An event to bring together Academia, Government, and Industry to share views on how the world of work will change in the future, share learning, and broaden perspectives.
How will successful organizations adjust to the increasing rate of change in markets, technology, and exploding complexity? Will “AI” further complicate the picture, or can it help? What will be the key skills for the future, and what will work look like? What will be the shape of organizations, and what is the future for different jobs?
The discussion will be stimulated by key speakers from MIT’s “Work of the Future” initiative, Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, Lancaster Business School, the Conference Board, Government policy makers, and major companies.
Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.
In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.
Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.
He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.
He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.
Elisabeth Reynolds is a Partner in Unless, an investment firm focused on industrial transformation, and a Lecturer in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She was Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development at the National Economic Council until October, 2022. During her time at the White House, she helped lead the Administration’s work on supply chain challenges, national manufacturing strategy, regional economic development and the broader industrial policy agenda. Before working in the Biden Administration, Reynolds was the executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center and co-led, with Professors David Autor and David Mindell, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. In both roles, she worked on manufacturing-related issues including growing innovative firms to scale and technology adoption by small and large firms.
The remarkable innovations that imbue machines with human and superhuman capabilities are generating uncertainty and anxiety about the work of the future. Whether and how the current period of technological disruption differs from prior industrial epochs is a source of vigorous debate. But certainly there is an urgent sense of collective concern about how fast-moving technological innovations can be harnessed for social benefit. Dr. Elisabeth Reynolds discusses MIT’s Work of the Future initiative and recent research on the relationship between technology, work and skills. She explores the lines between hype and reality, as well as gaps in our knowledge that future research should try to address.
At PwC Rob works with partners across academia, government, technology vendors, start-ups, and other key stakeholders, in order to drive innovation within the Firm and develop new services for clients. He is an evangelist for responsible technology and promote awareness of the growing ethical agenda relating to AI. He is an advisory board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI, an adviser to The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems. Rob will describe PwC’s experiences in business and workforce transformation.
Vincent Maret is Open Innovation Director with Bouygues SA, where he focuses on open innovation, business development, and business transformation consulting across the whole group, with an emphasis on digital transformation, energy, and smartcities. Maret has experience as Marketing Manager, Deputy R&D Director with Bouygues Telecom, and previously as a Project Executive with IBM Global Services. He was the founder and CEO of the US Office of Bouygues Telecom (now Winnovation). Maret serves on the board of directors of Bouygues Asia, is also a board member of Cap Digital, serving as president of its Membership Committee, and sits on the board of ESPCI alumni. Maret is a graduate of ESPCI ParisTech with a master’s in physics and a master’s in chemistry and holds a master's in electronics from UPMC Paris.
This talk examines lessons learned at Bouygues, along with their implications and outcomes, including:
Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She brings deep expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence, data science and computation. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer, and the Association for Computing Machinery. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Career award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship. Rus earned her PhD in computer science from Cornell University.
Daniela Rus will give a future view of where technology could take us in the future and the wider societal issues that will need to be resolved.
Philip developed the Global Human Resource Research Alliance, a research group involving 30 companies worldwide - American Express, BAE Systems, BT, EDF, GE, General Mills, IBM, IKEA, Infosys, Matsushita, Oracle, Procter and Gamble, Rolls-Royce, SANYO, Sealed Air, Shell, Siemens, TCL, TNT, and Unilever. The project represents the most comprehensive worldwide research study in the subject. The contribution to knowledge has been to identify both innovative and best HR practices within companies, and to show how human capital integrates with key dimensions of social and organisational capital.
Philip is also engaged in work on corporate governance, focusing primarily on the dynamics of boards of directors. He was involved in research for the Higgs Review on the Effectiveness of Non-Executive Directors, and he is also involved in examining the nature of succession within companies, carried out in collaboration with an international headhunting organisation. He consults to a number of organisations in both the private and public sector, and is a member of the Cambridge Corporate Governance Network (CCGN).
Philip Stiles will talk about the nature of motivation as the nature of jobs changes.
My doctoral degree is from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. I joined Lancaster University in 2013. From 2003 to 2013, I was Asst /Assoc (tenured)/Full (tenured) professor at the University of Toledo, US. I have an undergraduate degree in Science and a graduate degree in telecommunications/electronics Engineering. Prior to my academic career, I worked as product engineer in the telecommuncations equipment manufacturing sector.
My external appointments/fellowships inlclude Visiting Scholar/Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan CISR (since 2016), Lever Hulme Research Fellow, UK (2017-2018), and Visiting Professor at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (since 2007). I serve as Senior Editor at Information Systems Journal, as Associate Editor at Information Systems Research, and as Editorial Review Board Member at Journal of the AIS and Journal of Strategic Information Systems.
Monideepa Tarafdar will discuss human capabilities needed for successful deployment of AI capability and digital wellbeing in the workplace.
Edward Jakeman will talk about his experiences in managing technology change and employee involvement, culture and skills in the light of the massive transformation of BT’s Voice Service platforms.
Steve Dale is a certified Knowledge Management specialist and facilitator/researcher for Warwick Business School's Innovation Network (KIN). KIN is a non-profit practitioners’ network of large, predominantly blue-chip organisations, dedicated to sharing innovation and organisational learning practice. His current research focuses on the changing nature of work and the workplace through the introduction of 'Intelligent Automation' technologies such as AI and RPA.
Steve Dale will describe how AI and RPA can augment (but not replace) the skills and capabilities of the human workforce.