Blog #2 aging population, tech & outdated wisdom

The notion of accelerating technological change and a population that is getting older rapidly are both issues that I have read about as they relate to public policy. On the aging front, most of the western world is aging out of their prime working years. This creates all sorts of problems for government and business. For companies looking for qualified people who can adapt quickly in a changing technological environment, older and wiser is not better. Managers do often rely on industry standards of practice or past experience to guide them, but the faster things change the more irrelevant that wisdom becomes. Forecasting will become less important than being able to adapt quickly to a new situation. That type of creative thinking is often best suited to a younger more tech savvy workforce. Economic growth and pace can be correlated to average working age population to high degree. Older populations tend to have more sluggish economies that are slow to take advantage of new trends or technological opportunities. From a public policy perspective, and older population pays in less and takes out more from social welfare services, creating a sustainability problem for future taxpayers.

The speed of advancing technology also makes it hard for even young workers to adapt and keep their resume competitive. At my own job we are adopting two new software packages that I have been tasked with learning at double speed so I can show the older folks in my department. Currently this is slowing down our productivity but with the anticipated payoff of being more efficient in the near future. However the more constant the change in standard operations, the harder it is to get to a new more efficient status quo. Employees will be constantly adapting and not necessarily producing.

Another aspect of this failure to adapt quickly enough is missed opportunities. In my department one of the issues that is being talked about is capitalizing on the amount of information we have about our donors to help engage further with alumni and other prospects. There is allot of information and ostensible opportunity, but no one is entirely sure how to take advantage of it. In this regard the "Competitor Analysis" article seemed somewhat outdated to me. Companies offering similar products, substitutes, suppliers, rating competitors strengths, and Porter's 5 Forces, may have all been sage wisdom, but now for many companies the only thing that matters is speed of adaptation and identifying new opportunities in the data or the tech. This outlook is obviously industry specific, but in service & tech the competitors you analyse today may not be there tomorrow or if they are they will be doing something completely different. The opportunity cost in time spent doing this kind of analysis would be better spent looking for new opportunities that no one has thought of yet. Also given the move the gig economy and smaller subcontractor companies, a competitor may be a single individual you can hire. In Porter's five forces model the bargaining power of suppliers & customers, the threat of new entrants & substitutes should be assumed to be infinite all the time. This notion really negates the efficacy of the analysis at all. However the manufacturing section of the economy is probably not this bleak.