On the 4th of March, we invited Ignacio Villoch, a specialist in Open Innovation and Digital Transformation at BBVA, to talk about digitalisation and the future of work.
Villoch started his presentation with a bold statement: the future is not something we guess. We design it, we discuss it, we build it. Each of us is responsible for building the future.
The most valuable assets of an innovative organisation are its people. Our responsibility as leaders, innovators, creators or products, is to make sure the ones in charge of the future will be equipped with the right skills. Our uniqueness lies in our capacity to develop soft skills that imply curiosity, creativity, empathy, humour and passion.
When it comes to the jobs of the future, Villoch ensured us that 85% of them hadn’t been created yet. We will solve problems that don’t exist yet. 47% of the current jobs, the repetitive, boring and unsafe, will be taken over by robots and automation. Moreover, it’s not only jobs that will disappear. Industries like insurance, physical retail, oil and gas will suffer massive changes that will determine a reconfiguration of our urban spaces.
Our guest told us about his experience of interviewing Nadine, an android with emotions and facial expressions developed by the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Nadine speaks several languages and has developed conversational and interactions skills.
We’ll be happy to continue doing the creative work that requires emotion and a deep understanding of human nature. We will have to learn to collaborate with robots and adopt the latest technological advances rather than compete against them. In the Madrilène hospitals that have adopted AI, radiologists are more efficient, more accurate and manage to solve medical cases better and faster than before.
Villoch left us with a quote from Charles Kettering: “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”
