Where will the jobs be, and how can companies carve out a competitive advantage in the global economy?
Exactly what technologies and trends will change our lives are hard to predict. Few people understood just how powerful the Internet would be, dismantling entire industries and creating millions of jobs.
So what’s the next big thing? Where will the jobs be, and how can companies carve out a competitive advantage in the global economy?
McKinsey’s Global Institute discusses this in its latest report, Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. It came up with a list of 12 technologies that could have a potential economic impact between $14 trillion and $33 trillion a year in 2025. The authors write that “some of this economic potential will end up as consumer surplus; a substantial portion of this economic potential will translate into new revenue that companies will capture and that will contribute to GDP growth. Other effects could include shifts in profit pools between companies and industries.”
The 12 disruptive technologies include: mobile Internet, automation of knowledge and work, Internet of things, cloud technology, advanced robotics, autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles, next-generation genomics, energy storage, 3D printing, advanced materials, advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery, renewable energy.
As Futurist Thomas Frey warns us, “Pay very close attention to these 12 technologies. They are both the job destroyers and the job creators in our future.”
Here’s the breakdown of the 12 technologies and their potential for impact:
Even though these technologies will have a profound effect, Futurist Thomas Frey goes on to say, “One common fallacy is that people are being replaced by machines. The reality is that machines don’t work without humans. A more accurate description is that a large number of people are being replaced by a smaller number of people using machines.”
The bottom line is that the work being done today will require far fewer workers in the future, but that just means we will be able to accomplish far more in the future.
And a great chart showing how these technologies will affect the world:
As Frey like to put it, “No, the robot knocking at your front door is not the boogeyman that so many are dreading. It’s easy to look around and see what exists today, but the true visionaries are looking at what’s missing. And “what’s missing” is where the real opportunities lie.”
Photo credit: CXO Today
Via Business Insider
