Fourth Industrial Revolution

The technological advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have fundamentally altered society in ways both seen and unseen. This digital transformation has changed how people live and work, and everything in-between. One area of daily life, however, seems to be largely missing out on this revolution: infrastructure. It remains one of the least digitally transformed sectors of the economy. While individual examples of highly advanced infrastructure systems exist, the sector at large lags behind others in innovation, a fact made all the more apparent by infrastructure’s ubiquity. When the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Infrastructure gathered for its annual meeting in Dubai in November 2018, it sought to understand why.As it began to think through solutions, the Council found a situation full of opportunity. Infrastructure is far from being a staid industry devoid of innovation – indeed, new technologies and ideas are flourishing. Integrating these innovations, which could change the way infrastructure is designed, developed and delivered, requires aligning stakeholders, implementing effective strategies and creating fertile enabling environments. This will allow existing innovation into the space and provide opportunities for new ideas.The Council thus decided to create a guidebook, contained here, that explores major questions about how to bring the Fourth Industrial Revolution to infrastructure. The guidebook surveys some of the fundamental issues and provides robust frameworks that can help public- and private-sector decision-makers decide how to create the right enabling environments for their situations. It also contains case studies to help illustrate how public- and private-sector entities can work together to integrate exciting existing technologies into infrastructure and spur the creation of new innovations. Overall, the content illustrates three main imperatives: (1) The importance of focusing on community outcomes, not physical assets: It is tempting to define future infrastructure requirements in terms of specific assets: “this city needs light rail” or “we must expand our motorway” are some examples. Defining projects in terms of social outcomes, such as delivering affordable public mobility between specific points, leaves an opening forechnological innovation to deliver those outcomes. (2) The need to adopt a “flexible architecture” approach to infrastructure planning: The technological transformation of infrastructure can be accelerated by recognizing that, while technology-driven disruption cannot be predicted, it can be allowed for and positively leveraged. Planning traditional infrastructure with a more flexible architecture is a way of achieving this; it allows for change and innovation at the edges while protecting and extending the life of core elements. It also permits the use of policy frameworks to allow new innovations to move from idea to commercial success. (3) The necessity of recognizing and respecting infrastructure’s “data layer”: As the world moves into an era of ubiquitous sensors and an ever-connected internet of things, infrastructure assets will become data assets. These technologies offer great potential to increase the social and economic value of infrastructure assets through predictive maintenance, real-time optimization and peak demand management. Much like traditional infrastructure assets such as airports, utilities and community facilities, these data pools will become highly valuable and highly sensitive assets, requiring owners with the right character operating under the right oversight.For planners and policy-makers, there is potential for enhancing efficiency, value and user experience for the publics they serve. Infrastructure owners have the prospect of improving long-term viability, project development and asset management. Technology providers could develop new innovations, forging new partnerships and technologically transforming a new sector. Using this guidebook, decision-makers can begin the conversation on how technological innovation can be nurtured in infrastructure to continue to meet the callenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This white paper is the outcome of a set of international, multi-stakeholder dialogues organized by the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society under the umbrella of the Second Dialogue Series on New Economic Frontiers. The First Dialogue Series was convened between September 2018 and January 2019 (https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/dialogue-series-on-new-economic-and-social-frontiers-shaping-the-new-economy-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution). This second series engages the Platform’s Global Future Councils on the New Economic Agenda and the New Social Contract, representing views from business, government, civil society and the research community. It identifies some of the most urgent challenges at the intersection of globalization, technology, economics and society, and explores a range of potential interventions to address them. As opposed to the First Dialogue Series, which considered a broad range of public- and private-sector led solutions, this Series focuses entirely on interventions in the public policy space, in the areas of labour, innovation and tax policy. As a key output of the learning created, this white paper draws upon discussion contributions by leaders and experts who engaged in the Dialogue through a series of virtual calls between May and August 2019. It also includes the latest thinking from international organizations, academic researchers, think tanks, businesses and other stakeholders. It aims to develop consensus towards a common narrative on the new economic and social context and objectively identify emerging response options for policy makers. The white paper is intended to be a resource for governments, business and other stakeholders interested in furthering economic and social progress in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Based on a survey of 56,000 youths aged 15-35 years old from six countries in the South-East Asia region (ASEAN), this report analyses the views of young ASEAN citizens on future of work, skills and technology. The survey finds that ASEAN youths are highly aware of potential disruption and challenges brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution to the local labour markets, and they are aware they must constantly upgrade their skills. It also details their skills gap, their future career aspirations and their preferences on skills training. The survey was conducted in partnership with Sea.

This report proposes an innovative focus on cybersecurity incentives for the investment community. Investors in innovation and technology-driven companies have a responsibility to ensure that cybersecurity is given priority in the early stages of product development. By ensuring cybersecurity from the outset – including features like security-by-design and security-by-default – investors can increase the likelihood of company success in the long term, promote more durable technology and improve overall cyber resilience. This report proposes principles for investors that will raise their internal cybersecurity awareness and offers a complete framework enabling investors to assess the cybersecurity preparedness of their target company.

The technologies on the list, which is curated by members of the Forum’s Expert Network, are selected against a number of criteria. In addition to promising major benefits to societies and economies, they must also be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers, and expected to have achieved considerable scale within five years. “From income inequality to climate change, technology will play a critical role in finding solutions to many of the challenges our world faces today. This year’s emerging technologies demonstrate the rapid pace of human innovation and offer a glimpse into what a sustainable, inclusive future will look like,” said Jeremy Jurgens, Chief Technology Officer at the World Economic Forum. “Technologies that are emerging today will soon be shaping the world tomorrow and well into the future – with impacts to economies and to society at large. Now that we are well into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s critical that we discuss and ensure that humanity is served by these new innovations so that we can continue to prosper,” said Mariette DiChristina, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, and chair of the Emerging Technologies Steering Committee.

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds, led by advances in technologies such as data science and artificial intelligence, the labour market is again changing in a fundamental fashion. In 2018 the Future of Jobs Survey and Report revealed that business leaders believe that by 2022, human workers and automated processes are set to share the workload of current tasks equally, while a range of new roles is expected to emerge simultaneously as digital innovation is absorbed across industries and regions. While the new labour market is changing at a rapid pace, emerging data sources are shedding light on its composition with a new depth and dynamism that has not previously existed. This Report focuses on data science, among the most competitive skills of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in collaboration with Burning Glass Technologies, LinkedIn and Coursera to shed light on how data science talent is being developed and deployed across today’s labour market.

Technology in many ways is perfectly conceived to operate in the workplace, bringing an ability to operate around the clock at increasing levels of accuracy and productivity. Since the Industrial Revolution, machines have been the ideal colleague, performing some of the most mind-numbing tasks and freeing up human partners to do more interesting and productive things. However, in the near future, new digital technologies are set to take the next step, graduating from the factory floor to the boardroom and applying themselves to more complex, cognitive activities.
Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are a game changer for automation in the workplace. Like ambitious young go-getters, they promise to take on more responsibility and make better decisions, and the implications for workers, companies, and policy makers are significant and pressing.
The impact of new digital technologies on the labor market has led to the coining of the phrase “technological unemployment,” which describes a view of how the industrialization of the workplace may play out. However, that perspective ignores the other side of the technological coin, which is that automation also creates jobs and brings a positive economic impact from its ability to boost innovation and productivity, and offers advances in fields including healthcare, retail and security.
This report is an attempt to provide a long-term view of how that balance may develop, based on scenarios of how digital automation and AI will shape the workplace, and calibrated to sensitivities around the economy, productivity, job creation and skills.