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our guest today is Ravi Kumar president of emphasis and we are speaking with him
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about how the emerging world of Technology will shape the jobs of the future Ravi thank you so much for speaking with
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knowledge it was named local for the opportunity so I won't talk to start by
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talking about a recent panel at the Milken conference that you were a participant and one of the things that
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you said on that panel is that seventy five million old jobs will go away by 2022 and 135 million new jobs will be
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created because of new technologies so the two questions I have are how will the jobs of the future be different than
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the jobs that are being eliminated and what are the main factors that are driving this change thank you so much
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Mukul that's a that's a great question actually in fact every large enterprise
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and every large you know government ecosystem is thinking about this fact about automation AI machine learning and
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new age digital technology is taking away jobs of the past and creating jobs of the future that's happened in most
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tech revolutions in the past but this this to me is one of the biggest and it's a tectonic shift in the way
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businesses and operating models have evolved in the last few years I would think there will be fundamentally two
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big shifts the first being a lot of repetitive tasks are going to be automated with machines and AI software
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in your workspace so when that happens the cognitive non repetitive tasks will be done by humans so that's one big
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shift so humans have to start looking at it as a way to amplify their jobs using
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machines to amplify the jobs and the shift from repetative to non repetitive tasks so that's a big shift the second I
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would say and this is one of my favorites institutions enterprises will from people workplace to a people plus
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machine workplace and if I extend the thought they will move from people plus gig plus machines machines will do the
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problem-solving the gig the gig economy which will give you variability of your workforce agility of your workforce and
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scale and the private human capital you have as I call it you know I kind of make this distinction of public and
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private human capital will switch to creative jobs or problem finding so repetative test to non-repetitive and
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the second is moving from problem solving to problem finding or more creative jobs so humans will then you
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know switch to transition to creative jobs so these are the two big shifts in the way work packets and in workplaces
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won't be so I'd like to drill a little deeper into into this issue but before
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we do that what are some of the opportunities and some of the challenges in implementing this vision that you
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just described you know the fundamental shift on this is is lifelong learning you know all of us have moved from you
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know at least when I grew up we we had a linear equation of studies to work and I
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call that linear straight line and we're going to move to a continuum of lifelong
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learning which essentially means you have to be a lifelong learner and you have to learn to learn and learn to
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unlearn and learn to learn that switch is a big switch for individuals to have a culture of being on that learning
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curve for all their lives so that's there that's a big switch in the way you
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see see things the second aspect is and we kind of discussed in one of our previous conversations which is about
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curiosity or problem finding lines between industries have blurred as lines between industries have blurred you have
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to start thinking in a much cross-functional way there isn't a discipline or a
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disciplinary approach to work anymore and that will that will make disciplines beyond core engineering and stem which
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was used for core technologies to diverse into a much cognitive diverse pool and I think in the digital age
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applying technologies to businesses will be a much bigger virtue than the technology itself so on one side of the
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spectrum you need deep programmers on the other side of the spectrum you need individuals who can contextualize it to
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businesses and apply it which means they need to be they need to be people who can actually find problems people who
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can actually apply to businesses so you need a much diverse workforce coming from liberal arts coming from design
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coming from humanity coming from anthropology and disciplines of that kind that's a big shift from the
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previous era where the tech revolution kind of got a braced with technologists and technologists actually created the
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divide and this is an opportunity to actually bridge the divide interesting I mean what you're saying makes a lot of
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sense and I wonder I've been given your role at Infosys you probably see a lot
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of different companies in different industries across the world based on your perspective which industries do you
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think are best prepared for this shift and which countries are best prepared to offer these changes in the future of
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jobs samokhin you know that's a that's a very intriguing question I would say you
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know industries which had a legacy of adoption of core technologies or traditional technologies
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counter-intuitively have a much difficult task of repurposing themselves because they have
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a legacy to deal with so that's one aspect of reflecting which industry will
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play a role which essentially means you could leapfrog multiple if you're in industry which not which
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did not adapt to traditional technologies and be ahead of the curve you have that opportunity now if you
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have not done it in the previous era the second way of seeing this is industry lines are blurring you know every time I
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meet a CX of a of an enterprise they're not worried about the peers they worried
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about what other industries are doing because they don't know who their competition is you know if I meet a bank
