By Dr. Anupam Narula, Professor of Marketing, Amity University Uttar Pradesh (AUUP), Noida & Ms. Shilpi Narula, Ram-Eesh International School, Greater Noida
The needed skills and competencies are changing at very fast pace than they are being taught and acquired bylearners.The current dynamic work environment demand learners command lifelong learning capabilities, high emotional, social and cultural intelligence, critical thinking, communication skills, and knowledge to interact with and create new technologies that propel the life cycle. Traditional intellectual skills like analyzing, synthetizing, conceptualizing on their own will not be satisfactory in the new normal and critical thinking (formulating the right questions) and evaluative thinking (providing the right answers)are required to come to the forefront. Hard skillswill be usually reduced only to intellectual competencies and are required to be refined along with soft skills—common sense for frugal innovations, ability to deal with people, open mindedness, emotional intelligence, persuasion skills, moral character and responsible consumption. The psychological demands of presentvolatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, prompts the education providers to cultivate basic human qualities of thought, dialogue, empathy and morality in learners of management education, which have not yet been visualized by conventional educators. All this will be required if we want that new upcoming graduates to have control over latest disruptive technologies. It is anticipated, that the current role of management education will have much higher and encompassing purpose.
It is very important for young millennial students to choose the right career path which matches with the future skill sets requiredby the Industry 4.0 and to succeed in entrepreneurial ventures. It has been predicted that half a billion users will save 2 hours a day as a result of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools. AI will play a top 5 investment priority for more than 30% of CEO’sand AI technologies will be in almost every new software product in the new normal. Some 800 million jobs will disappearand taken over bymachines by 2025. AI will reach human levels byaround 2029 and everyone will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold by 2045(Gartner,2017).The Industry 4.0, (Intelligence Revolution)will replace not only human hands but also human brains; the time of machines will require new forms of work designand new ways of talent mix in management education.
We need to adapt to the changing speed after this pandemic and try to capture the most accurate images of future opportunities. It can be seen that the management education and research in the next normal can only occur by using ‘Digital Value Co-creation Networks’ (DVN’s).The choices that young and old millennials must make to be based on having a clear vision about how the Digital Value Co-creation Networks (DVN’s) will work in a collaborative way with humans as this will affect the learning and working design system in the future.
The Nobel LaureateHerbert A. Simon (1996) has called“Learning by doing”as the most promising way of experiential learningthat is, learning in ways that are much like the work-life for which the learners are being educated. He has expressed that this way of learning helps to explore and specify the ways of how, why, and for whom the model of learning is to be practiced.
Stephen W. Hawking, Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge called that success in creating Artificial Intelligence (AI) would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. The thing that’s going to make Artificial Intelligence so powerful is its ability to learn, and the way AI learns is to look at human culture.
The future trends in the new normal will lead to huge demand of talented young and older millennialsin almost all industrial sectors whose skill sets resides firstin the combination of digital marketing and data analytics skills which can deliver connected customer experience that is MARTECH(The blend of marketing and technology talent), Second in the combination of technology and innovative financial skills that aims to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services that is FINTECH (The blend oftechnology and financeinnovative talent),Thirdthere is enormous growth in welfare and healthcare services in developed countries due to aging population, which led to combination of health tech savvy professional in demand that is HEALTECH (The blend of technology and healthcare talent), Fourth isthe emergenceofnew generation of professional service delivery models even new business models that is COBOTICS (The blend of cognitive technology with humans service providers), Fifthis to deliver cost-effective solutions to potentially billions of people, in particular those at the bottom and middle of the income pyramid that is through AIFI(Blend of Artificial Intelligence and Frugal Innovation)and Sixthis to ensure that new technologies are well undertaken and developed with the aim of helping society to navigate the deployments in fairly, ethical and safe manner that is AIGOV(The blend of Artificial Intelligence and Governance).
The young and older millennials are suggested to upgrade their skill sets in the post COVID era by pursuing the following specialized ‘Nano degree courses’preferred by most of the companies,which will help young millennials to get new jobs offers faster,older millennials toswitch to new careers and Gen X to get promotion and harbor the potential to support the lifelong learning as follows:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)which includes- Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, AugmentedReality, Virtual Reality,Natural Language processing with Python,Real Time Targeting, Autonomous Vehicles, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Edge Computing and Block Chain Technology.
- MARTECH-DesignThinking, Knowledge Management, Self-Service Touchless Technologies (SSTT), Data Driven Marketing, Voice Search Engine Optimization (VSEO).
- FINTECH-FinancialInnovation, Fintech for Financial Inclusion, Digital Transformation in Financial Services, ROBO-Driven Wealth Management and Corporate Techno-Accountability
- Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
- Artificial Intelligence and Frugal Innovation (AIFI)
- Cloud Based Technology- Cloud security and Cyber Security
- Collaborative Robots (COBOTICS) and Internet Of Things (IOT)
- Computational Ethics(AIGOV)-Corporate AI Governance Models and Corporate Ethical and Societal Principles
- HEALTECH- Healthcare Technology
- International Artificial Intelligence Standards
The above “Nanodegree courses” are offered online by course providers like ‘Coursera’, ‘edX’,‘Udacity’and ‘Udemy’which harbor the potential to support the lifelong learning at optimal or no cost at all designed by the industry experts for intelligence era.
Coursera is an American massive open online education platform that offers massive open online courses, specializations, degrees, professional and master track courses. It partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer online courses in varied disciplines like Soft skills, Social sciences, language learning, Healthcare, Information technology, Data science, Business, Computer science, Arts and Humanities, Physical science and Engineering etc.
edX is an American massive open online course provider created by Harvard and MIT and hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines like Computerscience, Language, Datascience, Business and Management, Engineering, Humanities, etc to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge.
Udacity offers quality curriculum designed with top-tier industry partners, so that learners can learn the high-impact skills that top companies want and targets more vocational training programs online in the area of Programming, Data science, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Marketing, and more. They adopt the learner centric approach through ‘Learning by doing’ with real-world projects and other hands-on exercises that lead to real skills mastery.
Udemyis an American massive open online course provider aimed at professional adults and students. It offers all kinds collection of top-rated business and technical courses through online learning to upskill and transform the lives of learners in meaningful way in the area of design, development, marketing, IT and software, Personal development, Business, Photography, music etc.
We are seeing profound shifts in employment scenario in the new normal, changes in learning methodology and learner’s needs, so the challenging question for the learners is how to develop capabilities amongst this VUCA scenario to enhance the career life cycle, get promotion and switch to new careers. These dynamic industry oriented educational courses that are instrumental for solving complex real-world problems will be able to efficiently and effectively bridge the gap between learners and Industry 4.0 thus shining light on educational services innovations that provide lifelong learners with personalized yet cost-effective,experientiallearning opportunities.
Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)
