The 2022 Update on The Future of Business, Work and HRM

The Future of Business

The Future of Business is about either creating and delivering or supporting the creation and delivery for the consumers at the end of the stream, the following:

1. Mass-customization/Mass-personalization

2. Virtually unlimited product customization/personalization options

3. Optimal Speed of Delivery

4. Effortless/Hassle-free "shopping", purchasing, customer care (from pre-purchase to post-purchase)

5. Tangible and Intangible experiences via phygital or virtual technological means, that may or may not have been previously possible or feasible for human beings

6. Ubiquitous service/experience

7. Seamless Transcendence of the Actual-Virtual and Digital-Physical boundaries

8. Effortless use of products (especially technological)

The entire picture, of how "business" works, is going to be wholly different in the approaching future ahead, from what it has ever looked like in the past. The primary product of any enterprise that exists in business ahead, will be "Experience". And it could be an experience, that has never been possible before.

End of the Stream Experience

To truly appreciate why and how the entire picture, of how "business" works, will be wholly different ahead, from what it has ever looked like in the past, one must look at and appreciate what the whole human experience will be that businesses universally will exist to build, support and maintain.

For example, for a new pair of footwear, a consumer will have his or her feet scanned upon stepping into a brick and mortar footwear shop, by a foot scanner, which will capture with optimal 360-degree precision the exact shape, size, angles and miscellaneous measurements of the feet. Based on the information captured, options will instantaneously light up automatically on a wall sized shoe vending machine, to highlight the options for the consumer, of which shoes available for sale in inventory at the outlet will be the safest, most comfortable and healthiest options for his or her feet.

Based on the lit up options, the consumer will be able to verbally request customizations. As a step before that, as the consumer decides on the customization, he or she will be able to view lifelike moving images/visual representations of the footwear on his or her feet, through his or her smartglasses or smart lenses - virtual objects that are not there in actual reality, but visible as if real (a product of the next level Augmented Reality, which is now the cause of much excitement in conversations as of 2022).

If possible, the vending machine, with in built 3D-Printing functions and a variety of robotic machines, will customize the pair of desired footwear on the spot, before dispensing the pair for the consumer. And the payment will automatically be deducted from the consumer's bank account. The consumer will then leave with the newly acquired footwear.

Where customization on the spot is not possible, a custom pair will be produced at a manufacturing facility closest to the consumer's residential address, with the process beginning before the consumer leaves the physical shop space. And upon completion, fitting the consumer's needs based on the data captured by the foot scanner at the shop space, an autonomous drone will pick up the packed footwear from the manufacturing facility to deliver the package to the consumer's doorstep upon which the payment will be deducted from the consumer's bank account.

No retail staff on the shop floor. No delivery person. No production line worker at the manufacturing facility. No order management staff. No logistics coordinator. No human involved in the whole process, other than the consumer making a purchase of a pair of footwear. Complete automation.

New Human Experiences

Can you imagine today, dating and romantic relations, between people who would have no opportunity of meeting in a real physical space, who are in fact separated by continents, having no linguistic commonality whatsoever between them? Well, making that possible, thanks to technology where it is at today and where it is headed to be at tomorrow, is one of countless examples of products of the future, which will deliver experiences to masses, in ways which have never been possible before. I know most of you won't believe me, so watch the short video below.

Another prime example, of a product of the future, which previously was just not supported by known science, engineering and technology, in real life outside of fantasy fiction, is the ability to experience living in a body, that a person was not born with. Again, I know most of you won't believe me, so watch the short video below.

And it does not stop there. The future, of business, is about producing and delivering down to the end of the stream, sensory experiences, that nature itself had never designed the human body to experience. For example, the ability to experience physical sensations, of touch, or sensations even deeper and beyond the skin's surface, that nothing exists in nature to offer, or, which without appropriate technological aid would be threatening to health, limb or life. Perhaps, new types of tastes, in food, that do not at all exist in any known edible ingredients, but will be experienced by the taste buds, through stimulation delivered via Brain-Computer Interface technology.

The New Marketplaces

Worlds, that do not exist in the physical reality or realm, will surpass the physical marketplaces of 2022, before we get to 2040. The reason is simple. That is where consumers predominantly will be, for learning, training, working, socializing, entertainment and all sorts of other purposes, including many, that even don't exist as part of the contemporary human experience in the present-day physical reality.