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CSC XO of a bank most times I get to hear tell us what you're doing with retail clients we want to know about
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them and the same with all other industries so industry lines are blurring so you really don't know where
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to actually how to measure you know what you want to benchmark yourself with so that's one other aspect of seeing this
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if I go back to society's or countries countries in the Asia Pacific the emerging ones like India China which did
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not have legacy systems and legacy processes to deal with a leapfrogging and creating digital platforms which are
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significantly superior to some of the developed nations and that's because the
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developed nations have a deal with a legacy and when they have to deal with the legacy they have to repurpose
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financial capital to fund the new and they have to repurpose human capital to fund new while the emerging economies
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have this if they have the vision they have the opportunity to leapfrog into a completely new digital paradigm without
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even bothering what the legacy is all about so I kind of have and that's why I
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said it's very intriguing who is gonna win win the race if I look at China which traditionally did labor arbitrage
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to create a massive manufacturing ecosystem today is in an inflection point at the crossroads where automation
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can take away that leverage of labor arbitrage because the percentage of Labor Robert percentage of labor in a in
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a manufacturing shop floor is going down and it could reassure manufacturing back
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to the developed nations if they don't embrace automation in a big way so I would think this is
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this is a very complicated you know paradox of sorts for economies to deal with it right well I think that both
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what you're saying is fascinating because if you take a country like China do you see this model that you described
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earlier of people plus machines plus gig do you see that playing out into China and and how is it differ different from
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the way it plays out say in a place like the US so it does you know in fact I actually think if you look at density of
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robots on a shop floor China doesn't rank number one Korea ranks ranks much higher than them
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Taiwan drags higher than them for the manufacturing manufacturing space Germany is doing pretty well in fact a
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lot of a lot of manufacturing is getting restored back so China really has to scale up on it and they have to
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cannibalize their ownselves to to get there and that's the point I was making earlier being an incumbent is
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not necessarily a competitive advantage in in a era where you can leapfrog and create necessarily a completely
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different operating model I think that that that's true moving slightly away
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from manufacturing into a service sector see like banking and insurance as you look to the future of work in these in a
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sector like banking and financial services what kind of jobs do you think are likely to go away and what kind of
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new jobs will come into being as a result of these technology shifts that are going on yeah you know going to a
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bank to do a transaction the traditional way of doing it is going to switch to the bank coming to your home and the
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band coming to your app and that's that's happened in literally in every
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country in the world and in fact in the emerging markets the amount of transactions you can do do online and do
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in a digital way and the digital Bank is much much superior to doing it you know if you if you go to
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developing nations because they're just leapfrogged you know multiple leaders to
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get there so that's taken the whole banking revolution into a very different
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paradigm if you go to underdeveloped nations the unbanked which is a significant population in in
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underdeveloped nations are getting access to a bank through the mobile phone you know all of Africa does
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banking on mobile phone and mobile service providers are becoming banks for for those citizens so banking has taken
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a very different paradigm in underdeveloped nations where you can literally Bank you know you can bank the
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unbanked by by very different industry industry paradigm and the and and the lines between these industries are
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blurring because everybody has a chance to be a bank of the future for those for
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those for those nations so how many jobs of the future need to balance between technical skills on the one hand and
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emotional and social skills on the other hand and also what are some of the implications for blue-collar and
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white-collar work that you see coming down the road that's a fascinating question because you know as much as
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technologies of the future are going to change the paradigm of work workforces and workplaces as well on one side you
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need deep programming skills to build these technologies I think the bigger virtue is to apply this technologies to
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businesses apply this technologies to a personal lives and our professional lives and the societies we live in and
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that embrace will need an emotional quotient a empathy quotient to make technology live our lives better finally
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that's what technology is all about it has to make lives better and for that to
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happen my sense is we're gonna move not just having deep programming skills with stem
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stem talent but we're going to have inclusion of liberal arts an inclusion of design an inclusion of humanities
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inclusion of disciplines which are completely away from the stem you know the stem equivalent if I'm an
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and that never happened in the tech space when the tech revolution happened it is going to happen in the digital age
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when these when these technologies are going to be embraced across industries and it will give you the emotional and
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the and the and the human aspect of of technology so I think liberal arts design and disciplines of this kind will
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play a much bigger virtue I also believe that we're going to move from T skills
