows enormous variation in how colleges define and structure digital education, in terms of pricing, program structure and use of instructional design.

Excerpt:

A new survey of those who oversee online learning programs at their institutions reveals significant diversity in the online education landscape, from differences in colleges’ strategic goals in going online to how they structure and price their programs and how much they require/encourage faculty members to work with professional designers to craft their courses.

The report, “The Changing Landscape of Online Education: A Deeper Dive,” is the second such report from Quality Matters and Eduventures Research, leading them to dub it CHLOE2. (Inside Higher Ed and “Inside Digital Learning” covered last year’s report here and here.) One hundred eighty-two senior officials responsible for online education at their institutions responded to the survey (up from 104 last year), drawn roughly equivalently from four-year private, four-year public and two-year public colleges.

The survey explores a wide range of topics and issues, related to the administrative structure of online offerings, the economics of their programs and the role of instructional designers. Among the most interesting findings:

235 emerging technology trends that will influence business, government, education, media & society in the coming year. [Future Today Institute]

On 03/20/2018, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, disruption, economics, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, health, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, media/film, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile technologies, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), organizational change, pace of change, platforms, political science, programming, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, trends, universities, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, wearables, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

2018 TECH TRENDS REPORT — from the Future Today Institute
Emerging technology trends that will influence business, government, education, media and society in the coming year.

Description:

The Future Today Institute’s 11th annual Tech Trends Report identifies 235 tantalizing advancements in emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, biotech, autonomous robots, green energy and space travel—that will begin to enter the mainstream and fundamentally disrupt business, geopolitics and everyday life around the world. Our annual report has garnered more than six million cumulative views, and this edition is our largest to date.

Helping organizations see change early and calculate the impact of new trends is why we publish our annual Emerging Tech Trends Report, which focuses on mid- to late-stage emerging technologies that are on a growth trajectory.

In this edition of the FTI Tech Trends Report, we’ve included several new features and sections:

a list and map of the world’s smartest cities
a calendar of events that will shape technology this year
detailed near-future scenarios for several of the technologies
a new framework to help organizations decide when to take action on trends
an interactive table of contents, which will allow you to more easily navigate the report from the bookmarks bar in your PDF reader

01 How does this trend impact our industry and all of its parts?
02 How might global events — politics, climate change, economic shifts – impact this trend, and as a result, our organization?
03 What are the second, third, fourth, and fifth-order implications of this trend as it evolves, both in our organization and our industry?
04 What are the consequences if our organization fails to take action on this trend?
05 Does this trend signal emerging disruption to our traditional business practices and cherished beliefs?
06 Does this trend indicate a future disruption to the established roles and responsibilities within our organization? If so, how do we reverse-engineer that disruption and deal with it in the present day?
07 How are the organizations in adjacent spaces addressing this trend? What can we learn from their failures and best practices?
08 How will the wants, needs and expectations of our consumers/ constituents change as a result of this trend?
09 Where does this trend create potential new partners or collaborators for us?
10 How does this trend inspire us to think about the future of our organization?

2018 Workplace Learning Report — from learning.linkedin.com

Excerpts:

The path to opportunity is changing
The short shelf life of skills and a tightening labor market are giving rise to a multitude of skill gaps. Businesses are fighting to stay ahead of the curve, trying to hold onto their best talent and struggling to fill key positions. Individuals are conscious of staying relevant in the age of automation.

Enter the talent development function.
These organizational leaders create learning opportunities to enable employee growth and achievement. They have the ability to guide their organizations to success in tomorrow’s labor market, but they can’t do it alone.
…
Our research answers the talent developer’s most pressing questions:
* How are savvy talent development leaders adapting to the pace of change in today’s dynamic world of work?
* Why do employees demand learning and development resources, but don’t make the time to learn?
* How do executives think about learning and development?
* Are managers the missing link to successful learning programs?

From DSC:
Even though this piece is a bit of a sales pitch for Lynda.com — a great service I might add — it’s still worth checking out. I say this because it brings up a very real trend that I’m trying to bring more awareness to — i.e., the pace of change has changed. Our society is not ready for this new, exponential pace of change. Technologies are impacting jobs and how we do our jobs, and will likely do so for the next several decades. Skills gaps are real and likely growing larger. Corporations need to do their part in helping higher education revise/develop curriculum and they need to offer funds to create new types of learning labs/environments. They need to offer more internships and opportunities to learn new skills.

The number of Americans working for themselves could triple by 2020 — from work.qz.com by Amy Wang

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Americans are as eager to work as ever. Just no longer for somebody else.

According to FreshBooks, a cloud-based accounting company that has conducted a study on self-employment for two years, the number of Americans working for themselves looks to triple—to 42 million people—by 2020.

