The Future of Work

According to academic entrepreneur and strategist Heather McGowan, a focus on certainty over creativity is coming at our peril.

By Natalie Nixon
Director of the Strategic Design MBA at Philadelphia University and Principal of Figure 8 Thinking, LLC

INC. - Jul 16, 2015

Last month innovation strategist Heather McGowan gave an interesting talk at the Amplify Festival on "the future of work." I've had the pleasure of working with Heather in the past when launching the Strategic Design MBA program at Philadelphia University. Here, I've captured some of Heather's top of mind on what needs to be in place for the ways we will need to work.
Heather, just to provide some context, what's the impetus of your thoughts on "the future of work"?
The world of work has changed dramatically, and higher education is not prepared and not preparing graduates to navigate. In the last decade I have focused increasingly on the future of work and on how higher education has to prepare workers. I have since advised college/university presidents and corporate leaders on how to prepare for and adjust to these new realities.
So what is the Amplify Festival and how did you come to be part of it?
The Amplify Festival, now in its 10th year, is a weeklong event created and sponsored by AMP Limited, the largest financial service provider in Australia and New Zealand, as a learning event for their employees, but it's also open to the public. Its founder and executive producer Annalie Killian created the Amplify Festival because she believes "in today's rapidly changing world, learning must be part of work."
This year the theme was Rethink Everything. Annalie and her team selected 32 speakers from around the world and chose topics like the future of work, the future of money, and reimagining the economy (videos of the talks can be seen here). I was impressed with how they weaved together topics to offer a synthesis of the shifting landscape of life and work. Annalie approached me to be a speaker after reading some of my blogs. I was selected to synthesize, conceptualize, and visualize the impact of accelerated change on the economy, jobs, skills, and education.

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