The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Lynda Gratton

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      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 stable markets. BA had a near monopoly on the UK travelling passenger, and if the company did not make its predicted revenue the UK Government, as the owner of the airline, was there to bail it out. I recall getting into the office at 9.00, taking a one-hour break in the staff canteen on the other side of the airport, and then leaving my desk at 5.30 for a leisurely trip home. No work was expected at the weekend, the holidays were good, and of course I had the pleasure of deeply discounted travel perks – oh, and did I tell you about the BA pension scheme?

      Economies of scale and stable markets (often supported by monopolies, oligopolies and regulations) protected large companies like BA from competition. If you worked for a smaller company, then you only competed with other local services and industries. The focus of these companies was on the production of goods and services at a reasonable price and in a form that consumers would not reject out of hand. Research and development departments did exist, but they tended to change around the margin, and costs could be planned for, thanks to unions negotiating wage rates for entire industries.²

      That’s not to say, of course, that national economic activity took place in complete isolation. There has always been economic integration and trade within and between nations. We may have assumed that globalisation is a recent phenomenon because we tend to take a local view of history. In fact, for thousands of years there have been complex networks of trade across regions.³ Putting a precise date on the origin of these global linkages is difficult, since it depends on factors such as human migration, improved transport links and ever more substantial trade. Whatever the answer, the important point is that the forces that transcend the local have been operating for a very long time.

      However, globalisation, as distinct from global history, emerged in the wake of the Second World War, following the agreements reached in the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 that led to the establishment of truly international trade institutions.⁴ Before 1944, trade was constrained by the sheer cost of moving goods around the world, the difficulty of sharing information across countries, and defensive governmental protectionism. After 1944, moving goods around the world became increasingly cost effective; developing technologies enabled information to be rapidly shared across much of the world, and government barriers to trade began to dissolve. As the goods and services available began to globalise, so consumers transformed the way they thought about meeting their needs. Rather than simply buying from the local supplier, people in many countries began to have a real choice. The result of this era of trade liberalisation was that the world volume of trade in the manufacturing sector rose 60-fold between 1950 and 2010.⁵

      As we take a closer look at how the forces of globalisation will impact on work in the coming decades, I have selected eight pieces about globalisation that I believe to be crucial and which will become part of the future storylines.

      1. 24/7 and the global world: since the 1940s, the combination of political will and motivation and technological innovation has created the means to join up the world and, in so doing, has pushed ever greater globalisation.

      2. The emerging economies: probably the biggest globalisation story since 1990 has been the emergence onto the world’s manufacturing and trading stage of emerging markets from China and India in Asia, to Brazil in South America. With large domestic markets and increasing determination to export goods and services, these emerging markets have rewritten the rules of global trade.

      3. China and India’s decades of growth: since the Cultural Revolution in China, and the liberalisation of markets in India, both countries have experienced massive growth – fuelled by a joint domestic market of over 2 billion consumers, and the capacity to be the ‘back office’ and ‘factory’ of the world. As we shall see, as the goods and services created by workers in these countries move up the value chain, so too the global aspirations of local companies increase.

      4. Frugal innovation: once seen primarily as the manufacturer of the West’s innovations, the developing markets are increasingly leading the world in low-cost and frugal innovations that are now being exported to the developed markets of the West. This will have a profound impact on the globalisation of innovation over the coming decades.

      5. The global educational powerhouses: it’s a numbers game. With a joint population of 2.6 billion in 2010, predicted to rise to 2.8 billion in 2020 and 3 billion in 2050, India and China are rapidly becoming key to the talent pools of the world. Added to that, a propensity to study the ‘hard’ scientific subjects, and investment by local companies in talent development, will ensure that increasingly companies will look to India and China for their engineers and scientists.

      6. The world becomes urban: from 2008, the proportion of the world’s population living in urban centres outweighed those in rural centres, and the trend will continue. At the same time, innovative ‘clusters’ around the world are attracting a disproportionate number of the most talented and educated people. The mega-cities of the world, often ringed by gigantic slums, will become home to an ever-greater СКАЧАТЬ