In this interview with Chris Cuomo, NYT Pulitzer Prize Winning Columnist, Tom Friedman describes his theory of the Age of Accelerations from this latest book Thank You For Being Late and he quotes Heather’s theories of our Future of Work Identity Crisis, which is also detailed in his book.

Increasingly futurists are being hired by businesses to present visions of what the future could look like. Sometimes futurists are sci fi writers like Isaac Asimov (whose books inspired Elon Musk’s companies), and other times they predict business futures like Faith Popcorn. In 1991 Faith predicted that "humanoid robots" would become companions and workers. As we see automation and robotics have found their way into our businesses and our lives; we can see she was right.

Having not long returned from UNLEASH, we’ve been enlightened and motivated by fresh perspectives, inspiring calls for action and a better grasp on the fast-moving HR tech vendor space.

Here are just a couple of takeaways from the two days…

(Disclaimer: we saw a fantastic host of sessions – and I’m sure we missed some great ones too. This is just a small flavour of the event.)

L’édition parisienne d’Unleash World 2019, conférence internationale consacrée aux solutions de gestion des ressources humaines, a réuni les 22 et 23 octobre à la Porte de Versailles près de 200 exposants, dont les principaux tenants des plateformes RH d’entreprises et de gestion de la formation déployées au niveau mondial, comme SAP Successfactors, Oracle, Talentsoft, Sopra HR, Workday, Unit4, Cornerstone, etc. aux côtés de nombreuses start-ups du secteur. L’événement Unleash se tient à deux autres dates dans l’année en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, la prochaine édition étant programmée à Londres en mars 2020 et la suivante en mai à Las Vegas.

The modern workforce is going through a revolution while academia has not kept up with the change. Future of work strategist Heather E. McGowan presented the challenges higher education faces when preparing students for the workforce in a talk titled “Future Forward: The future of work and learning and CU’s role in furthering the public good.”

Heather McGowan MBA’01 travels the world speaking to leaders and organizations about the future of work. “She’s smart and she’s real,” says Babson President Stephen Spinelli Jr. MBA’92, PhD.

"We're asking young people what they want to be when they grow up, when maybe more than half of the job's tasks and industries they may work in have not been invented yet," says Heather McGowan, a future work strategist who helps to prepare people and organizations for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will see the world reshaped by artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological breakthroughs.

With the incredible speed at which technology is advancing and changing how we live, it’s crucial that institutions understand the impact that all of this is having —­ and is going to have — on how we work and learn, says Heather McGowan, a futurist and well-known lecturer.

Speaking at the Achieving the Dream conference in Long Beach, California earlier this year, McGowan noted that as humans, we are taught to learn to do one thing and be great at it, and maybe that one thing is going to change a few times.

Tom Friedman: My thoughts on the future of work are very influenced by my friend, a business strategist, Heather McGowan. She really describes that what’s going on is that work is being disconnected from jobs, and jobs and work are being disconnected from companies, which are increasingly becoming platforms. That’s Heather’s argument, and that is what I definitely see. Click here to read the full article.

Issy Beech quotes Heather “We’re stuck in this paradigm of asking people what they want to be when they grow up, and asking university students what their major is, and asking each other what we do. Asking young people to think about the future when 65% of the jobs haven’t been created yet and half of existing work can be replaced by automation is becoming an increasingly ridiculous frame to put around things." Click here to read the full article