People Make The Digital Economy Go Round

To succeed as a society in the emerging digital economy, it isn’t just machines and software that will move us forward — we need people to be well-educated, well-trained, and well-motivated to take part in its growth.

Where is the best preparation for the digital economy taking place? The United States and China come to mind, but the US has actually lost ground over the past three years, and China didn’t crack the top three with the momentum needed to bring workers into the digital economy. Rather, it’s Saudi Arabia, France, and Indonesia are showing the most momentum. These are the findings of a recent study published by the European Center for Digital Competitiveness, which looked at nations’ ability to cope with digital transformation.

France, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia “may not be the first examples that come to mind when it comes to digital, but their underlying policies implemented in the last three years show a strong and comprehensive push towards digital transformation, which has created significant results,” state Drs. Philip Meissner and Christian Poensgen, co-authors of the study.

Among the G20 nations, those with the most momentum in the digital economy — “digital risers” — include the following:

1. Saudi Arabia (overall digital advancement score:+149)
2. France (+95)
3. Indonesia (+56)
4. China (+52)
5. Argentina (+38)
6. Japan (+30)
7. Canada (+13)
8. Korea, Rep. (+1)

Those nations slipping in the digital ranks include the following:

1. Australia (-2)
2. Russia (-4)
3. UK (-6)
4. Mexico (-28)
5. USA (-33)
6. South Africa (-40)
7. Brazil (-45)
8. Germany (-52)
9. Italy (-77)
10. India (-173)

The top digital risers around the world have a common denominator — they “have invested in talent and made innovation and entrepreneurship very feasible for companies,” Meissner and Poensgen state. “Indonesia (+56) and the Dominican Republic (+177), for example, have invested significantly in digital education. Indonesia started a digital talent scholarship program to provide certifications to 20,000 digital talents, whilst the Dominican Republic started the ‘One Computer’ initiative to give every child access to a laptop at school.”

In addition, the ability to attract international talent is also a key factor in advancing within the digital economy. “Countries such as the Philippines, with their start-up visa program, and Indonesia, France and Latvia (+78) represent particular success stories in this regard, the authors state. “Digital risers have made it easy, quick and cheap to start companies. Azerbaijan (+18), for instance, has reduced the time to start a company, from over three days to less than one day, and Latvia has introduced special tax and funding regimes to support young companies.”

Note that these growth efforts emphasize education and innovation. Human capital makes all the difference, even in a world of increasing automation. In fact, human talent may be even more critical. “Creativity is a uniquely human trait that no algorithm can replace, says Scott Belsky, chief product officer for Adobe, in a recent report out of World Economic Forum. “By focusing on education, retraining and workplace tools, we can prepare for a future of work in which success depends on creativity.”

Belsky urges a greater concentration on three areas key to the growth of the digital economy:

Education: “Success for the next generation of workers will come down to making an impact in ways robots cannot,” Belsky states. “To stand out in their jobs, our kids must be outfitted to express their ideas visually, to quickly put together a compelling video, or to build a simple prototype to pitch a new idea. We need to give the same emphasis to the principles of design that we give to the grammar of sentences, the same attention to color theory that we give to statistics, and teach kids to use video-editing software like we teach them to use spreadsheets.”

Retraining: “We recently studied two million job postings and two million resumes across 18 diverse high-growth fields,” Belsky relates. “Half the job postings listed creativity as a necessary skill, but three out of four resumes didn’t include it.” People would “benefit from structured programs that ensure they have the essential creative skills to compete — familiarity with the most common creative tools, much like they have with common utilities like web browsers.”

Workplace tools: “As robots tend to fields and algorithms analyze data, workers will stand out more for their creativity than their productivity. To set people up to succeed, companies need to give employees the tools they need to be creative. The satisfaction that comes from performing the same old task a little more quickly can’t compare with the pleasure of creating something unique and seeing it connect with other people.”