Professor Jan Rivkin, the Senior Associate Dean for Research and a Professor in the Strategy Unite, chats to Beth Peters about his views on automation, globalization, and why MBAs must play a role in creating shared prosperity for all.Recent political events like the US election and Brexit have made it clear that, while MBA students are experiencing a golden age where we can leverage our skills and technology to generate high returns on a global scale, many middle- and low-skilled jobs are being automated and offshored. In reaction, an increasing number of high profile figures – ranging from Bill Gates to Stephen Hawking – have weighed in to the growing public discourse around this. Jan Rivkin has been co-leading HBS’s US Competitiveness Project since 2011. Having conducted research in areas ranging from infrastructure to the skills gap, the team is now trying to catalyze action in Washington and cities around America. Given this, Jan is well placed to provide his view on automation and globalization’s impact on society and why MBAs must play a role in creating shared prosperity for all. Will technological progress be a net creator of jobs this century? To me, the real question is, “Will technological progress be a net creator of good jobs?” Right now, a very small number of people can create and capture a stunning amount of value. Instagram had just 13 employees when Facebook bought it for $1 billion. That’s great for those employees, but will we have enough good jobs and shared prosperity? Figuring out how to change both policies and business practices to address this is a key challenge. What economic and public policy events have led us to this point? Central to the story is the concept of the commons—that is, the shared resources that society relies on for companies to be productive—for example, public education, workforce skills, and infrastructure. Historically, government and business in America cooperated to build a strong commons. Then, starting in the 1980s, changes in technology and geopolitics put enormous pressure on middle-class Americans. They found themselves competing with skilled, ambitious workers around the world and automated technology improving at the rate of Moore’s Law. At that point we could have doubled down to make our workers so productive that they could compete with anyone and remain on the frontier of technological change. Instead, U.S. society made a series of unsustainable promises—for example, to expand credit to the middle class, to maintain the illusion of shared prosperity even as its underpinnings weakened. With the government overextended by those promises and with businesses globally mobile, America invested inadequately in the commons. With weaker public education, skills, and infrastructure, we entered an era of stagnation for working- and middle-class Americans, even during a golden age for those with the skills to tap global markets with technology. Technological change and globalization are forces that are not going to abate. But poor investment in the commons is a self-inflicted wound. That we can fix. Where can private business can have the greatest impact in rebuilding the commons?
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