It was the great Sir Isaac Newton that said “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.” This is as true a phrase to characterize the advance of technological innovation today as it was when he wrote it in 1676. The many amazing discoveries that are made each day would not be possible if not for the hard work of those innovators that came before us.
The Challenge
There is one big difference between Newton’s time and now, and that is the size and the number of the Giants. Much has happened since he described universal gravitation and his laws of motion and things keep changing at an ever-increasing pace.
All you need to do to intuitively see this is compare your parents standard of living at your current age with your own. Or, you can think about the fact that in roughly a decade cell phones have gone from, well, just phones, that few people had to the smart-phones that have become almost ubiquitous today. With all of the advances expected in many fields, from bio-tech to big data, and a globalization trend that hasn’t even scratched the surface of its full potential, most signs point toward a continuation of this exponential growth path at minimum, if not an acceleration.
This represents a great opportunity for those willing and able to ride this wave, but like the declining role of the factory worker in our economy over the past decades, and of the agriculture worker before that, the role of today’s knowledge worker is likely to also change and leave another generation of workers without the skills they need to compete. This has the potential to happen a lot sooner than people think. Whether it is due to the growth in technology mentioned above or the boom in the supply of knowledge workers throughout the developing world, many knowledge professions and industries will continue to be commoditized right out from under the feet of the average first-world worker.
It will take more to ascend to the shoulders of the giants of tomorrow. As we effort to climb up the backs of these giants, they keep getting bigger before us. I believe that the keys to succeeding in this plight will continue to rely more and more on education, the ability to communicate and time management skills. This is true both for individuals and collectively for the organizations and nations they are a part of.
Education
As the boundaries of science and technology expand, it will take more and more knowledge to further push those boundaries. A college degree that used to be a differentiator is today no guarantee of employment. Masters degrees and doctorates are often now the cost of entry to the frontiers of science. These increased minimum requirements are to some extent evidenced by the increased average age of both first time patent filers and Nobel prize winners over time.
Whatever the level you receive, formal education is really just the beginning. With the rate of innovation in many industries, simply keeping up with the latest information is a job in itself. In fact, much of it is often already obsolete soon after one finishes learning it, further highlighting the need to make continued education a core part of your life. Much of the best knowledge is gained outside of formal educational institutions, but it takes a fair degree of motivation and self-discipline to make the pursuit of that knowledge a regular part of your life.
In a world where capital and labor are abundant (and thus cheap), it is your knowledge, your human capital, that will continue to become the commodity that is most valued.
Communication
An ‘alternative’ to more education is further specialization. However, as specializations become narrower in focus, the need for collaboration among them increases. Indeed, over the past 30 years, both the average number of contributors listed per scientific paper and inventors per patent has continued to rise. Looking at the production of almost any product you buy and you will find an array of intermediate products from various companies that went into the creation of that final product you purchased.
Therefore, the value of those that have both the technical knowledge and the communication skills needed to effectively work with others will increase. And by communication skills, I don’t mean basic reading and writing skills or the ability to acceptably get along with people. I mean real emotional intelligence and being a driving force to foster collaboration among many different types of people throughout your team, your organization and the world at large.
The key to discovering the great breakthroughs of the future may increasingly depend on innovators abilities to both do this and to actively cultivate their own personal networks, thus developing their social capital. This is as true for R&D and product development as it is for growing service based industries of our economy.
Time
Another increasingly important commodity will be time. It seems like today, as time goes on, we have more and more things we all must cram into the few precious hours we have in each day. Adherence to my suggestions above certainly doesn’t help the situation. In fact many may agree in principle but can’t imagine having enough time to follow through.
This is why time management skills will be of critical importance. From becoming better at focusing on your true priorities (saying no to everything else), to becoming better at managing and filtering the steady onslaught of information launched in your direction each day, to automating and outsourcing your life where possible, working smarter, not harder is the only way to go.
In a more competitive marketplace, time to market becomes more and more important too, and so this is as true for the individual as it is for the organizations they are a part of.
In Closing
This should not be news for most people reading this. It is true that such skills have always been important and help to define the success of any worker, in any profession. However, I believe that the bar will continue to raise at increasing rates and that many individuals, and the firms that employ them, may find themselves without sufficient skills in these areas to compete. For those that are not consciously trying to develop these skills, the time to start doing so is now.
While the prospect of having to continually climb the back of the giants before you may be a daunting one, we all know what’s below the giant’s back, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be relegated to spending my days climbing around down there.
To give credit where credit is due, the basic analogy that you must “climb the Giant’s back” and that that back is getting higher off the ground as time goes on came from a lecture I attended on the Economics of Science and Technology presented by Professor Gerald Marschke of of the State University of New York at Albany.
