It is nothing new if I say that we are at the beginning of a new ‘digital’ age in which IT plays a prominent role. It is also nothing new that almost warmheartedly welcome this transformation and that we, as BIM students, almost only look at the bright side of the development. However, another trend is going hand in hand with the upcoming of the digital age; inequality. The International Monetary Fund has released an article in which it states that ‘The robot revolution could have profound negative implications for equality’

This week, ING has released the news that they will fire 7000 people due to the increased importance of IT and the cost reduction this brings. A total of 15 % of the employees won’t be returning to their office because of IT! While it is a fact that labour disappear when a new technology is adopted, new jobs were created at every level to support the new technology (think of a train driver with the industrial revolution). The main difference with the digital age is that only new jobs are created for highly educated people with specific skills. According to H. Bandholz of UniCredit this will have a great negative impact on the lower educated people: “Some of the productivity gains from robot densification are shared with workers through higher wages. The issue is, however, that different income and skill groups do not benefit to the same extent, which means that robotization further adds to income inequality.”

In the research of the IMF it is however assumed that robots are perfect substitutes of employee’s labour. This assumption gives rise to the opportunity in which people can differentiate themselves from robots: human interaction. Humans have to focus on their comparative advantages, like non-cognitive skills and soft skills. A research by D. Deming (2015) supports this statement and shows that jobs with high social skill requirements have experienced greater relative growth throughout the wage distribution since the 1980’s. Moreover, employment and wage growth has been strongest in jobs that require high levels of both cognitive skill and social skill. A research of Young Capital has shown that 30 % of the young employees are afraid that their job will be taken by robots in the future. Young Capital has developed an e-assessment to find the soft-skills of students to prepare them better in their job search.

So to make sure that you won’t lose your job to mister Robot, make sure to develop your social skills!

Reference:

Deming, D. J. (2015). The growing importance of social skills in the labor market (No. w21473). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Following the latest news, Twitter might just be the hottest new possible target for a take-over. Since last Friday, the stock of Twitter has rose with a total of more than 21 % to 16 billion dollars caused by the uproar of potential buyers. And the potential buyers are not the usual companies as Google, which may actually surprise you!

Companies like Salesforce, world’s biggest CRM system company, and Disney have shown interest in taking over the social network site that has been struggling in making profit. The heavy competition between other social network platforms like Facebook and Snapchat have pushed Twitter in a difficult situation. The numbers of active users have stagnated and advertisers are reluctant in putting their money for promotion  in Twitter. As Twitter has promised better future results for quite some time, a take-over might just be the answer to their promises.

So why would companies actually like to pay 16 billion dollars for a loss-making platform? The answer is simple: data.  The platform still has an enormous reach which creates lots of data to be analysed.  Some functions of Twitter’s data analysis can be seen in stock markets prediction (Dataminr),  sentiment analysis or in news coverage. Twitter offers all kind of different companies valuable market information just by analysing all the data of its tweets.

For companies like Salesforce, the biggest business data company, this the reason for a possible take-over. Salesforce is seeking ways to connect with customers in a more direct way,  and taking over Twitter would give them the opportunity to add customer data to their data source of business.  Salesforce may also use Twitter’s  software to improve their own customer relationship management.
Disney has somewhat the same reason to evaluate a possible bid on Twitter. According to James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co is Disney considering its position in the world. With an investment in Twitter they are investing in a technology for distribution. Twitter would give them the platform to reach audiences from all around the world. A more important factor for Disney, who also owns ABC News and ESPN, is that the company is losing ad money from the traditional media to the new online media. And oh yeah, the CEO of Twitter is also in the board of Disney..