Four Skills Tomorrow’s Innovation Workforce Will Need

Posted on February 3, 2020 by Design in Design Innovation | 0 Comments

The young digerati will lead innovation, but they’ll need business awareness, an entrepreneurial attitude, bottom-line focus, and ethical intelligence.

This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management.

Image courtesy of Jim Frazier/theispot.com

Throughout history, new technologies have demanded step shifts in the skills that companies need. Like the First Industrial Revolution’s steam-powered factories, the Second Industrial Revolution’s mass-production tools and techniques, and the Third Industrial Revolution’s internet-based technologies, the Fourth Industrial Revolution — currently being driven by the convergence of new digital, biological, and physical technologies — is changing the nature of work as we know it. Now the challenge is to hire and develop the next generation of workers who will use artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, genetic engineering, 3D printing, virtual reality, and the like in their jobs.

The problem, strangely enough, appears to be two-sided. People at all levels complain bitterly about being either underqualified or overqualified for the jobs that companies advertise. In addition, local and regional imbalances among the kinds of people companies want and the skills available in labor pools are resulting in unfilled vacancies, slowing down the adoption of new technologies.

Before organizations can rethink how to design jobs, organize work, and compete for talent in a digital age, they must systematically identify the capabilities they need now, and over the next decade, to innovate and survive. For more than 10 years, we’ve been studying the impact of digital design and product development tools on organizations, their people, and their projects.1 We’ve found that the competencies companies need most are business-oriented rather than technical. That’s true even for brick-and-mortar companies that are trying to become more digital.

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And most companies are beginning to realize that they can’t just hire all-new workforces; there aren’t enough qualified recruits, and the expense would be enormous. Instead, they need to retrain and redeploy existing employees and other members of their communities, in addition to hiring and contracting new ones to fill their needs. However, rapid technological change has rendered skill cycles shorter than ever; key competencies of even a decade ago are passé today, and most of tomorrow’s jobs remain unknown.

Waiting for the fog to clear isn’t an option. Companies must identify and develop the core skills their employees will need going forward. Our interviews, surveys, and case studies have revealed that most companies focus on refining the skills their people already possess, which doesn’t prepare existing employees or new hires for the business challenges they’ll face when using emerging technologies in their jobs.

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About the Authors

Tucker J. Marion (@inuvation) is an associate professor of technological entrepreneurship at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in Boston. Sebastian K. Fixson (@sebastianfixson) is associate dean of innovation and the Marla M. Capozzi MBA ’96 Term Chair of Design Thinking, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Greg Brown is senior director of Worldwide CAD Business Development at the global software company PTC.