The trend, gauged in a survey of more than 2,700 full-time US workers in traditional, independent, and small business roles about their career plans, is largely being driven by millennial workers. FreshBooks estimates that of the next 27 million independent workers, 42% will be millennials. The survey, conducted with Research Now, also finds that Americans who already work for themselves are suddenly very content to keep doing so, with 97% of independent workers (up 10% from 2016) reporting no desire to return to traditional work.

From DSC:
With the continued trend towards more freelancing and the growth of a more contingent workforce…have our students had enough practice in selling themselves and their businesses to be successful in this new, developing landscape?

We need to start offering more courses, advice, and opportunities for practicing these types of skills — and the sooner the better! I’m serious. Our students will be far more successful with these types of skills under their belt. Conversely, they won’t be able to persuade others and sell themselves and their businesses without such skills.

Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs — from technologyreview.com / MIT Technology Review by Kai-Fu Lee
No matter what anyone tells you, we’re not ready for the massive societal upheavals on the way.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The rise of China as an AI superpower isn’t a big deal just for China. The competition between the US and China has sparked intense advances in AI that will be impossible to stop anywhere. The change will be massive, and not all of it good. Inequality will widen. As my Uber driver in Cambridge has already intuited, AI will displace a large number of jobs, which will cause social discontent. Consider the progress of Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo software, which beat the best human players of the board game Go in early 2016. It was subsequently bested by AlphaGo Zero, introduced in 2017, which learned by playing games against itself and within 40 days was superior to all the earlier versions. Now imagine those improvements transferring to areas like customer service, telemarketing, assembly lines, reception desks, truck driving, and other routine blue-collar and white-collar work. It will soon be obvious that half of our job tasks can be done better at almost no cost by AI and robots. This will be the fastest transition humankind has experienced, and we’re not ready for it.
…
And finally, there are those who deny that AI has any downside at all—which is the position taken by many of the largest AI companies. It’s unfortunate that AI experts aren’t trying to solve the problem. What’s worse, and unbelievably selfish, is that they actually refuse to acknowledge the problem exists in the first place.

These changes are coming, and we need to tell the truth and the whole truth. We need to find the jobs that AI can’t do and train people to do them. We need to reinvent education. These will be the best of times and the worst of times. If we act rationally and quickly, we can bask in what’s best rather than wallow in what’s worst.

From DSC:
If a business has a choice between hiring a human being or having the job done by a piece of software and/or by a robot, which do you think they’ll go with? My guess? It’s all about the money — whichever/whomever will be less expensive will get the job.

However, that way of thinking may cause enormous social unrest if the software and robots leave human beings in the (job search) dust. Do we, as a society, win with this way of thinking? To me, it’s capitalism gone astray. We aren’t caring enough for our fellow members of the human race, people who have to put bread and butter on their tables. People who have to support their families. People who want to make solid contributions to society and/or to pursue their vocation/callings — to have/find purpose in their lives.

Others think we’ll be saved by a universal basic income. “Take the extra money made by AI and distribute it to the people who lost their jobs,” they say. “This additional income will help people find their new path, and replace other types of social welfare.” But UBI doesn’t address people’s loss of dignity or meet their need to feel useful. It’s just a convenient way for a beneficiary of the AI revolution to sit back and do nothing.

To Fight Fatal Infections, Hospitals May Turn to Algorithms — from scientificamerican.com by John McQuaid
Machine learning could speed up diagnoses and improve accuracy

Excerpt:

The CDI algorithm—based on a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning—is at the leading edge of a technological wave starting to hit the U.S. health care industry. After years of experimentation, machine learning’s predictive powers are well-established, and it is poised to move from labs to broad real-world applications, said Zeeshan Syed, who directs Stanford University’s Clinical Inference and Algorithms Program.

“The implications of machine learning are profound,” Syed said. “Yet it also promises to be an unpredictable, disruptive force—likely to alter the way medical decisions are made and put some people out of work.

Lawyer-Bots Are Shaking Up Jobs — from technologyreview.com by Erin Winick

Excerpt:

Meticulous research, deep study of case law, and intricate argument-building—lawyers have used similar methods to ply their trade for hundreds of years. But they’d better watch out, because artificial intelligence is moving in on the field.

As of 2016, there were over 1,300,000 licensed lawyers and 200,000 paralegals in the U.S. Consultancy group McKinsey estimates that 22 percent of a lawyer’s job and 35 percent of a law clerk’s job can be automated, which means that while humanity won’t be completely overtaken, major businesses and career adjustments aren’t far off (see “Is Technology About to Decimate White-Collar Work?”). In some cases, they’re already here.

“If I was the parent of a law student, I would be concerned a bit,” says Todd Solomon, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, based in Chicago. “There are fewer opportunities for young lawyers to get trained, and that’s the case outside of AI already. But if you add AI onto that, there are ways that is advancement, and there are ways it is hurting us as well.”

