Recently BigSpeak spoke with futurist and technology expert Erica Orange—Our most pressing question for her: ‘What will be some of the major shifts in the way we do business that we can expect in the near future?’ Orange detailed four factors and their implications that business leaders should be aware of.

Tech Will Take Over Hard Skills

Robots, for instance, are increasingly being trained to match human dexterity and speed. Erica cites that, “Up to 44% of jobs may be automated within the next decade (25% within the next 5 years). Globally, traditional jobs, as we know them today, are beginning to disappear. What may be looming is an era of technological unemployment in which computer scientists and software engineers essentially invent us out of work as the total number of jobs declines steadily and permanently.”

Soft Skills Become More Valued

Rest assured, Erica predicts that “as smart machines relieve us of tedious manual tasks, they may allow us to spend more of our time being creative.” “It is becoming more apparent that traditional paths to economic viability are vanishing, as are traditional paths of employment” but, in a world where machines take over many manual tasks, skills that are less easy to automate will become more valuable. Erica says that “skills like relationship-building, collaboration, empathy and cultural sensitivity will become top currency.”

The Technological Templosion

Erica says that companies need to be aware of what she calls the technological templosion (a term coined by futurist Edie Weiner where very big things happen in increasingly compressed amounts of time). “As each technology builds upon the other to create new ways of collecting information, making decisions, streamlining the nature of work and establishing global interconnectedness, the pace of innovation will be increasing at an exponential rate around the world.” This, she explains, is leading to a world of “templosion,” in which very large things happen in increasingly compressed amounts of time.

In fact, the templosion has already begun. Erica cites technological advances such as, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, 3D (and eventually 4D) printing, Big Data, the neural net, etc. as products of the technological templosion. “These things are not coming, they’re already here,” she says.

Erica predicts that sectors such as security, privacy, reliability, storage capacity and responsiveness “will particularly and increasingly be tested by these technologies.” Additionally, she says that virtually “all professions will grapple with the many ways fast, decentralized, smart systems will change not just the work they do, but also where they do it, how they do it and for whom.”  

Time and innovation may be among a company’s most valuable resources

“In a world of templosion,” Erica says that “many large organizations, particularly long-established corporations, face a marketplace mandate to audit and overhaul much of what they do, and how they do it, in order to remain sustainable and competitive in a vastly different operating environment.”

The impacts of the templosion acceleration will be felt across all industries and disciplines. “Those who are able to constantly refresh and innovate their thinking and remain relevant in a time of rapid change, will emerge on top. Time, like energy, is becoming a precious resource. Just as no entity or profession has the luxury of frivolously wasting energy, in the not so distant future, no entity will have the luxury of failing to value time.”

The content writers at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau are Experts on the Experts. They hold doctoral, masters, and bachelors’ degrees in business, writing, literature, and education. Their business thought pieces are published regularly in leading business publications. Working in close association with the top business, entrepreneur, and motivational speakers, BigSpeak content writers are at the forefront of industry trends and research.