McKinsey have released a new report on what they believe will be the most disruptive technologies, and the economic impact they will have.  The report, produced by the McKinsey Global Institute, has had input from the likes of Hal Varian and Erik Brynjolfsson.

It concludes that the most disruptive technology will be the mobile Internet, with renewable energy failing to live up to its hype.

Of particular interest is the high placing of automating knowledge work.  The report outlines how the rising intelligence of computing can be both a blessing and a curse, taking on some of the tedious work we do on one hand, whilst also of course removing whole jobs on the other hand.

Whilst automation made a huge impact upon manual work, the report suggests the impact upon knowledge work would be subtler and more nuanced.

Nevertheless, the report suggests that automation could be performing the role of over 110 million people by 2025.  Whilst this may have many potential benefits in terms of better quality service, the knock on effect on society is pretty clear.

The full report is available below.  It’s 178 pages, but well worth a read if you’re at all interested in what the future could bring.

When you enjoy the work you do, the day seems to fly by in a blur of stimuli.  How many of us actually enjoy the work we do though?  Employee engagement statistics would suggest a pretty small number.  For many, it seems work is something that has to be done, and we plug away in the hope that one day things will change round and the hard work will bear fruit.

It doesn’t have to be this way though.  The long history of games has shown us that doing complex tasks can be enjoyable, dare I say even fun.  These games have much they can teach us about how to shape the things we do in the workplace.

A good game typically has one of the following types of stimuli that makes them enjoyable.  See how many you can integrate into your own work.

8 types of workplace fun

1. Problem solving. We’re hard-wired to enjoy a challenge, and it is often the routine and un-challenging nature of work that makes it dull.  Stretching yourself however can be incredibly rewarding.
2. Exploration.  This desire to solve problems often leads us to attempt new things and requires us to learn new skills in order to solve each problem.  This sense of exploration is an inherently rewarding experience.
3. Teamwork.  The massive multiplayer environments of modern games should show managers how much people like working together to crack a problem.  We are often natural collaborators, so you should use all the tools at your disposal to encourage this.
4. Recognition.  Research a few years ago showed that people value recognition and appreciation more than sex.  A simple thank you can raise employee engagement by as much as 30%.
5. Success.  Back in 2011 Harvard academic Teresa Amabile released The Progress Principle.  The book charts the importance of achieving success, or at least making progress, and its impact on our happiness in life and at work.
6. Surprise and novelty.  Relationship gurus the world over trumpet the virtue of keeping things fresh in a relationship.  Novelty is kinda taken for granted in the social world because it moves so quickly, but introducing fresh things should be a key part of your working life.
   
7. Creativity.  How often do you get to come up with great ideas at work?  I suspect when you think of those times, it was generally accompanied by a happy feeling.  Just as challenging work is exciting, so is trying new ways of succeeding at work.
   
8. Knowledge sharing.  If you’re regarded as an expert in your field, it does wonders for your ego.  The culture of hoarding knowledge and using that power to climb the greasy pole is hopefully slowly fading out, so get out there and show off your knowledge internally.  There are lots of collaboration tools available now that encourage internal knowledge sharing.  The chances are your organisation has one in place, so get out there and make use of it.
   

If you can incorporate these things into your work life, then the chances are good that you’ll become happier and more engaged.  Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips.

Google have gone an awfully long way to changing how we view geographic information.  Google Maps and Google Earth have allowed us to digitally explore our world like never before.  A new site wants to take things one step further however.

Collaborate.org launched this week at the Future in Review conference.  It’s aim is to bring geospatial data to the masses via over 2 million different data layers that can be overlaid on top of maps.

“We want to harness the collective knowledge of the online global community, sharing expertise and enthusiasm,” said company CEO Kevin Montgomery. “We are providing worldwide geospatial infrastructure to empower people.”

The site is built upon World Wind, an open source platform developed by NASA.  It’s kinda like Google Earth but on an open source platform that allows users to develop and interact with it.

“It’s an interface for that spatial data and puts it in the native context of the real world. It’s a way to allow innovation to occur.” said Patrick Hogan, the apps project developer at NASA.

The range of possible applications are limitless.  For instance, they believe they can provide real-time geomapping of all tweets made in the world or provide mapping of all flights as they zip around the world.

The more people contribute to the environment, the richer the data available to users.

“Technologically, it’s big data leveraging the cloud with community crowdsourcing moderating the data,” Montgomery said.

Suffice to say it is early days, but this looks like a project that is very much worth keeping an eye on.  You can find out more about it in the video below.

Noted Nazi propogandaist Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough, sooner or later people will come to regard it as the truth.  Whilst obviously not on the scale of some of the things Goebbels trotted out, the idea that to achieve expertise in something has become pretty much accepted since Malcom Gladwell popularised the notion in Outliers.  As heuristics go, it’s one of the most widely used.

Is it correct though?  Some new research suggests not.  The study looked at the affect of practice on the skill level of chess players and musicians, and found that practice alone was not enough to explain the differences in performance amongst people.

“Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn’t enough,” researcher Professor Zach Hambrick says.

It runs counter to the Gladwell heuristic of 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a subject.  Hambrick goes on

“The evidence is quite clear that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice,” he says.

To reach their conclusion Hambrick and colleagues analysed 14 studies of chess players and musicians.  They were looking in particular for the impact practice had on performance.  They found that at most it accounted for perhaps 1/3 of the differences in skill level of chess players and musicians.  The remainder can be explained by things such as natural ability, intelligence, the age in which we begin practising and so on.

Hambrick is at pains to point out that things aren’t all doom and gloom however.  He suggests that rather than showing how many of us will never achieve greatness regardless of how often we practice, it does instead make clear the likelihood of achieving certain things, and thus give us a more realistic picture, thus allowing us to refocus efforts in more fertile areas.

In Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist, the character Mr Bumble is informed that “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction”.  It solicits the classic response

“If the law supposes that … the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Never has this seemed more apt than in a ruling this week in New York City that the sofa surfing website Airbnb is in fact illegal.  The judge ruled that a man who rented out his flat via the site had violated a 2011 law that was setup to prevent illegal hotels.  This ruling determines that property owners cannot rent out their property for less than a 30-day period over the course of a year, so the odd weekend here and there as is common on Airbnb is against the law.

The case in question revolved around a gentleman who had rented his appartment to a woman for a 3-day stint in September.  This was deemed to have broken the hotel law, and the judge ordered him to pay a $7,000 fine.  Whilst a later ruling reduced this to $2,400, it still represents a major blow to the ethos of the site.

Here is the official statement from Airbnb.

“This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed. But more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. Eighty-seven percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in — they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.”

It’s worth remembering that this is the same Airbnb that was used as a platform to provide temporary shelter to over 4,000 people after hurricane Sandy had hit the very same state that has now ruled much of the sites activities illegal.  There’s gratitude for you.

As Mr Bumble aptly put it, the law is indeed an ass.