So far, AI-powered document discovery tools have had the biggest impact on the field. By training on millions of existing documents, case files, and legal briefs, a machine-learning algorithm can learn to flag the appropriate sources a lawyer needs to craft a case, often more successfully than humans. For example, JPMorgan announced earlier this year that it is using software called Contract Intelligence, or COIN, which can in seconds perform document review tasks that took legal aides 360,000 hours.

…

People fresh out of law school won’t be spared the impact of automation either. Document-based grunt work is typically a key training ground for first-year associate lawyers, and AI-based products are already stepping in. CaseMine, a legal technology company based in India, builds on document discovery software with what it calls its “virtual associate,” CaseIQ. The system takes an uploaded brief and suggests changes to make it more authoritative, while providing additional documents that can strengthen a lawyer’s arguments.

Lessons From Artificial Intelligence Pioneers — from gartner.com by Christy Pettey

CIOs are struggling to accelerate deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). A recent Gartner survey of global CIOs found that only 4% of respondents had deployed AI. However, the survey also found that one-fifth of the CIOs are already piloting or planning to pilot AI in the short term.

Such ambition puts these leaders in a challenging position. AI efforts are already stressing staff, skills, and the readiness of in-house and third-party AI products and services. Without effective strategic plans for AI, organizations risk wasting money, falling short in performance and falling behind their business rivals.

“Pursue small-scale plans likely to deliver small-scale payoffs that will offer lessons for larger implementations”

“AI is just starting to become useful to organizations but many will find that AI faces the usual obstacles to progress of any unproven and unfamiliar technology,” says Whit Andrews, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, early AI projects offer valuable lessons and perspectives for enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders embarking on pilots and more formal AI efforts.”

So what lessons can we learn from these early AI pioneers?

Why Artificial Intelligence Researchers Should Be More Paranoid — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

What to do about that? The report’s main recommendation is that people and companies developing AI technology discuss safety and security more actively and openly—including with policymakers. It also asks AI researchers to adopt a more paranoid mindset and consider how enemies or attackers might repurpose their technologies before releasing them.

How to Prepare College Graduates for an AI World — from wsj.com by
Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun says schools need to change their focus, quickly

Excerpt:

WSJ: What about adults who are already in the workforce?

DR. AOUN: Society has to provide ways, and higher education has to provide ways, for people to re-educate themselves, reskill themselves or upskill themselves.

That is the part that I see that higher education has not embraced. That’s where there is an enormous opportunity. We look at lifelong learning in higher education as an ancillary operation, as a second-class operation in many cases. We dabble with it, we try to make money out of it, but we don’t embrace it as part of our core mission.

Inside Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence Flywheel — from wired.com by Steven Levy
How deep learning came to power Alexa, Amazon Web Services, and nearly every other division of the company.

Excerpt:

Amazon loves to use the word flywheel to describe how various parts of its massive business work as a single perpetual motion machine. It now has a powerful AI flywheel, where machine-learning innovations in one part of the company fuel the efforts of other teams, who in turn can build products or offer services to affect other groups, or even the company at large. Offering its machine-learning platforms to outsiders as a paid service makes the effort itself profitable—and in certain cases scoops up yet more data to level up the technology even more.

Mapping the Trends on Our Doorstep: The Pace of Change Has Changed [Christian; evoLLLution.com]

On 02/19/2018, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, leadership, organizational change, pace of change, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Mapping the Trends on Our Doorstep: The Pace of Change Has Changed — from an article that I did out at — and with — evoLLLution.com [where LLL stands for lifelong learning]; my thanks to Mr. Amrit Ahluwalia, Managing Editor out at evolllution.com and to his staff as well!
The higher education industry has changed significantly over the past decade, and given the pace and significance of change hitting other industries as a result of technological advances, it’s fair to say the postsecondary space is ripe for further transformation.

From DSC:
From the perspective of those of us working within higher education, we see massive changes occurring in the corporate world, and we see innovations and changes also occurring in the world of K-12. Higher education should also be adapting, changing, questioning, and reflecting upon how we can best prepare our students for a rapidly changing workplace.

Below is another interesting item that I believe gives credence to the idea that we are now on an exponential pace of change. Companies are coming and going on the S&P Index…at an ever faster pace.

The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027 (Chart 1).

Here is the video:

This is the transcript with the original graphs in it.

This is a nice PDF file from evoLLLution.com with the transcript, with some different graphics and some other

Learning Ecosystems

Can a culture of change improve innovation? [Whitehurst]

Better Brainstorming [Gregersen; hbr.org]

“The Changing Landscape of Online Education: A Deeper Dive” [Quality Matters & Eduventures Research]

2018 Workplace Learning Report [LinkedIn.com]

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