Take This Job and Automate It
by Julia Kirby and Thomas H. Davenport

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Which kinds of knowledge workers are at high risk of job loss thanks to smart machines? Usually we don’t love getting that question, because the answer isn’t the simple one interviewers are seeking. Many jobs include tasks that can and will be automated, but by the same token, almost all jobs have major elements that — for the foreseeable future — won’t be possible for computers to handle. Our advice therefore can’t boil down to a clear “avoid careers in a, b, and c” or “apply for jobs x, y, or z.” And yet, we have to admit that there are some knowledge-work jobs that will simply succumb to the rise of the robots. They […]

Humans, How Do You Rate?
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Geoff Colvin’s new book insists that humans are underrated. It’s a fun follow-up declaration to his earlier book, which taught us that talent is overrated.   The two are not as incompatible as it might seem. Colvin’s point in the earlier book was that talented people always succeed in the context of a system, and it’s hard to rate talent independent of its context. As a result, stars usually get more credit for their successes than they’re due. (Boris Groysberg’s research backs this up by showing how the high performance of stars in various fields turns out not to be portable when they are recruited away by other employers.)  Indeed, it’s often a well-designed system […]