“The future does not just come – it is made. And it is made by us!”

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download

New work, future of work, new worlds of work. Let’s start with a bit of terminology. How are they different?
I have no idea! To me, it’s kind of a ‘bullshit bingo’! At best, these are marketing terms for selling things that have been around forever. These terms mean what people want them to mean. Work has evolved ever since it was “invented”.

So are these terms about as useless as Industry 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0?
We left the industrial age behind long ago anyway. According to the UN, we’ve been living in the digital age since 2010; industrialization is over.

Who’s living there? The West, or the world?
Even largely agrarian societies are benefiting from and taking part in digitalization. So, for example, Indian farmers in the World Food Program are paid in “stablecoins” which allows them to participate in the business cycle – that wasn’t possible before.

How will we work in the future? In many sectors, AI and RPA are already the norm. So what’s next?
The shift has more to do with structures and processes, and less to do with technology. Robots and AI may be quite useful in certain areas, but that’s not the point. We’ll be seeing production relocated back to our own countries. Take IKEA’s Billy bookcase, for example: At the moment, it’s predominantly made in China, South Korea and Georgia. Now we’ll have a network of carpenters in Europe, with a local digital production machine that doesn’t cost half a million euros like it did just six years ago – but just 65,000 euros. Production costs are falling, because production preparation costs are getting so much cheaper. You code a couple of lines (or you get a digital construction plan instantly pinged over), and you can start producing a bookcase on the spot. The same is true of clothing and various other products. Production processes and therefore also value creation are becoming more local again, and they’re also becoming more individual as well.

So Western Europe will go back to producing its innovations itself?
Sure. Take the food industry and the rise of food labs. At the food lab in Hamburg, for example, out of some 500 innovations, four or five products a month are being put into practice and brought to market. Of course, the food labs are still small and don’t pose a threat to Nestlé and the like. But they’re growing by up to 3,000 percent a year. There’s much more innovation and the process is much fairer. We’re already seeing how mind workers no longer have to travel to do their job. That will also be increasingly possible in production.

And bespoke products instead of mass production?
Red Bull has a filling system with a capac­ity of, I think, 90,000 cans a minute. Just recently, they were considering a new system – for just 9,000 cans a week. Why? Different bars could use digital parameters to make their own flavors, which would then only be available at that particular bar.

Where and how will we produce?
We won’t have to migrate to large me­tropolises anymore, as was the case during the industrialization. Back then, everything was concentrated in major industrial centers. Now there’ll be a more polycentric approach: small, self-sufficient, but nonetheless networked structures.
This means big changes for infrastructure: Large business parks, access roads for raw materials, centralized cities – there’ll be none of this anymore. We will move around less, because we won’t have to follow after work anymore. For example, Volkswagen has set up co-working spaces all over the world, where employees can get together. So there’ll be more indivi­du­ality and localized working. For small and medium-sized cities, this is a great opportunity.

A decentralized, local economy; working remotely from home. I always thought we’d end up traveling the world as digital nomads, having a couple of Teams meetings in Bali, in between vegan lunches and yoga.
You have this freedom, yes – but you don’t have to use it. There’s no one single model in digitalization. You can set your life up as you want. It’s important to understand that local value creation is also circling back to smaller places. This increases your chances of living there too, something that wasn’t possible in the industrial age.

Does this mean that the entire production process will be local? If a Swiss firm specializes in cutting wood modules, for example, then the first steps of the process will still take place in the country of origin – in the Baltics, or in Russia. After all, you don’t import entire tree trunks if you can only use 30 percent of them.
Getting back to the Billy bookcase, which is made out of wood waste, this can be produced locally, because there’s enough wood waste available. But of course, this might not be the case in other sectors. There’s no either/or. In the industrialization period, we learned that once you’ve defined a certain process for a certain product, then that is the best way to go. In the future, however, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Instead, processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.

“In the future, there will no longer be a single process for a single product. Processes will be geared towards what is possible locally.” 

So what does digitalization mean for the job profile, then? Instead of building a table by hand, carpenters have to type in a code. Those who are already finding even that difficult will be hard pressed to retrain as IT experts.
In the beginning, you actually did have to be able to program in order to set up a machine. Today there’s a simple UX – you don’t need in-depth IT knowledge anymore. The same applies to medicine and nursing: In Germany, skilled nursing staff can give a preliminary diagnosis thanks to AI-supported systems – and they only need to consult a doctor in specific cases. To do this, nursing staff need additional training, and they earn almost double for it. It’s a huge opportunity for nursing professions! The people left behind will be those who just want to keep doing what they’ve always done.

Which key competencies will be needed in future?
During industrialization, fewer competencies were needed; what was urgently needed were skills and qualifications. The system structure made the necessary decisions in terms of norms and values. And today you need the competence to decide for yourself once again which norms and values you’d like to form the basis of your actions. So we’ll see increasing discussion in our society about values: what kind of work do I want to do (or have done), in what form, and what kind of social and ecological impact will it have. These kinds of decisions will, of course, also be driven by cost, but the value factor will gain in significance, because it reflects much more directly on me and my decision and, what’s more, is also traceable. Up till now, data has been used to optimize processes and create a better cost/benefit ratio. I think we’ll in-creasingly be using data to improve quality of life, not just to become more productive.

What advice would you give companies in terms of preparing properly for the future?
Look at your own possibilities. Think about “What can I actually do?” instead of “What could happen that I need to be prepared for?” That was the mindset in the industrial age. As a result, benchmarking will no longer be important, because it will start losing relevance. You’re no longer bound to large structures, so you have many more opportunities to network in a flexible way on a small scale. Not based on an industrial pattern of thinking, but in new social models. Building on this, you can decide individually what you’d like to do. You don’t have to say: “Now let’s do something with AI.” Because maybe there’s no actual reason to.

ti&m special Future of Work
New value chains, digitalization and cultural change: numerous factors are fundamentally changing the way we work. Our new special explores what this profound transformation means for companies, management and employees. to download