How to Use Emerging Technologies to Create a Future Relevant Career?

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Emerging Technologies India

5 min readJan 10, 2016

Almost all organizations are facing continuing challenges managing work-life balance (now called work-life integration ) and emerging technologies are making all that easier. Adoption of emerging technologies requires re-skilling their workforce on a very large scale, and this also requires layoffs of those who cannot adopt or blend easily and poaching those who are ahead of others and can lead. So what is a perfectly sustainable strategy here?

Emerging Technologies and the Future of Work:

Emerging technologies such as alternative energy, big data, internet of things, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, personal drones, robotics and virtual reality are creating huge skill gaps. In the employment market, some of these gaps are already evident and this will only get larger. Technology is now automating more and more jobs, not only that, even the job that remains are witnessing skill gaps as technology is changing the very nature of the job and how we work, and not giving us enough time to adapt.

Learning and re-learning are becoming an integrated part of any career in new emerging technologies. “Work is worship” will be a false statement. “What is the point of work?” will be a winning argument.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -Alvin Toffler

Industries that don’t adopt technologies have died and with every company is becoming a technology company this statement is becoming more and more evident.

On-demand Economy:

Permanent full-time day jobs are increasingly being replaced by an anywhere, anytime work model. Emerging technologies enable on-demand economy, as now work can be achieved using smartphone applications and various automated workflows that do not require the worker to be in the office. Services industries like transportation, groceries, and restaurants are giving more and more choices to the consumer and consumer is winning in this game. All that is possible with new technology companies that fulfill consumer demands via immediate provisioning of services.

The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience. Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease. If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.
— Ev Williams, Twitter co-founder

The competitive advantage of on-demand companies is totally based on their ability to aggregate lots and lots of resources from their suppliers and integrate them with the trust needed to attract customers. So these new on-demand firms are trying to become trusted brands in their targeted market segment, by relying on a freelance workforce instead of on the fulltime permanent company workforce. In this process, they’re reshaping both the structure of companies and the very nature of work

Training and Education:

Our education system will need to change, and we need to change how to learn? What will it take to learn emerging technologies? A formal system or informal system. You just can’t read formally directed, fixed focused and supplied content –as that won’t teach you problem-solving and that won’t give you experiential knowledge; so you need to learn while doing it.

The Internet of Things is ground zero for a new phase of global transformation powered by technology innovation, generating significant economic opportunities and reshaping industries.

-Marc Benioff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Salesforce.com, USA

Humans must adapt to collaborate with machines, and when that collaboration happens, the end result is stronger.

-Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Learning IoT ( Internet of Things )

Learning Big Data

Learn 3D Printing

Industry research reports

By 2025, Internet of things applications could have $11 trillion impact and this gives rise to new business models that could alter the basis of competition

Internet of Things is going to change the future of manufacturing. Here is an interesting article where executives at Robert Bosch and McKinsey experts discuss the technology-driven changes that promise to trigger a new industrial revolution. Similarly, if you are a mechanical engineer you should know how Mechanical Engineering in the Internet of Things Era will work

The rise of blended workforce involving close collaboration between humans and intelligent machines in the form of augmentation. Examples include humans collaborating with robots on factory floors or augmented reality applications to assist technicians in complex repair tasks.

Healthcare Internet of Things market segment is poised to hit $117 billion by 2020, with big players like IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and GE; creating sensors and computing to protect you and your family health. That include home monitoring and remote care, and patient engagement. Philips also believes that Internet of Things is revolutionizing the healthcare where consumers, patients and those working in medical professions will all need to alter their mindsets to take full advantage of this revolution in healthcare

Commercialization of software application in a traditional industrial sector is still in infancy stage so many of new fellow graduates from traditional education streams will have new exciting careers in new technologies and they should not overlook this career route. With IoT (Internet of Things) coming up with current speed, soon industry will be talking about the need of mechanical engineers.

What Can You Do?

You need to be current, flexible, adaptable and willing to learn anything new. With the abundance of startups and every large company is starting its own digital initiatives to sustain in this digital economy, you are going to see a lot of changes, a lot of new career routes and job titles. The market is full of job opportunities and mediocrity is not an option. There are technologies they did not exist 5 years back, and what’s coming next and how do you plan to learn that is the key.

So, to create a future market relevant career, learn and re-learn. Ready or not, but emerging technologies is going to impact employment and policies and will increasingly transform the global economy, even displacing many in the human workforce. Below quote from Eric Hoffer was never so true before

In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Nothing stops you from becoming a DIY data scientist.

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