by Klaus Schwab
For business leaders and policymakers, emotional intelligence is the vital foundation for skills critical to succeed in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, namely self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.72 Academics who specialize in the study of emotional intelligence show that great decision-makers are differentiated from average ones by their level of emotional intelligence and capacity to cultivate this quality continuously.
In a world characterized by persistent and intense change, institutions rich in leaders with high emotional intelligence will not only be more creative but will also be better equipped to be more agile and resilient – an essential trait for coping with disruption. The digital mindset, capable of institutionalizing cross-functional collaboration, flattening hierarchies, and building environments that encourage a generation of new ideas is profoundly dependent on emotional intelligence.
Inspired intelligence – the soul
Alongside contextual and emotional intelligence, there is a third critical component for effectively navigating the fourth industrial revolution. It is what I call inspired intelligence. Drawing from the Latin spirare, to breathe, inspired intelligence is about the continuous search for meaning and purpose. It focuses on nourishing the creative impulse and lifting humanity to a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny.
Sharing is the key idea here. As I mentioned previously, if technology is one of the possible reasons why we are moving towards a me-centred society, it is an absolute necessity that we rebalance this trend towards a focus on the self with a pervasive sense of common purpose. We are all in this together and risk being unable to tackle the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and reap the full benefits of the fourth industrial revolution unless we collectively develop a sense of shared purpose.
To do this, trust is essential. A high level of trust favours engagement and teamwork, and this is made all the more acute in the fourth industrial revolution, where collaborative innovation is at the core. This process can only take place if it is nurtured in an environment of trust because there are so many different constituents and issues involved. Ultimately, all stakeholders have a role in ensuring that innovation is directed to the common good. If any major group of stakeholders feels that this is not the case, trust will be eroded.
In a world where nothing is constant anymore, trust becomes one of the most valuable attributes. Trust can only be earned and maintained if decision makers are embedded within a community, and taking decisions always in the common interest and not in pursuit of individual objectives.
Physical intelligence – the body
Contextual, emotional and inspired intelligence are all essential attributes for coping with, and benefitting from, the fourth industrial revolution. They will, however, require the vital support of a fourth form of intelligence – the physical one, which involves supporting and nourishing personal health and well-being. This is critical because as the pace of change accelerates, as complexity increases, and as the number of players involved in our decision-making processes increases, the need to keep fit and remain calm under pressure becomes all the more essential.
Epigenetics, a field of biology that has flourished in recent years, is the process through which the environment modifies the expression of our genes. It shows incontrovertibly the critical importance of sleep, nutrition and exercise in our lives. Regular exercise, for example, has a positive impact on the way we think and feel. It directly affects our performance at work and ultimately, our ability to succeed.
Understanding and grasping new ways of keeping our physical bodies in harmony with our mind, our emotions, and the world at-large is incredibly important, and we are learning more about this through the incredible advances being made in numerous areas, including medical sciences, wearable devices, implantable technologies and brain research. In addition, I often say that a leader requires “good nerves” to address effectively the many simultaneous and complex challenges that we are facing. This will be increasingly critical in order to navigate and harness the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution.
Towards a new cultural renaissance
As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “the future enters into us...in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.”73 We must not forget that the era we currently live in, the Anthropocene or Human Age, marks the first time in the history of the world that human activities are the primary force in shaping all life-sustaining systems on earth.
It is up to us.
Today we find ourselves at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, looking forward and, more importantly, possessing the ability to influence its path.
Knowing what is required to thrive is one thing; acting upon it is another. Where is all this leading and how can we best prepare?
Voltaire, the French philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment era who lived for many years just a few miles away from where I am writing this book, once said: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”74 Indeed, it would be naive to claim that we know exactly where the fourth industrial revolution will lead. But it would be equally naive to be paralysed by fear and uncertainty about what that direction might be. As I have emphasized throughout this book, the eventual course that the fourth industrial revolution takes will ultimately be determined by our ability to shape it in a way that unleashes its full potential.
Clearly, the challenges are as daunting as the opportunities are compelling. Together, we must work to transform these challenges into opportunities by adequately – and proactively – preparing for their effects and impact. The world is fast changing, hyper-connected, ever more complex and becoming more fragmented but we can still shape our future in a way that benefits all. The window of opportunity for doing so is now.
