The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Lynda Gratton
is that I have the luxury that few have of extended periods of time to think and write. This has been crucial because, as you will discover, while this is an incredibly exciting journey, it is also very complex and it is only with time and reflection that I have been able to take a perspective and view of these pieces.
To help you find you own way through this maze of information, I have assembled the pieces of hard facts about the future under five broad headings: Technology; Globalisation; Demography and Longevity; Society; and Energy Resources. The truth is that these are rather superficial ways of categorising and the reality is that they can be re-sorted in many other ways. But it strikes me that this is a good place to start.
I have then created for each of these broad areas about five to eight smaller pieces. Each of these pieces has some kind of internal consistency and tells a story on its own: a story, for example, about how the West is ageing, or how the developing countries are becoming powerhouses of innovation, or how the population of the world is moving from the countryside to the city. I’ve chosen each of these pieces because I believe they could be important to your future, your children’s future or the future of your community. It is up to you to decide what to do with the 32 pieces as you craft your personal point of view about the future.
So, let’s take a closer look at the five broad forces that will shape the future of work, and the more detailed pieces that create a deeper understanding.
The force of technology
Technology has always played a key role in framing work and what happens in working lives. When we fast-forward to our working lives in 2025 and even out to 2050, we can only do so by knowing something about how technologies will develop in the near term – and by taking a guess at the possibilities for the long term.
Technology has been one of the main drivers of the long-term economic growth of countries; it has influenced the size of the world population, the life expectancy of the population and the education possibilities. Technological changes will continue to transform the everyday nature of our work and the way we communicate. Technology will also influence working lives in other deeper and more indirect ways – the way people engage with each other, their expectations of their colleagues, and even their views on morality and human nature. You don’t have to be an out-and-out supporter of technological determinism to recognise that technological capability – through its complex interactions with people, institutions, cultures and environment – is a key determinant of the ground rules within which the games of human civilisation get played out.1
That’s not to say, of course, that the experiences of technology of those living in 2025 will be similar across the world. There have been, and no doubt will continue to be, large variations and fluctuations in the deployment of technology. That’s because technological developments do not happen in isolation but instead are dependent on context – be that cultural, economic or the values of people. What’s more, the deployment of any particular aspect of technology is not inevitable and will not necessarily follow a particular growth pattern. It could be that some technological developments will create revolutions in work while others will be a slower and steadier trickle of invention. It may be that in the future, as there has been in the past, there will be important inflexion points at which technologies divide and history will take either path with quite different results.
The Cloud, the technology net that creates the means by which people across the world can access resources, is a case in point. Technologically it will be feasible within the next decade for anyone with access to the Cloud around the world to access the World Wide Web and all the enormous information held in it. However, it could be that in certain countries and regions and at certain times, issues about security and access will severely limit the deployment of the Cloud. However, in spite of these likely variations in deployment, the impact of different growth patterns across the world, and contextual variations, what is clear is that technological developments will continue on a broad front.
For those of us on a journey to understand the future, the question is what might we expect this broad front to be – and how will it impact on day-to-day working lives in 2025 and beyond? Here are the ten pieces about technology that we will see played out in the storylines that follow.
1. Technological capability increases exponentially: one of the key drivers of technological development has been the rapid and continuous fall in the cost of computing. We can expect this to continue and it will make increasingly complex technology available in relatively inexpensive handheld devices.
2. Five billion become connected: this capability will be combined with billions of people across the world becoming connected. This will take place in both the megacities of the world and rural areas. The extent of this connectivity will create the possibility of a ‘global consciousness’ that has never before been seen.
3. The Cloud becomes ubiquitous: rapidly developing technology will create a global infrastructure upon which are available services, applications and resources. This will allow anyone with a computer or handheld device to ‘rent’ these on a minute-by-minute basis. This has enormous potential to bring sophisticated technology to every corner of the world.
4. Continuous productivity gains: technology has boosted productivity from the mid-1990s onwards, and we can expect these productivity gains to continue with the possibility of advanced communications at near-zero cost. Interestingly, in this second wave of productivity the emphasis will be less on technology and more on organisational assets such as culture, cooperation and teamwork.
5. Social participation increases: a crucial question for understanding the future of work is predicting what people will actually do with this unprecedented level of connectivity, content and productive possibilities. Over the next two decades we can expect the knowledge of the world to be digitalised, with an exponential rise in user-generated content, ‘wise crowd’ applications and open innovation applications.
6. The world’s knowledge becomes digitalised: there is a huge push from educational institutions, public companies and governments to make available the knowledge of the world in digital form. We can expect that this will have a profound impact, particularly on those who do not have access to formal educational institutions.
7. Mega-companies and micro-entrepreneurs emerge: these technological advances will lead to an increasingly complex working and business environment – with the emergence of mega-companies that span the globe. At the same time, millions of smaller groups of micro-entrepreneurs and partnerships will together create value in the many industrial ecosystems that will emerge.
8. Ever-present avatars and virtual worlds: increasingly work will be performed virtually as workers hook up with each other across the world. Their virtual representatives – avatars – will become central to the way virtual working occurs.
9. The rise of cognitive assistants: at the same time, bundling and priority mechanisms, such as cognitive assistants, will act as a buffer between ever-increasing content and the needs of workers to arrange their knowledge and tasks. 10. Technology replaces jobs: much of the productivity in the coming decades will come as robots play a crucial part in the world of work, from manufacturing to caring for an increasingly ageing population.
These are the ten pieces of the technology force that will shape the world you will live and work in. As we shall see in the stories that follow, technological developments will not only be at the heart of the Default Future’s dark side of fragmentation and isolation but will also be a part of a Crafted Future where co-creation and social participation are the norm. Before we move on, take a moment to ask yourself which are the most important pieces for you, which you can discard, and also to consider those technological aspects that have not been considered, but which you believe you need to know more about.
The force of globalisation
The workplace that dominated most of the twentieth century allowed producers and sellers a fairly relaxed existence. Thinking back to my first real job – as a psychologist for British Airways – much of the world was broken into relatively