First stop, will be the Virtual Worlds known as Metaverses (well, at least, now they will be known as Metaverses because someone decided that that should be the term). And then the boundaries between physical realities and the virtual/simulated/engineered reality will simply evaporate, and we will be left with the phygital reality of X Reality, which will thoroughly permeate and pervade all physical reality, while entirely encompassing it and seamlessly transcending it simultaneously. While that transition, or rather, evolution, will happen, the consumers of the future will consume more of what does not physically exist, or that which is not possible to experience without being virtual or non-physical, than what actually will be physically real.

More money will be generated in economies from the consumption of goods, services and experiences which will have absolutely no physical or offline attributes, than consumer goods and services that do, whether fully or in part.

And that will actually mean well for the environment and the climate. An ultra high-end luxury bag, has far lesser environmental footprint, if it is only seen, and felt through haptic technology at best, but has never physically been manufactured in a production plant, never requiring physical material, than one that is very physically real. Virtual goods, even if disposed of, won't end up in landfills. Produce, use and throw all you want, without a direct cost to nature, environment or climate.

Off course however, there is very significant room for debate, in terms of the increasing shift of lifestyles to the Digital and then X Reality realms, where the demands for energy along with the technological hardware infrastructure needed may prove to be rather adverse as well, environmentally. It is absolutely valid to think of that. That however, about the energy and hardware issues, is a topic, for another day, another essay, another discussion, specifically addressing Environmental Futures.

The Future of Work

What humans will not be doing

Economically employed human labor will no longer be performing physical jobs or tasks (with very few exceptions). Human employees/workers will instead almost entirely be performing tasks that are exclusively mental and intellectual.

Even tasks that are currently non-physical in nature, will be fully automated if they are routine, repetitive or quantitative in nature.

Even technical tasks, that are non-routine and "non-standard", that require human skills, will be performed remotely, by human engineers and technicians, through surrogate machines and robots. That means that the engineers and technicians will not be expending physical efforts, but rather only mental and intellectual efforts, for the purposes of executing those tasks.

There will be no bus drivers, taxi drivers, delivery personnel, construction workers, cleaners, data entry personnel, cashiers and factory workers. Just some examples of the sorts of workers that cease to exist in commercial spaces.

We will see all around us, robots of all kinds, of all shapes and sizes, executing all the time, wherever we go, the tasks that have required physical labor from human workers in the past. Vehicles, whether to transport people or objects, will be driverless. And everything will run autonomously (largely so) without the need for routine or regular human supervision, intervention or oversight.

Machines will build machines that build machines with some human supervision at the beginning of that chain, but without any hands-on task execution required of a human being. Machines will autonomously maintain and repair machines. Software or virtual objects will build, maintain and repair everything virtual or digital. Yes, software will write and operate software, at the spoken request, demand or instruction of an average non-technically trained human being.

Also read: The 2018 Update on The Future of Everything

What humans will be doing

Humans will be creators. They will create with their ideas and creativity. They will create solutions to problems, which will then be pursued, implemented or executed by technology (problems such as impacts of weather or seasons upon crops and food supply, for example).

Humans will be decision makers, to determine what is fair, what is just, what is ethical, what is responsible and what is good for the end user, customer or client in terms of experience and product satisfaction.

Humans will utilize opportunities presented by the X Reality existence, which will go well beyond and transcend the boundaries of Metaverse spaces, while thoroughly permeating and pervading the environment of the physical world wherever humans may physically be. Humans will routinely conceptualize new markets, market opportunities and means of monetization in that new reality of X.

Humans will produce art and literature. They will produce aesthetic concepts to make products such as buildings, vehicles, open spaces, apparel and so on, more pleasurable. They will continuously add meaning thus to the general and overall broad human experience.

Humans will create means to entertain, as we somewhat already see primitively happening with online streaming mediums or channels today such as Tiktok and Facebook Reels, and they will develop new means and avenues to monetize such efforts, in new immersive spaces and environments.

Humans will bear the task of thinking what then existing technologies could/may do, or how they may be better or best used, to better deliver food, water, clean air, medicine, healthcare, clothing, housing, sensory experiences and luxury. If not, the task that human workers will perform, will be to think of what new technologies will be needed, and how they may be brought about, even if those workers would be in mostly non-technical vocations.

Humans will still be doctors, lawyers, dentists, researchers, engineers, scientists and so on. The bulk of their daily efforts, regardless of their respective vocational descriptions, will be qualitative.