As a first and vital step, we must continue to raise awareness and drive understanding across all sectors of society, which is what this book aspires to achieve. We must stop thinking in compartmentalized ways when making decisions – particularly as the challenges we face are increasingly interconnected. Only an inclusive approach can engender the understanding required to address the many issues raised by the fourth industrial revolution. This will require collaborative and flexible structures that reflect the integration of various ecosystems and which take fully into account all stakeholders, bringing together the public and private sectors, as well as the most knowledgeable minds in the world from all backgrounds.
Second, building on a shared understanding, we need to develop positive, common and comprehensive narratives about how we can shape the fourth industrial revolution for current and future generations. Although we may not know the precise content of these narratives, we do know critical features that they must contain. For example, they must make explicit the values and ethical principles that our future systems must embody. Markets are effective drivers of wealth creation, but we must ensure that values and ethics are at the heart of our individual and collective behaviours, and the systems they nourish. These narratives must also evolve progressively higher degrees of perspective-taking, from tolerance and respect to care and compassion. They should also be empowering and inclusive, driven by shared values that encourage this.
Third, on the basis of raised awareness and shared narratives, we must embark on restructuring our economic, social and political systems to take full advantage of the opportunities presented. It is clear that our current decision-making systems and dominant models of wealth creation were designed and incrementally evolved throughout the first three industrial revolutions. These systems, however, are no longer equipped to deliver on the current, and more to the point, the future generational needs in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. This will clearly require systemic innovation and not small-scale adjustments or reforms at the margin.
As all three steps show, we cannot get there without ongoing cooperation and dialogue - at local, national and sup
ra-national levels, with all interested parties having a voice. We need to focus on getting the underlying conditions right, and not just concentrate on the technical aspects. As the evolutionist Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University, reminds us, cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind.”75 As the principal architect of four billion years of evolution, cooperation has been a driving force because it enables us to adapt amid increasing complexity and strengthens political, economic and social cohesion through which substantial progress is achieved.
With effective multistakeholder cooperation, I am convinced that the fourth industrial revolution has the potential to address – and possibly solve – the major challenges that the world currently faces.
In the end, it comes down to people, culture and values. Indeed, we need to work very hard to ensure that all citizens across cultures, nations and income groups understand the need to master the fourth industrial revolution and its civilizational challenges.
Let us together shape a future that works for all by putting people first, empowering them and constantly reminding ourselves that all of these new technologies are first and foremost tools made by people for people.
Let us therefore take collective responsibility for a future where innovation and technology are centred on humanity and the need to serve the public interest, and ensure that we employ them to drive us all towards more sustainable development.
We can go even further. I firmly believe that the new technology age, if shaped in a responsive and responsible way, could catalyse a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a true global civilization. The fourth industrial revolution has the potential to robotize humanity, and thus compromise our traditional sources of meaning - work, community, family, identity. Or we can use the fourth industrial revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure that the latter is what happens.
Acknowledgements
All of us at the World Economic Forum are aware of our responsibility, as the international organization for public private cooperation, to serve as a global platform to help define the challenges associated the fourth industrial revolution and help all stakeholders shape appropriate solutions in a proactive and comprehensive manner, in collaboration with our partners, members, and constituents.
For this reason, the theme of the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2016 in Davos-Klosters is “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. We are committed to catalysing constructive discussions and partnerships around this topic across all our challenges, projects and meetings. The Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions in Tianjin, China, in June 2016, will also provide a critical opportunity for leaders and innovators across research, technology, commercialization and regulation to meet and exchange ideas about how to harness the fourth industrial revolution to the greatest possible benefit of all. For all these activities, I hope this book serves as a primer and guide, equipping leaders to grapple with the political, social and economic implications as well as to understand the advances in technology that create them.
This book would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support and engagement of all my colleagues at the World Economic Forum. I owe them immense thanks. I express my particular gratitude to Nicholas Davis, Thierry Malleret and Mel Rogers who were essential partners throughout the research and writing process. I am also thankful to my colleagues and all the teams who contributed to specific sections of the book, particularly Jennifer Blanke, Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, Silvia Magnoni and Saadia Zahidi on economics and society; Jim Hagemann Snabe, Mark Spelman and Bruce Weinelt on business and industry; Dominic Waughray on the environment; Helena Leurent on governments; Espen Barth Eide and Anja Kaspersen on geopolitics and international security; and Olivier Oullier on neurotechnology.
