Building a Skills Engine for the Human Economy

Abstract

Flexibility For more than a century, the economies of the developed world have taken a reductionist approach to the people who work in them, one that frames the relationship within the single-minded pursuit of productivity. In the simplest terms, productivity can be computed as output divided by labor input. Throughout this period, the dominant mechanism industry deployed to increase productivity has been to manipulate labor input by altering the role, size, location, and cost of the workforce. From their roots in the assembly lines and timed tasks of Frederick Taylor and the “management science” of Alfred Sloan, the four key levers for this approach have been the commoditization of labor, labor replacement, labor arbitrage, and labor flexibility. BUILDING A SKILLS ENGINE FOR THE HUMAN ECONOMY