Workforce 4.0: From Knowledge Force to Intelligent Force (Issue 4)

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ICYMI, here’s my unique take on the Deepseek saga and the escalating US-China AI rivalry, discussing a perspective that’s often overlooked - the deep civilizational and cultural dimension.

Previously, I introduced The Intelligence Symphony (ISY) and the metaphorical symphony of Genies and Geniuses (if you haven’t read them yet, I highly recommend checking them out). In this edition, we’ll dive into organizational design, setting the stage for what it means for you as a leader and/or salaried employee in a future issue.

The central question I am addressing today is: What will the workforce of ISYs be like?

As usual, I will quickly cycle through history before we venture into the future.

Broadly speaking, four workforce models exist today (ignoring the remnants of nomadic and primitive communities):

• Agrarian Workforce: Field-based Farm Force (Pre-Industrial Revolution). The majority of workers were engaged in agriculture, while artisans and craftsmen ply their trades in urban centers.
• Workforce 1.0: Mechanically-Assisted Factory Force (1st Industrial Revolution). This marked the birth of modern jobs, with people migrating to cities to build infrastructure, manufacture goods, transport people, and prepare food - assisted by early mechanical machines.
• Workforce 2.0: Electrically-Charged Industrial Force (2nd Industrial Revolution). Large-scale industrialization brought work specialization, assembly lines and, clockwork logistics, and heralded the rise of service and office jobs.
• Workforce 3.0: Tech-Augmented Knowledge Force (3rd Industrial Revolution). Knowledge-intensive, technology-driven, and expert-based jobs emerged, facilitated by information technology and real-time communication.

Each workforce model represents a quantum leap in value creation and capture over its predecessor. Today, all four models coexist, though unevenly across the world. Many societies remain time-locked in older models, struggling to transition. The higher the proportion of a country's or company's workforce in later models, the wealthier it becomes.

Let’s look at two examples:

• Singapore (where I am from) has a Workforce 3.0-heavy economy, making it one of the world's wealthiest nations in terms of per capita income.
• General Electric (GE) was the world’s most valuable company in 2004, but as a Workforce 2.0-skewed organization, it has since fallen out of the top 50, now worth less than 10% of top-tier Workforce 3.0 companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Google.

The ageing 3.0 Knowledge Force is on its last legs

Next, let’s visualize the workings of the Knowledge Force.

Knowledge work is primarily performed by humans, with digital technology handling heavy-duty information processing, analysis, and distribution.

There are three key (and non-mutually exclusive) roles in Talent 3.0:

1. Managers – Organizing resources, projects, and teams to achieve corporate goals.
2. Experts – Deep domain specialists with years of education and professional experience in a specific field (scientists, doctors, lawyers, architects, technologists, engineers, and accountants comes to mind).
3. Producers – Knowledge workers directly involved in creating value for customers; be it, journalists in a news media organization, software engineers in a tech company, professors in a university, bankers in financial institutions or architects in a master planning firm.

The 4.0 Intelligent Force is Knocking Loudly at the Door

With the mainstreaming of AI technologies - LLMs, AI Agents, Virtual Assistants - the next generation workforce is arriving quickly. Much of the knowledge work handled by Talent 3.0 workers will be taken over by an advanced suite of AI-capable enterprise applications.

As I cautioned in my 2017 Straits Times article on Preparing for Singapore 4.0:

"By 2030, hyper-connected, autonomous, and intelligent technologies will be ubiquitous - in factories, offices, schools, hospitals, highways, and homes. These self-functioning systems will operate the world with minimal human intervention. Enterprises will deliver services at just 10% of the manpower intensity from a decade before. Many jobs from 2017 will be gone - mostly 'value-adding' single-skilled jobs that are more effectively performed by autonomous robots and AI-cloud services."

Three new classes of Talent 4.0 roles will soon take center stage:

• Entrepreneurial Leaders – Transformative leaders who reinvents their organization or teams to seize emerging opportunities, reimagine business models and capture massive value from slow-moving incumbents.
• Super-Experts – Former experts who elevate their expertise and multiply their efficacy by experimenting and co-piloting with AI applications.
• Corporate Innovators – Ecosystem architects, systems builders and product innovators, driving new value propositions and scaling groundbreaking ventures.

The Messy Path Ahead

In the coming years, as AI Agents and Assistants mature, we will reach the ROI tipping point:

1. AI-native startups and nibble microenterprises will show the way.
2. Tech giants and digital platforms will follow suit and demonstrate that "big boys" can also do it.
3. Large corporations will transition to avoid losing out.
4. Traditional firms and slow movers will wonder what is happening until it is too late.

The first 3 groups will ultimately become Intelligence Symphonies.

This shift has been years in the making, from slowly, slowly, slowly… to suddenly. That’s the tipping point and the first real impact of the AI tsunami.

From another vantage point, we are now in the messy middle. Companies are at different starting points due to varying digital maturity. Tech pure plays, digitally enabled enterprises, and those in banking and finance, for example, are further along in the journey. That said, everyone is still closer to the starting point than the finish line.

While this economy-wide transformation will accelerate, Workforce 2.0 and 3.0 jobs won’t disappear overnight. As mentioned earlier, these different workforce models will continue to coexist for some time, but value will shift exponentially toward the more advanced generation.

Ultimately, Digital Darwinism determines that only the most adaptive and innovative of species will survive.

What are your thoughts on Human-Augmented Intelligent Force? What are your variations of it? Wil it happen? How will it happen?

Appreciate a “like, love or comment” if you learn something new from this article.

If you are new to Genies x Geniuses newsletter, please subscribe to be notified of new editions. You are also recommended to read the introductory edition for the origin story. In future issues, we will continue to delve deeper into Intelligence Symphonies and venture into uncharted territory together.

#ai #strategy #leadership #digital #transformation