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to Z skills and this is my you know my way of articulating it these skills are the skills where you specialize in an
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idea but you kind of have a broad embrace on things around you and that's how you know educational ecosystems are
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built we're going to move to Z skills which means you learn unlearn and learn
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on a constant basis and there isn't a discipline so I almost call it an entire
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disciplinary approach to education so you're spot on you know the technology
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is important but a bigger virtue is to apply them in a human and an empathetic way to businesses that's that's the
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future right as you think about the future of work and I know you think a lot about it some of the biggest risks
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that keep you up at night yeah and what do you hear from the people you talk to in different companies and different
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industries what are they most worried about what can be done about those risks to do it so that everyone can sleep
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better at night yeah I think you're you know this is a follow-up question but
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you you teed it up before I asking the blue collar and white collar it's kind
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of in the same space zone you know across the world everybody now recognizes rescaling is very important
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repurposing is very important but everybody is talking about rescaling white-collar
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jobs what happens to blue-collar jobs what happens to a factory worker what happens to a technician what happens to
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a bartender there was this distinctive difference between blue and white collar jobs and how you scale and rescale in
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the past but the embrace of digital is so overarching and so pervasive that we need to start thinking about blue collar
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jobs and I think you know that line will blur and you're gonna have new college
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options very little infrastructure has been established for blue collar jobs or jobs of the future so that's a big risk
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I I believe and that's a that's an uphill task because they're not ready to
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get rescaled and you are almost pushing them to rescale in fact our own initiative on community colleges is a
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phenomenal example of how we're trying to do that the second aspect Mukul I don't know whether you have thought
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about it for this rescaling task which is such a such a big mission governments academic institutions and enterprises
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have to come together to to take the owners you know who own set is it the employee or the enterprise or the
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government or the academic institutions who owns it but you know governments have wired in a very different way
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governments are wired for the first 15 to 20 years of their of citizens lives and they're wired for the last 20 years
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of citizens lives but all this change happens in the middle and all the risk killing is needed in the middle and how
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do government's re-architect then their own infrastructure to to deal with the
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middle I think is a big risk we all foresee and how do the educational ecosystems get up to create lifelong
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learners I think these are the three things I would say I would lose sleep on how is Infosys what his interest is
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doing to try to mitigate some of these risks so you know you know in our own small way we are making impact on all
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these three areas we have a learning platform called wingspan which is being which is a platform for enterprises to
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create learn for their employees this is our own customers not just our employees and
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that is to create an embrace of learning across the enterprise including blue-collar jobs in the in the aspect
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round round working with governments we are very actively pursuing with governments in fact what we are hiring
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from schools in the US with our six centers is a is a partnership with local state governments and academic
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institutions to create future talent talent which does not exist in the market and to create lifelong learners
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we have the Infosys foundation in the United States which is in the top three foundations for computer science
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education in k-12 schools and our endeavor is to teach teachers so that they are equipped enough to teach
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students and teach students and we're doing this a massive scale and I think
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that's in a small way our contribution to theirs I would say challenges and opportunities of the future then end
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with one last question let's imagine that among the people who are listening
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to this conversation there are some young people who are just about to graduate from college and enter the
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workforce for the first time what advice would you give them about things that they can do today so that they can have
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a meaningful career over the next 30 to 40 years you know that's a that's a
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phenomenal question you know I actually think being a lifelong learner it's probably the most important aspect of
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this and because I can academic institutions the way they're wired you finish higher studies you get to work
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and you think you're done with learning I think you need to get back into the
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mind frame of being a lifelong which essentially means what you learn today will will get obsolete and in literally
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in a few a few months sort of or or less than a year and you should be prepared to challenge the status quo and and
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create your own you know your own career path that and that I think is the only way
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you could be on this constant learning journey I would say that's the that's
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the area we are all entering into and if they want to stay relevant they have to
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be paranoid about the change around them and accordingly react Andy Grove the former CEO of Intel used to say only the
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paranoid survive you know that that might be a good mindset you know absolute for the future absolutely
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Robbie thank you so much for speaking with knowledge at Wharton Thank You McCool for this opportunity thank you so
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much for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge Wharton UPenn edu
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