Driverless autonomous vehicles; chat bot serving customers; artificial intelligence, which processes invoices better than accountants, or can plan and implement campaigns better than human beings; fully automatic warehouses; production line machines that talk to each other and find the optimum product path according to their workload, or order service when the failure approaches – these are just examples of the 4th Industrial Revolution that is already in front of our eyes and will still be accelerate.
Up to 60% of today’s positions can be automated – some 350 million jobs in Europe alone, 1.8 million in the Czech Republic. There is no doubt that we live in a society that will change fundamentally. We don’t have to worry – we’ve lost 3.5 million jobs by introducing computers, but we’ve gained 19.3 million new, albeit others.
Therefore, it is better to be ready and to build the foundations of your future work competencies today, which will require a different composition than what we were used to. We will have to change fundamentally not only the educational and career system in companies, but naturally also the school education system from the very first stages.
We will be much less in need of manual dexterity, basic cognitive skills – such as initial information processing – and far more advanced IT skills – programming or servicing sophisticated devices. But even more so, interpersonal skills, and in particular creative competence – our ability to create added value through innovative approaches.
The motivation of companies to implement and develop creative competencies seems clear – first and foremost the need to accelerate the innovative capacity that is the basis for future survival, not only in innovations reflected in new products, but also in the business model and overall business behavior and adaptation changing conditions.
Just as there is no profession that would not be untouched, there is no position in the company that would not touch this development – not just ordinary employees or executive management, but also top management, which must not be a brake on development and on the contrary, by its example, it must show the way to others. Every business restart project in the company should start from top management or even better from the owners.
In a few years, there will be shifts from the current positions to the new ones – that’s why it is necessary to start preparing for a new, challenging profession today – when a company does not employ employees in a new role, at least prepare it to move to another company or to a separate company business.
In addition to long-term innovation skills and preparation for major organizational changes, the motivation for introducing creative competencies can be tactical – to offer new, but also an attractive advantage to new and existing employees, which has an effect in their private lives and promotes teamwork.
Whatever the motivations of organizations, it is not a good thing to hesitate to start with the process of preparing for the changes caused by the 4th Industrial Revolution, not only in the technology field, but also in terms of soft factors. You will create a balanced mix of competencies for an agile organization that is well prepared for future challenges, and where a key element of future success – a creative employee – becomes its active part. Creatixo can perform this process successfully.
Jan Bízik, partner and senior consultant, jan.bizik@creatixo.eu, +420 773 584 738