Writing this book uncovered exceptional expertise across the whole Forum staff, and I thank everyone who shared their ideas with me, both online and in person. Here, in particular, I thank members of the Emerging Technologies taskforce: David Gleicher, Rigas Hadzilacos, Natalie Hatour, Fulvia Montresor and Olivier Woeffray – and the many others who spent time thinking deeply about these issues: Chidiogo Akunyili, Claudio Cocorocchia, Nico Daswani, Mehran Gul, Alejandra Guzman, Mike Hanley, Lee Howell, Jeremy Jurgens, Bernice Lee, Alan Marcus, Adrian Monck, Thomas Philbeck and Philip Shetler-Jones.
My deep gratitude also goes to all members of the Forum community who helped shape my thinking about the fourth industrial revolution. I am particularly thankful to Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson for inspiring my ideas on the impact of technological innovation and the great challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and to Dennis Snower and Stewart Wallis for underscoring the need for values-based narratives if we are to succeed in harnessing the fourth industrial revolution for the global good.
Additional thanks to Marc Benioff, Katrine Bosley, Justine Cassell, Mariette DiChristina, Murali Doraiswamy, Nita Farahany, Zev Furst, Nik Gowing, Victor Halberstadt, Ken Hu, Lee Sang-Yup, Alessio Lomuscio, Jack Ma, Ellen MacArthur, Peter Maurer, Bernard Meyerson, Andrew Maynard, William McDonough, James Moody, Andrew Moore, Michael Osborne, Fiona Paua Schwab, Feike Sijbesma, Vishal Sikka, Philip Sinclair, Hilary Sutcliffe, Nina Tandon, Farida Vis, Sir Mark Walport and Alex Wyatt, all of whom I corresponded with or were interviewed for this book.
The Forum’s Network of Global Agenda Councils and our “future-oriented communities” strongly engaged in this topic and provided rich insights on all the topics discussed here. Special appreciation goes to the Global Agenda Councils on the Future of Software and Society, Migration and the Future of Cities. I am also grateful to the remarkable array of thought leaders who so generously contributed their time and insights on this topic during the Summit on the Global Agenda 2015 in Abu Dhabi, as well as members of the Forum’s Global Shapers, Young Global Leaders, and Young Scientists communities, particularly those who contributed ideas through TopLink, the Forum’s virtual knowledge and collaboration platform.
Special thanks also to Alejandro Reyes for his editing, Scott David for the design, and Kamal Kimaoui for his layouts and publishing touch.
To have the book ready in time for the Annual Meeting 2016, it had to be written in less than three months with the collaboration of people all over the world. This truly reflects the fast-paced, dynamic environment of the fourth industrial revolution. So lastly, I convey my deep gratitude to you, the reader, for embarking on this journey with me, and for your enduring commitment to improving the state of the world.
Appendix:
Deep Shift
In the fourth industrial revolution, digital connectivity enabled by software technologies is fundamentally changing society. The scale of the impact and the speed of the changes taking place have made the transformation that is playing out so different from any other industrial revolution in human history.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software and Society conducted a survey of 800 executives to gauge when business leaders anticipate that these game-changing technologies would break into the public domain to a significant degree, and to understand fully the implications of these shifts to individuals, organizations, government and society.
The survey report Deep Shift – Technology Tipping Points and Social Impact was published in September 2015.76 Reproduced below are 21 technology shifts presented in the study and two additional ones, including the tipping points for these technologies and the dates of their expected arrival to market.
Shift 1: Implantable Technologies
The tipping point: The first implantable mobile phone available commercially
By 2025: 82% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred
People are becoming more and more connected to devices, and those devices are increasingly becoming connected to their bodies. Devices are not just be
ing worn, but also being implanted into bodies, serving communications, location and behaviour monitoring, and health functions.
Pacemakers and cochlear implants were just the beginning of this, with many more health devices constantly being launched. These devices will be able to sense the parameters of diseases; they will enable individuals to take action, send data to monitoring centres, or potentially release healing medicines automatically.
Smart tattoos and other unique chips could help with identification and location. Implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a “built-in” smart phone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brainwaves and other signals.
Positive impacts
– Reduction in missing children
– Increased positive health outcomes
– Increased self-sufficiency
– Better decision-making
– Image recognition and availability of personal data (anonymous network that will “yelp”77 people)
Negative impacts
– Privacy/potential surveillance
– Decreased data security
– Escapism and addiction
– Increased distractions (i.e. attention deficit disorder)
Unknown, or cuts both ways
– Longer lives
– Changing nature of human relationships
– Changes in human interactions and relationships