Between The Covers

EXTRACT - BOOKSHELF

WILEY INNOVATION BLACK BOOK ON EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES 2019

- Vikas Gupta

Transforming the learning ecosystem

This transformation, attributed to Industry 4.0 (and its underpinned technologies such as AI, IoT, robotics, AR-VR and more), is altering the rules of production, operation, and workforce. Not surprisingly, it is pushing traditional and legacy organizations to reconfigure how they operate while creating opportunities for newer startups and companies to come up with disruptive models—overall, fast morphing into a landscape where continuous innovation is the only way to survive.

While we are consistently focused on getting the next breakthrough innovative idea right, we also need to dig deeper and identify what can feed innovation consistently, and how do we make innovation an unceasing, everyday mindset. To achieve this, we need to align our learning ecosystem to the world we live in. In short, we need to transform the way we learn.

Shifting skills: Need for an everyday innovation mindset

It is now common knowledge that Industry 4.0 is transforming the way organizations and customers operate, thereby demanding constant shifts in workforce capabilities and job roles. Functioning—and in fact surviving—in this world which emphasizes digitization, speed, and efficiency, requires constant re-calibrating into newer skill sets. In addition, the fourth industrial revolution is expected to witness automation displacing job roles dealing with basic cognitive skills while creating new opportunities for human-centric job roles which emphasize out-of-the-box thinking, creativity, design, innovation, and collaboration.

Given this, few skills become critical in the new world:

-The ability to adapt and learn, unlearn and readapt, to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technologies and their impact on everything related to the way we work, do business and live