The Imagination Workers

For GroupM’s chief digital officer ROB NORMAN, as machines understand intelligence and information, people become imagination workers, and that is a whole new power.

- Noor Fathima Warsia

The rise of artificial intelligence combined with the idea that increasingly people, who would have described themselves as information workers not so long ago, are now essentially ‘intelligence’ workers, has given birth to a new work force. According to Rob Norman, chief digital officer at GroupM, if machines catch up with intelligence as well as information, people become imagination workers.

This notion has more advantages than perils that the world of automation and AI can entail. “All of us have to talk among ourselves, talk to the people we work with and our clients to understand how we apply imagination to business problems and social problems and use technology to enable and free them up to use their imagination,” advises Norman.

By his own admission, Norman is not a technologist. He sees his role as bringing perspective to GroupM clients and partners in media and technology to layer some context around the value and opportunity in the age of technology. “Because I worry a lot about people disappearing down little rabbit holes; perspective is imperative,” he explains.

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