There will still be teachers or educators. They just won't teach in classrooms the way they still do up to the present in 2022.

There will not be an occupation that exists today, and that which will continue to exist 10-20 years from today, the execution or delivery of which will not be wholly different, from how it is today, entirely thanks to the ongoing technological evolution - in the direction of manifesting X Reality.

While almost all occupational roles of physical, manual or repetitive nature will completely disappear before the end of 2030s (except perhaps in the currently underdeveloped nations), there will be more types of jobs or occupations in existence by 2035, that do not at all exist today, than the ones that do exist today and which will continue to survive well ahead into the future indefinitely (such as those of doctors, historians, educators, etc). And the majority of those new types of jobs that are not in existence today (as of 2022), but will come into existence by 2035, will come about thanks to the advent of the Metaverse and X Reality, along with mass robotization and mass automation, driven by the convergence of the Cloud and Artificial Intelligence.

Also read: The 2019 Update on The Future of Everything - Part I

Employment Market

The biggest irony in what lies ahead, is that while robotics and automation have largely seen rather noisy resistance over the past two to three decades due to concerns of people being rendered unemployed or unemployable, the continued advent of robotization and automation, especially that driven by the convergence of evolving AI capabilities and the Cloud, along with the advent of the Metaverse and X Reality, will produce so much demand for employees/labor, that it will render a situation of a global labor shortage which will be endemic across almost every industry for many decades to come. There will be more demand for human workers, than there have been at any point in recent centuries. There will definitely be more demand for human workers (albeit not for even remotely physical tasks) than the number of adult able-minded human beings on earth who will be available to meet that demand. Needless to say, the deficit will make it a job-seeker's market.

Also read: The 2019 Update on The Future of Everything - Part II

Skill Level

Where largely however, human work, within human prerogative, will be about creating and higher level thinking, the bar for employability will also be completely different from what it has predominantly been like up to 2022 - at least where education is concerned.

Dropping or failing out of school will be a rather bad option for anyone who desires to be a part of the constructive economic workforce. Not going to college or university, or dropping out of a degree programme before graduation will also be a rather bad option for most (not everyone is Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs).

And thus, if we look at the statistics of how much of the young adult population of the world today is at least university educated, what will become apparent, is a set of a variety of major labor mismatch problems over the coming decades, starting from the very near-term in the 2020s (we are already in the decade!).

Also read: The 2019 Update on The Future of Everything - Part III

Also read: The 2019 Update on The Future of Everything - Part IV (Final)

The Future of HRM

At the Macro level of the Organization, the role of Human Resource Management as a function will be to:

1. Identify, attract, onboard and retain talent that will seamlessly fit into and enhance the existing COLLABORATIVE MIX OF TALENTS
2. Design and Implement Policies, Strategies and Protocols to support/ensure the necessary systems and availability of resources for Optimal Intelligence Augmentation (IA) (see below under Heading "The Tech Factor) for each individual employee, for each team/department, for each division and the whole organization
3. Develop, maintain and utilize time-appropriate means to assess the value of each individual employee's contributions, for the purposes of compensation, rewards, accountability and equity, in a World of Organizational Work where routine day-to-day employee contribution will largely be about strategizing, innovating, creating, building, redesigning, adapting and inventing, in a fluid, flexible, progressive and dynamic culture, without boundaries or parameters of time and geographical space

The Tech Factor

Intelligence Augmentation

The most talked about topic of technology in the 2010s has been Artificial Intelligence (AI). The most under-appreciated and under-discussed topic thus far in the 2020s though, which pertains to human beings as much as technology, is that of/about Intelligence Augmentation (IA).

Any conversation remotely pertaining to the Future of Human Resource Management, or any narrative relevant to it, as of 2022, is completely devoid of any kind of credibility whatsoever (however "credibility" may be defined by any linguist), if it is not wholly and entirely centered around IA at its core. The reason for this fact (not opinion) is rooted in IA's definition.

Intelligence Augmentation, defined, is the enhancement, augmentation and amplification, of the human being's intelligence and abilities at performing anything that a human being would be expected to perform. This by:

1. Having technology wholly and completely relieve humans of all tasks that do no require abstract reasoning, creative thought and in-depth qualitative discovery
2. Technology executing all tasks that are delegated away from human prerogatives with far greater superiority than if they were to be left to human labor
3. Technology supporting human beings in the tasks that remain human prerogatives, by diminishing barriers of time, space, accessibility, physical capacity, etc

Also read: The Future of Management: Managing Human Wisdom in Robotic Spaces

The New Human-Technology Relationship

Our access to technological applications or systems will not be limited through devices we would have to handle or operate using our hands.

