These alterations include the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to work. Those entering the labour market, or self-employment, should reflect on the radical alterations that are currently transforming labour markets. Tom, highlighted the importance of listening, learning and doing. Panellist Ghada Othman provided a checklist for future proofing a career – be bold, own the journey, keep evolving and developing, make a positive impact and enjoy the journey – have fun. This is to take control of your own career and construct your own future. Second, there is perhaps only one way of coping with an uncertain future. New technology provides new opportunities to create value by creating new forms of work and new forms of firms. The emergence of born global firms highlights the role that web-based platforms and the internet have played in enabling the establishment of smaller firms that are able to transact business in many countries. This might be associated with the gig economy, but for others self-employment provides flexibility as workers can balance their livelihoods with liveability. For some, self-employment is considered to be problematic.
These include a shift towards self-employment and freelance work, but it also includes the emergence of born global firms. Two important points emerged from the discussion at the University of Birmingham Dubai. The only prediction that can be made is that the future is uncertain and that it is in a process of becoming.
There are important questions to address including ‘which jobs and tasks will be destroyed and replaced by machines?’ and ‘how to manage the development of a career that might need to last for nearly five decades?’ It is important to remember that no one can predict the future. The acceleration in the pace and reach of process and technological innovations presents a challenge for parents, their children and for all students – for all those at the start of their journey within the labour market. Thus, it took the telephone 75 years to obtain 50 million subscribers, television 13 years, the internet 4 years, Facebook 2 years, YouTube 10 months and Angry Birds 35 days(1). One of our panellists Tom Urquhart, radio and television presenter provided an excellent example of this pace of acceleration. The pace of change, the pace of job destruction and creation, defines this period of process and technological disruption in the labour market from other periods. Part of this process includes acceleration – the speeding up of the production of value by the application of new process and technological developments. The second process includes the replacement of variable costs, meaning people – workers, in production processes with machines – simple machines or much more complex computers and their algorithms. This second process destroys jobs and creates jobs – it transforms the future of work. This transformation process includes the transformation of raw materials in to aspirational products or services, but it also includes another process of transformation. Central to capitalism is a process that transforms inputs in to new forms of value. Capitalism is an evolving system of value creation. We are living with uncertainty – uncertain lives, uncertain futures. But the future is the future and not the now.
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