Will robots take your job?

How to survive an uncertain future

Automation can be found in all industries. The threat is not limited to robots that assemble cars in large factories or prepare orders in giant ecommerce warehouses. Artificial intelligence has a radical impact on most of our jobs. Whatever you job, it seems that robots are ready to take over.

Sci-fi becomes the new reality

When thinking about this kind of disruption, we often imagine a grim future in which cyborgs have completely replaced humans. Some sci-fi scenario that will hit us in the near future.

But what we seem to neglect, is that technology has already taken more than 90% of the jobs we once used to do. Before the first industrial revolution, a big majority of people were employed in agriculture. Even though we need more and more food to feed the ever-growing population, the amount of farmers has dropped steeply. Today, only around 2% of people still work in agriculture.

What stands out here is that we didn’t end up with mass unemployment. The nature of jobs just changed and while tractors replaced horses and machines replaced laborers, we shifted to a knowledge-based economy.

This does happen a an ever-increasing speed. We must adapt quickly to keep up with technological change and find our place between artificial intelligence, robots, 3D-printing and self-driving cars. Robots have been taking people’s jobs for decennia and they will keep doing so.

More challenging jobs

In most cases, artificial intelligence will not eliminate your work. Instead, it will help to reduce the amount of boring and repetitive tasks you have to perform on a daily basis. As such, robots will allow people to spend more time on challenges at a higher level that are more intellectually stimulating.

Almost paradoxically, this makes people even more important than ever before. And it will require specific characteristics. People will have to be very flexible and innovative. They will need to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and to address higher interpersonal, creative and innovative challenges.

People are the basis

As a company, that means that you have to select people that can handle these uncertain and volatile conditions. Innovative minds that can come up with completely new ideas and pioneering ways to to tackle new challenges.

It also calls for efficient teams that can take these new ideas, collaborate on them and get them to the market quickly. Because creativity is great, but ideas alone will not keep your company alive. You need to add value and be able to sell it to survive on the long term.

An unbiased assessment

Getting the right profiles together is only possible when you have a unbiased way to assess these innovative skills. Be it in your existing team, or when hiring new staff to complement it. Who is an ideator that will come up with bright new ideas? Who is the champion within your team to gather people, funds and support to overcome all obstacles? And who is the implementer working relentlessly to go from idea to reality? Seldomly you find those 3 basic innovation skills in 1 person. But those who excel in the 3 basic innovation skills are the innovation masters & the ideal person to be the coach of the innovation dream team.

At INNDUCE.me, we did a lot research into the central role of people and teams in innovation. Working together with prof. dr. Frederik Anseel and his team at the Ghent University, we developed an objective and scientifically based online assessment for innovation potential.

With the insights from this test, you can start building top-performing innovation dream teams and accelerate the transformation of creative ideas into innovation that brings value to your organization.

You don’t need cyborgs, you need the right people with strong & complementary innovation skills. With the right talent in well-balanced innovation teams, you are ready for the future. You won’t have to fight frightening robots or software, but you can design and use them yourself to build a new reality. Come what may, you know that your future is in capable hands.

Demo

Interested to learn how you can quickly measure the innovation skills of professionals to build or recruit your own innovation top team? Try the free demo to see how it works!