Big Idea 2016: The Rise of the Digital Career

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. Read the posts here, then write your own (use #BigIdeas2016 in your piece).

As we head toward 2016, we’re faced with a recurring challenge in the U.S. — the skills gap, or what I call the “training gap.” With the youth unemployment rate substantially higher than the overall, there is a need for high schools, technical schools and colleges to rethink how we train and educate our future workforce — with a focus on preparing students for digital careers.

I recently read “The Second Machine Age,” by MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who describe how the impact of digital technologies will shape and enrich our lives personally and professionally over the next decade and beyond.

“Technologies, like big data and analytics, high-speed communications, and rapid prototyping have augmented the contributions made by more abstract and data-driven reasoning, and in turn have increased the value of people with the right engineering, creative or design skills,” Brynjolfsson and McAfee note.

This helps illustrate how companies will be particularly affected by this digital shift, highlighting the need to find the right talent for tomorrow by identifying a track for success. Developing this track depends on taking a good look at educational opportunities available to the next generation, and recognizing that educational paths must evolve to meet the needs of today’s digital-driven workplace.

In today’s digital economy, no matter what business you’re in, software is at the heart of it.

For example, the world’s largest bookseller today – Amazon – is a software company. The world’s largest video service – Netflix – is a software company. The world’s largest music companies – from Apple to Pandora to Spotify – are software companies. Even today’s steel mills – unlike the ones my grandfathers worked in – have computer aided design and advanced software that run operations.

This phenomenon is an historic revolution that is changing the basic nature of work – and it’s just a warm up for what’s to come. Changes will unfold in ways we can’t even imagine today – requiring students to think hard about how they plan for a digital career.

The jobs of tomorrow will look much different than those of today. In fact, studies show that most millennials will work 15 or 20 jobs in their careers. A decade from now, at least half of them will be working in careers that don’t even exist today.

There is an obvious opportunity for businesses to invest in programs that develop our future workforce and empower students with the skill-set needed to take on this revolution.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee write, “There has never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value.”

At Siemens, we have made a concerted effort to address America’s training gap through public, academic and corporate partnerships which train workers for highly skilled, well-paying software-driven jobs. Software is transforming the workplace in today’s digital world, and it’s what makes industries such as manufacturing one of the most sophisticated, highly-skilled and innovative areas of business.

We’ve provided colleges and universities with hundreds of millions dollars worth of in-kind grants of engineering and our Product Lifecycle Management software, which powers today’s digital industry. This software can be found in about 77,000 companies around the world — giving students a leg up when it comes to working with those companies.

Another example is the Siemens Foundation’s Siemens Technical Scholars program with our partners at the Aspen Institute. The program develops core competencies in STEM-based highly skilled technical work. I had the privilege to “interview” two outstanding students, Edleshia Leverette and Manuel Rivera, selected as two of the inaugural class of Scholars. They spoke about their career goals and why the STEM-based highly skilled technical track works for them, in industries also being transformed by the digital shift.

The truth is industry will not only succeed by adapting to the shifts our digital economy will bring, but by also helping to develop talent to fill the digital jobs of tomorrow.

Doing so is a necessity — not an option. For example, today’s manufacturing plants have as many computers on the floor as they have heavy equipment. At one of our electronics plants, the production is almost entirely automated. Machines and computers handle 75% of the value chain.

I’m not talking about robots taking jobs. I’m talking about software that makes things run faster, and safer, and better – creating high-value jobs that pay higher salaries. More and more businesses and industries are being run by software. And we are moving into a decade where physical objects will become part of the internet, too.

According to Gartner, by 2018, digital businesses will drive a 500% boost in digital jobs. The careers of tomorrow are digital ones.

Given these changes in the workplace, there is a need to fundamentally transform education to keep up. While we’ve experienced technological shifts in our economy before, when looked at with a new perspective, I think a big idea can be developed from an existing idea that has tremendous potential.

As The Second Machine Age cites, “To invent something is to find it in what previously exists.” The idea of embracing high-skill technical opportunities, offering diverse educational career paths, and providing public, academic and corporate partnerships may have been around for awhile, but today it needs to embody our ever-changing digital economy, which will have a big impact on young people and the careers of 2016 and beyond.

The world is becoming increasingly digital. My advice to students: Don’t let the digital technology wave crash over you. Open your eyes to new educational pathways — and ride the wave to a successful digital career.