Year: 2020

Everyone’s talking about “the future of work” — but is that future already here? We’re hosting this chat because we’re interested in discussing what the future means for companies and their workforces. Every field has been touched by digitalization, and new technologies promise to increase efficiencies by automating routine tasks and giving customers immediate access to new experiences. (Uber and Lyft wouldn’t exist without the smartphone, after all.) What does this mean for companies? How is work changing? And what does this mean for employees? Let’s talk about the new mindsets, skills, and career trajectories people need to continue cultivating to contribute to their organizations and find meaning in the work they do.

We hope you’ll join us Tuesday, Feb. 25, for this conversation.

To participate, head over to MIT Sloan Management Review’s Twitter feed (@mitsmr) at the chat start time, or search Twitter for the hashtag #MITSMRChat to follow along.

Add this event to your Outlook or iCal calendar.

Questions we’ll discuss include the following:

1. Do you think employees want different things from their jobs and workplaces than they did in the past?
2. Do you feel that companies are helping their employees develop and maintain the skills they need in order to be successful in the future?
3. How is technology changing how work gets done?
4. When technology is used to automate or augment certain tasks, what opportunities does that create for workers?
5. How should organizations think about workforce planning over the next one to three years?

In advance of this chat, consider reviewing the following content from MIT SMR:

How Will Digital Trends Shape Your Career?

Take this short self-assessment to see how new ways of working are transforming organizations and what that might mean for your career.

Revisiting the Jobs Artificial Intelligence Will Create

MIT SMR’s Paul Michelman interviews authors Paul Daugherty and H. James Wilson about new categories of human jobs that have emerged as a result of advancing technologies.

Redefining Work for New Value: The Next Opportunity

Authors John Hagel, Jeff Schwartz, and Maggie Wooll suggest that the automation of routine tasks can free up workers to focus on new opportunities for value creation.

Leisure Is Our Killer App

Take six minutes or so to explore why letting our minds wander fuels creativity — and gives us an edge over machines.

Clayton Christensen’s Theory of Disruptive Innovation first came to public attention 25 years ago. Christensen presciently explained that fast-moving disrupters entering the market with cheap, low-quality goods could undermine companies wed to prevailing beliefs about competitive advantage. In the last decade, however, the profile of disrupters has changed dramatically. The critical difference is that they now enter the market with products and services that are every bit as good as those offered by legacy companies. Their ascendance doesn’t undermine Christensen’s theory. In fact, they expand its reach and vitality — and make it harder than ever for traditional companies to compete.

The Classic Theory of Disruption

Before we look at how things have evolved, let’s briefly review why Christensen’s theory proved so influential and, indeed, disruptive to existing ideas of competitive advantage.1 Traditional strategy had been anchored on the notion of “generic strategies” in which a company could compete at the high end by differentiating, at the low end by pursuing cost leadership, or focus on serving a specific niche exceptionally well.2 Christensen illustrated a way for new entrants to cheerfully ignore these basic strategy dynamics. He showed how a new kind of dangerous competitor could wreak havoc by entering at the low end of a market, where margins are thin and customers are reluctant to pay for anything they don’t need.

The new entrant comes in with a product or service that’s cheaper and more convenient but that doesn’t offer the same level of performance on the dominant criteria that most customers expect from incumbents that have been working on the technology for years. The incumbents feel they can ignore the newcomer. Not only are its products inferior, but its margins are lower and its customers less loyal. Incumbents choose instead to focus on sustaining innovation — making improvements to the features that have been of most value to their high-end customers.

Christensen showed the downside of ignoring the newcomers. Eventually, as these upstarts improve, they become pretty good at the old dominant criteria. They also develop such solid innovations at the low end that they bring new customers into the market. Having doubled down on what has always worked, the incumbents fail to notice two things.