3
SIx dRIveRS oF ChAnGe
It is estimated that by 2025, the number of Americans over
60 will increase by 70%. Over the next decade we will see
the challenge of an aging population come to the fore. New
perceptions of what it means to age, as well as the emerg-
ing possibilities for realistic, healthy life-extension, will begin
take hold.
Individuals will need to rearrange their approach to their
careers, family life, and education to accommodate this de-
mographic shift. Increasingly, people will work long past 65
in order to have adequate resources for retirement. Multiple
careers will be commonplace and lifelong learning to pre-
pare for occupational change will see major growth. To take
advantage of this well-experienced and still vital workforce,
organizations will have to rethink the traditional career paths
in organizations, creating more diversity and flexibility.
Aging individuals will increasingly demand opportunities,
products, and medical services to accommodate more
healthy and active senior years. As we move toward to a
world of healthier lifestyles and holistic approaches to what
we eat, how we work, and where we live, much of daily
life--and the global economy as a whole--will be viewed
through the lens of health.
We are on the cusp of a major transformation in our
relationships with our tools. Over the next decade, new
smart machines will enter offices, factories, and homes
in numbers we have never seen before. They will become
integral to production, teaching, combat, medicine, security,
and virtually every domain of our lives. As these machines
replace humans in some tasks, and augment them in others,
their largest impact may be less obvious: their very presence
among us will force us to confront important questions.
What are humans uniquely good at? What is our compara-
tive advantage? And what is our place alongside these
machines? We will have to rethink the content of our work
and our work processes in response.
In some areas, a new generation of automated systems will
replace humans, freeing us up to do the things we are good
at and actually enjoy. In other domains, the machines will
become our collaborators, augmenting our own skills and
abilities. Smart machines will also establish new expecta-
tions and standards of performance. Of course, some rou-
tine jobs will be taken over by machines--this has already
happened and will continue. But the real power in robotics
technologies lies in their ability to augment and extend
our own capabilities. We will be entering into a new kind
of partnership with machines that will build on our mutual
strengths, resulting in a new level of human-machine col-
laboration and codependence.
We begin every foresight exercise with thinking about drivers--big disruptive shifts that are likely to
reshape the future landscape. Although each driver in itself is important when thinking about the future,
it is a confluence of several drivers working together that produces true disruptions. We chose the six drivers
that emerged from our research as the most important and relevant to future work skills.
1
extreme
longevity:
Increasing global
lifespans change the
nature of careers
and learning
2
rise of
smart machines
and systems:
Workplace automation
nudges human
workers out of rote,
repetitive tasks