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The future of work

Michał Dżoga, Corporate Affairs Manager at Intel Corporation

Throughout the many years of fostering youth entrepreneurial learning from a corporate perspective, our company always followed a line of focus that fell within our main area of expertise. Intel, as the largest worldwide computer chip maker, is always looking for the impact that technology has on our everyday lives.  What role does technology play in today’s entrepreneurial boom?

It is pretty apparent, that the digitalization of our economy has enabled people to start their own companies on a global scale from day one and tremendously speed up the whole process of starting up, whether through product design, manufacturing models and sales. On the other hand, unlimited availability of goods and services on the Internet has created a paradise for customers, making it much harder for entrepreneurs to find unique value propositions for their company. From the megatrend perspective we also observe new jobs popping out, mainly related to new technologies, which weren’t even in existence a few years ago (e.g. big data scientist, social media manager). Combining this with start-up boom we are seeing all around the world and the global trend for high youth unemployment, one thing is certain: both form and content of work will change dramatically and will happen faster than we think.

So, what are entrepreneurial skills today? How and where do we teach them? Can they be taught? This and other questions are now more important than ever. An entrepreneurial mind-set is no longer only for entrepreneurs looking to establish a new company. It is now being required by big corporations, who struggle to stay innovative with their scale and pace of operations. Intrapreneurship is today a prerequisite for successful corporate career. Though, we tend to use the term ‘21st century skills’, which includes all sorts of soft, STEM and innovation skills like digital literacy, social intelligence, adaptive thinking, new media literacy, cognitive load management or cross-cultural competences. Effective teaching of these skills however, requires a completely new approach to the classroom, student evaluations and programme bases.

Formal education is a key to success here, even though it is not the only way of successfully delivering such knowledge. Still, countries which succeed in changing their approach to school, both its content and form, will win the innovation battle and end up on the top of the future socio-economic ladder. This requires lot of courage and an overall forward-looking approach from governments, as changes in education are always difficult. We also see importance in experience sharing in this area, therefore multinational organizations will have a strategic role to play, so that we don’t reinvent the wheel and can save time – one of the most precious assets in this process.

Category : entrepreneurship education, skills for employability Posted : 23 February 2016 08:31 UTC
About the Author
Michał Dżoga, Corporate Affairs Manager at Intel Corporation

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