The group of quotes that Albert Einstein left to history can only be compared with those from figures of the stature of Churchill, Josep Pla or Paulo Coelho. It is sometimes difficult to keep track of his statements and to see where they are going, but one of the more popular quotes attributed to the scientist says that he never thinks about the future because it comes soon enough. What would Einstein say if he had lived in an age of such accelerated change as our current time? The Technological Circle of Catalonia (CTecno) brought together more than 50 business people to look into the future and predict what the jobs of the future will be, during the event The new professions in the digital era. And the reflections made by the experts give the father of relativity his due: better not to worry about it, because the future is already here.
“Innovation cycles are increasingly shorter, which means that the need for continuous learning has shot up. For all that we invest in training, it is never enough to cover the gaps in knowledge fast enough,” argues the director general of Strategy and Business at Netmind, Aleix Palau.
The pace of change has accelerated and, for Palau, there are only two strategies for providing a response: guaranteeing the creation of profiles with broad-ranging skills and creating active training networks to guarantee continuous technical learning.
“Innovation cycles are increasingly shorter, which means that the need for continuous learning has shot up"
“Our children do not know what basic skills they will need to fill the jobs of the future, because the learning acquired will be out of date soon after they leave the faculty. Therefore, they have to be given broad-ranging skills, such as communication, problem solving and team working,” insists Palau.
In the creation of active training networks, the executive points to the need to create collaborative and innovative environments in which all the members of an organisation play a dual role of student and trainer, and he gives the example of Twitter. “In 2013, the company saw that mobile technology was the next strategic step, but only nine of their 1,000 engineers had knowledge of programming for Android. The solution came when they took on new profiles and created a knowledge and innovation network that allowed them to get up-to-date and, at the same time, ensure that the next innovation would not catch them off guard.”
Future profiles
The future not only throws up doubts about which skills will be needed to cover future professions. The other great question is where are these professionals to come from. The obvious answer is from the faculties. And it is true that universities like UPC already have a catalogue of training programmes for jobs that are beginning to appear, such as degrees in biotechnology, masters in drones or the Internet of Things.
3D clothes designers, digital chefs, regulators or lawyers for cryptocurrency could be some of the professions of the future
But the university provides “only” 50% of the answer. “The professionals in the jobs of the future will both be people with skills that are now new or that we still know nothing of, such as workers recycled and imprinted by organisations that are going in a futuristic direction,” says the Business Manager of IthinkUPC, Ramon Martí, who describes the profile of the next employees as “people with capacity to understand the technological transitions, expansionists, capable of optimising the technology to make it useful for society and with arguments to rebuff the innovation trolls.”
Martí dares to play the fortune teller game and points to different professions that could become reality in the next few years. For the expert, innovation such as 3D printing, digital banking or the Internet of Things will require new profiles. 3D clothes designers, digital chefs, regulators and lawyers of cryptocurrencies, strategists of new currency systems, lifestyle auditors, efficiency consultants, architects specialised in augmented reality or designers of avatars, among others.
Whatever the case, the challenge will be in the development of Big Data. “In the future we will need professionals capable of managing large volumes of data, but also to eliminate them with everything that protections and privacy supposes,” concludes Martí.