The observation that “software is eating the world” has become a truism. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was early when he made his famous quip in 2011, but now most people get the drift. Digital technologies are transforming the design, development, and delivery of everything from movies to manufacturing to ride-sharing.
However, not enough has been said about what software means for workforce development. Waves of tech have been radically changing what workers do, yet neither the workforce system nor company human resource departments have adequately responded.
With digital technologies transforming firms’ talent needs, employers continue to say they are struggling to locate not just high-skill software and data professionals, but also digitally-literate line workers. At the same time, universities, community colleges, and career technical education programs struggle to keep up. Much remains in flux, both on the supply and on the demand side of the talent equation.
Which is why the Metro Program, in partnership with Kettering University and the Mott Foundation, convened its latest advanced industries regional workshop last month in Flint, Mich., at Kettering, one of the nation’s earliest bastions of highly applied, experiential engineering education.
At Kettering, Brookings brought together two dozen industry executives, entrepreneurs, educators, training-system officials, and economic development people to tour Kettering’s hands-on learning labs; discuss developments in “digitization” with a focus on Michigan’s increasingly high-tech auto sector; and explore a variety of training-system responses to the talent needs of industry. Much ferment surfaced during the day’s discussions, but by day’s end a short list of key insights came to mind.
Here are five takeaways:
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In the end, the discussion at Kettering clarified that the “software-ization” of the advanced industry sector is beginning to generate exciting responses across the worker-training community. The question now is: How can those responses be scaled? How can they become ubiquitous?
The Alcoa Foundation is a donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and not determined by any donation.
Image courtesy of Patrick Hayes/Kettering University