All interaction or interfacing with technology will eventually and imminently be touchless and contactless. There will be devices, gadgets, gizmos and machines all around us, all of which would fit the definition of autonomous robots in one way or another, to varying degrees. We will not necessarily be holding, handling or physically operating any of them most of the time, despite benefiting from all their functions at all times.

Technology will be present all around us, manifest as ubiquitous swarms of servants. We will not however, consciously interface or interact with technological hardware as we have always done up until the beginning of the 2020s. Rather, we will directly interface with applications, immersive simulations and computer generated holography, whether we are stationery in a particular environment, or on the move. Location, time, environment and device ownership will not be a bar to our interfacing with technology as such.

Technology will reverse interface with humans by means of a combination of:

1. Remote Brain Computer Interface/Brainwave Reading
2. Speech Recognition and Subvocal Recognition
3. Computer Vision

Technology will automatically, autonomously, proactively and dynamically respond to our needs, the critical part of which will be the execution of tasks to support us in enhancing or augmenting our efforts in tasks that remain human prerogatives.

Also read: Brain-to-Cloud Interface + Internet of Everything + Metaverse = Internet Experience Reinvented

Internet for Technology rather than for Humans

While extensive or substantial skepticism persists yet as of 2022 pertaining to the Semantic Web or the idea of Web 3.0, increasingly in parallel to the persistence of that very skepticism (which notably is rather widespread), the functionalities of the internet and the cloud, along with intelligent web applications, continue to evolve in the direction, where the process of information acquisition, retrieval, relay, distribution, dissemination or coordination is tech or AI mediated to diminish our:

1. Efforts
2. Inefficiencies
3. Ineffectiveness
4. Limitations

What present day skeptics do not realize, is that robots connected to the cloud, delivering groceries from the warehouse or a store, to the consumers' doorsteps, are amongst the very early and very visible symptoms (for the want of a better term) of technology automatically "using" the web, to deliver services or support human needs, and this is completely part of the evolutionary trajectory towards the manifestation of the Semantic Web precisely.

Much of the autonomous robotics visible in public spaces or public views in highly developed or developing countries, is possible thanks to that evolutionary threshold having been achieved with the Web. This needs to aptly and largely be attributed to the convergence of Advanced Artificial Intelligence and the Cloud. It is also therefore not too bold a statement to make, that the exciting tech developments of the day, in 2022, are no longer about autonomous machines, but autonomous whole systems and networks.

What lies ahead from here, is the rapid transition towards the increasing use of the web, autonomously by the full spectrum of articles of technology, physical, digital and/or phygital, away from active human interfacing with devices for the purposes of utilizing the Web personally (by the human user). What this means, is that to know about anything, I will instruct a device or application to find answer or information for me, and it will retrieve that information from anywhere on the internet instantaneously, and voice relay it to me to the best of my needs to understand that information. Yes, research will get a lot faster.

Also read: 6 Automation Technologies that will COMPLETELY TRANSFORM the WORLD from NOW to 2030

Also read: The Internet of Robotic Things: The Biggest Revolution in Goods Production Yet

Massive Bandwidth

As much as it may seem uninteresting to the non-engineering or non-technical mind, anyone and everyone who wishes to credibly discuss anything remotely associated with the futures of business, work and HRM must appreciate the game-changing importance of the impending 6G cellular network in transforming the human experience, with all the possibilities rendered through bandwidths of up to 3 Terahertz, to begin with, and then more as the cellular network continues to progress further from thereof.

What ultra-high bandwidth connection will spell in the future, is not just reliable and fast connection, but support for flow of information to afford humans complete and unlimited real-time immersion into X Reality (seamless and fluid transcendence of the divide between the actual-physical world and virtual-digital world): mind and multi-sensory.

Harish Shah?is Singapore's first local born Professional?Futurist?and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs?Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and?Keynote?Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Product Development, X Reality,?Marketing,?Strategic Foresight,?Systems Thinking?and?Organisational Future Proofing. In an?Open Letter?in 2019, Harish has called on his fellow Futurists around the world to raise the emphasize upon the need for Environmental Salvation, in the course of their work.

In 2022, Harish released his first Futurist eBook titled: Life in Techtopia (available for free reading, download or request in PDF format)