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Introduction and Overview

In 2015 the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) released the report Making Value for America: Embracing the Future of Manufacturing, Technology, and Work. That study observed that technological developments, reengineered operations, and economic forces are transforming the way products and services are conceived, designed, made, distributed, and supported, a transformation that is having profound effects on the world of work. Jobs consisting of repetitive tasks are being disrupted by automation or offshored to lower-cost producers. Workers are being asked to upgrade their skills to become more productive and adaptable. So far these changes have been most notable in manufacturing and high-technology services, but they are poised to also transform enterprises in energy, health care, education, and other sectors.

To explore the effects of these changes on the workforce and on individual workers, the NAE held a workshop November 2–3, 2017, entitled “Preparing the Engineering and Technical Workforce for Adaptability and Resilience to Change.” The first goal of the workshop was to increase stakeholders’ understanding of both the importance of workforce adaptability and the definition and characteristics of adaptability. The second goal was to provide an opportunity to share best practices for fostering adaptability and to identify needs for future study and development.

The workshop started with a keynote address on the evening of November 2 and consisted of six sessions the following day (the workshop agenda is in appendix A). Biographies of speakers and the workshop organizing committee members are in appendix B. Over 75 participants from a mix of academia, industry, engineering societies,

and government engaged in the dialogue (the list of participants is in appendix C).

CONTEXT FOR THE WORKSHOP

As Nick Donofrio, fellow emeritus at the IBM Corporation and chair of the committee that produced Making Value for America, observed at the workshop, the object of work is to produce value, whether people are employed in academia, government, or business.¹ But value changes over time, largely because of the influence of technology. Furthermore, value can migrate away from the United States unless US workers can compete with the rest of the world in creating value, said Donofrio. “Like capital in a free market society, value goes to the place where it is most efficiently deployed.”

The continually changing demands of the workplace have created an imperative for workers to be adaptable, Donofrio observed. People need to be able to innovate and change in a collaborative, open, and inclusive way. “My biggest fear is that too few people see that binding thread—and that one missed stitch could ruin the entire deal for us. We can’t let that happen. That’s my passion, that’s my energy, that’s why I’m here.”

Donofrio said that for many years he has preached the value of what’s called a T-shaped educational model, fostering the development of both broad “soft” skills and deeper knowledge in a particular area. When people are educated very narrowly for a job or to earn a PhD (what he called the I-shaped model), they do not have the breadth that enables them to adapt to new circumstances and new challenges. This is true at all levels of education—the high school diploma, 2-year and 4-year degrees, master’s and PhD degrees. “The higher education system gets this, for the most part,” he said. “But we have to cascade that model down…to K–12 education,” in part because many young people will not continue on to higher education.

One way to provide a T-shaped education is through problem-based learning, but such a step requires fundamental changes to educational systems, which need to be more honest with themselves and with students about the skills people will need in the future, Donofrio said. “We don’t help people think about this; there’s no context for it.”

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¹ Donofrio offered introductory remarks and also participated in a panel and other discussions. His comments from various points in the workshop are consolidated here.

Innovation is happening in places where it might not be expected, he pointed out. For example, the Boy Scouts of America are bringing a more elastic mindset to youth as merit badges are earned for problem solving, not just for the sake of earning merit badges. “There is some evidence that we’re on the right path,” said Donofrio. But “time is not our friend. Time is our enemy. There isn’t enough of it, and we’re not going to get any of it back.”

An important part of the answer resides at the local level. States can move faster and be more flexible than the federal government. They can establish examples that others can observe and emulate. They also can help make it easier for people to do a job from where they are, not just from where a company is located. “We need to find states that care about this issue,” he said; New York, for example, has done an “incredible job of bringing jobs” to the state.

Donofrio also directed attention to a particular part of the workforce: technical workers who do not have a four-year college degree. People who do technical jobs with less than a four-year degree add great value to the economy, he said. “It’s a terrible idea that people who graduate with a high school degree or a two-year associate’s degree are not skilled enough to do complex data analytics or [work with] big data.” People erect barriers to letting them do such tasks, just as countries try to build barriers to protect capital.

As the pace of change in the economy continues to accelerate, these workers need the skills to be adaptable so that they can continue to build the economy, “because you can’t build it without them,” he said. Society has an obligation to provide these workers with opportunities to “re-school, re-tool, and re-scale” themselves through, for example, a “GI Bill” for displaced workers. If these people do not have the skills to be adaptable, work will flow to the cheapest sector of the workforce and to the highest-educated sector. And as these workers “lose their way, we lose our country,” said Donofrio. “Power comes when you have people, but when there is no work, that power is used against you.”

Leaders of businesses, educational institutions, and government need to be honest and truthful about what is going on, Donofrio concluded. They also need to be hopeful and point to a better future, because their employees are working hard and need to know that they are working in an environment that supports both honesty and hopefulness.

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKSHOP

At the heart of Making Value for America was “recognition of the impact of globalization, disruptive technologies, and new business models on how things are produced,” said Theresa Kotanchek, chief executive officer and cofounder of Evolved Analytics, who chaired the steering committee that organized the workshop. As an example, she pointed to the impact of information technologies.

The digital universe is growing exponentially, Kotanchek said—from 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 to 44 zettabytes in 2020 (a zettabyte equals 1 billion terabytes). Furthermore, emerging markets surpassed mature markets in the generation of data in 2017, and the gap between the two will continue to grow.

She noted that the impact of the Internet of Things is already visible in the digital universe. Data from embedded systems—the sensors and systems that monitor the physical universe—are projected to rise from 2 percent of the digital universe in 2013 to 10 percent by 2020. Advanced sensors, controls, and software applications are connecting the world’s machines, fleets, and networks. Advanced analytics are combining the power of physics-based analytics, predictive algorithms, and deep domain expertise. The ability to connect people at work or on the move is supporting more intelligent design, operations, and maintenance, leading to better service quality and safety.

But the tremendous promise of the new technology faces a major obstacle, said Kotanchek. “If we’re not enabling people to connect, integrate, and create further value, it will not deliver on its promise.” New business opportunities are fundamentally changing the marketplace, the world of work, and every aspect of business operations. “The future belongs to those companies and those people who learn how to take data and convert it to knowledge and information that they can act on.” She quoted a statement attributed to Charles Darwin: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

The workshop was designed to tap into the “power of we,” she said, by bringing together people from different sectors, including business, education, and government, to share best practices, learn from each other, identify unmet needs, and articulate how to close those gaps.