The power of humans: how companies will compete with humanity against AI

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I was recently interviewed for an interesting article in The Guardian Brand human: why efficient automation will not always be best for business.

The main thrust of the article was about whether companies would choose to hire humans rather than use machines to win customers and improve perception of their brand. It is an interesting point, though I view it as fairly unlikely that consumers will actively shift their buying to companies that hire humans in roles that machines could do.
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Designing effective co-creation of knowledge using knowledge development loops

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Last week I gave the opening keynote at the Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand’s Thought Leadership Forum, the fifth consecutive year I have done the keynote for this excellent event series. My keynote was on The Potential of Business-Academic Collaboration, offering a big-picture view of the possibilities for value creation between university business faculties and the business sector.

As I was preparing my keynote it struck me that the themes of my first book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships are extremely relevant here. Universities are implicitly knowledge-creating organizations, and the value they have to offer to the business sector must be in developing their knowledge capabilities.
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The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty index is at an all-time high: the implications

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A group of top economists has created an Economic Policy Uncertainty Index for 17 countries, using media reporting and economic forecasts to show how much uncertainty there is economic policy.

The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is currently the highest it has been since the beginning of the period analyzed starting at the end of 1996.
global-epu
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Shaping a positive world as we move into a “post-work economy”

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The New York Post has just published an article titled Prepare for a world without work, based on an interview with me.

Below are some excerpts from the article delve into what I describe as the “post-work economy”, with some further comemnts:

Driverless cars are set to make millions of truckers and taxi drivers redundant and automated fast food service is poised to shut off a key job sector for young people. As artificial intelligence is increasingly able to carry out complex tasks that used to require humans, large numbers of us are set to find ourselves out of work, with no prospects.

“Many jobs will be destroyed,” futurist Ross Dawson told news.com.au. “We can no longer be sure we’ll have a sufficient amount of the right type of work for people to be employed.”

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General reflections on blogging after 14 years

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After having written my post to relaunch this blog last week, I am now – in theory – back in blogging mode, so I should be writing blog posts.

Passing the threshold of blogging

Which in itself comes to the nub of the experience of blogging, all the thresholds you have to cross to actually start and finish a blog post. What is compelling enough to say that you take the time to write it? How long or polished should pieces be? If I get started writing a post, how much time is it going to take to say what it is I want to say? When do I cut off a blog post and save the rest for the next post?
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Relaunch of my website and blog – time to get blogging again!

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I am delighted to have finally relaunched my personal website and blog! The front page of this website provides an overview of my work, there are details on my keynote speaking and strategy advisory work, and now my blog has been incorporated into the same website.

I set up my blog Trends in the Living Networks in 2002 to accompany the launch of my book Living Networks. A bit later I set up rossdawson.com as my speaker website, and kept the blog on a separate domain, running the two sites in parallel for many years.
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Framework: The role of Humans in the Future of Work

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Yesterday I gave the keynote on Creating the Future of Work at The End of Nine to Five.

For the last years in addressing the future of work I have often focused on the human capabilities that will drive value as machines become more capable and the work landscape is transformed.

To help define and clarify these capabilities I created a landscape on the role of Humans in the Future of Work, which I first shared publicly in my keynote yesterday.

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Click on the image to see full size
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Vivid Sydney: Flexibility, diversity, and productivity at the heart of the future of work

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Next week I am doing the keynote at a Vivid Sydney event titled The End of Nine to Five, organized by Gemini3, a job share matching technology company, in collaboration with EY Australia and Hermann International Asia.

I will be speaking on Creating the Future of Work, looking at the dramatically shifting landscape for work, the distinctive human capabilities that will drive value, and the resulting structure of work required to draw out the greatest growth and contribution for our teams. In the keynote I will share for the first time globally a new framework I have created on Humans in the Future of Work. I’ll share more on that here after the keynote.

Here are quotes from some of the other speakers to give a sense of what they will be covering:
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Launch: Timeline for the future structure of the legal services industry

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Our shared passion for the future of professional services has led George Beaton and I to collaborate on projects over many years.

George has long expressed his view that the traditional “BigLaw” model for legal services firms is under severe threat. He has just launched his latest book Remaking Law Firms to provide clear guidance on how law firms can adjust and reshape themselves for success in a rapidly changing world.

Drawing on the concept of my Newspaper Extinction Timeline, George and I collaborated to create a timeline for the changing structure of the legal services industry over the next decade and beyond across different geographies.

The full description to the legal services timeline describes in detail the mega-forces shaping the industry, the research methodology, and the outcomes.

Here are the legal services industry timelines we created for five regions, with below the charts descriptions of the types of legal services providers referenced.

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Platform Strategy: How the rise of platforms enables exponential business

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This afternoon I am giving the closing keynote of Day 1 at CeBIT Australia on the topic of Platform Strategy: Creating Exponential Value in a Connected World.

The slides to my keynote are below.

As usual, the slides are designed to support my keynote, not to stand alone, but there is more than usual structured content that may be useful to people who are not attending my presentation.

I believe that the concept of platforms is enormously relevant in understanding how the economy is shifting today. In many ways it brings together the key themes of my books, including knowledge-based relationships, value co-creation, living networks, internal and external social media, and crowdsourcing.
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