White Paper

In the face of increasing competition and declining return on assets, companies often turn to short-term, one-time initiatives that (temporarily) improve their bottom lines. While tactics such as cost-cutting may offer temporary relief, they don’t constitute a long-term strategy. We studied more than 75 companies to determine the key strategic operations differentiator and determined that to address increasing performance pressure, companies need to tap into the only resource with unlimited potential—their talent. On-the-job learning and talent development provide an effective and sustainable way to accelerate performance improvement at individual, team, organization, and ecosystem levels.

Some have voiced fears that artificial intelligence could replace humans altogether. But that isn’t likely. A more valuable approach may be to view machine and human intelligence as complementary, with each bringing its own strengths to the table.

In a world of uncertainty and mounting performance pressure, organizations face a significant challenge. On the one hand, more powerful and less loyal consumers demand more value; on the other, more powerful and less loyal workers demand higher compensation and a work environment that supports their development. In this environment, organizations need workers with passion to realize extreme sustained performance improvement. While much work has been done to understand and improve employee engagement, employee engagement is no longer enough. Times have changed. Worker passion—defined by three attributes rather than static skills that rapidly diminish over time—will be critical as we shift from a twentieth-century world characterized by scalable efficiency to a twenty-first-century world amplified by scalable learning. We must figure out how to thrive—and not simply survive—in this new uncertainty, and we believe that individuals with worker passion will be the key. Three attributes characterize worker passion: Commitment to Domain and Questing and Connecting dispositions. Commitment to Domain can be understood as a desire to have a lasting and increasing impact on a particular industry or function. Workers with the Questing disposition actively seek out challenges to rapidly improve their performance. Workers with the Connecting disposition seek deep interactions with others and build strong, trust-based relationships to gain new insight. Together these attributes define the “passion of the Explorer”—the worker passion that leads to extreme sustained performance improvement.

The educational needs of the 21st century pose a number of serious problems for current educational practices. First and foremost, we see the 21st century as a time that is characterized by constant change. Educational practices that focus on the transfer of static knowledge simply cannot keep up with the rapid rate of change. Practices that focus on adaptation or reaction to change fare better but are still finding themselves outpaced by an environment that requires content to be updated almost as fast as it can be taught. What is required to succeed in education is a theory that is responsive to the context of constant flux, while at the same time is grounded in a theory of learning. Accordingly, understanding the processes of learning which underwrite the practices emerging from participation in digital networks may enable us to design learning environments that harness the power of digital participation for education in the 21st century.

This paper is the latest in Deloitte’s ongoing ‘Business futures’ research programme, which aims to provide insights into business in the future. We are committed not only to examining the potential impact of digital technologies on the labour market, on occupations and on different sectors of the economy, but also to helping our own workforce and the community adapt to life in the machine age.

“Performance ecosystem: A decision framework to take performance to the next level” was released by Deloitte University, compiled and translated by Deloitte China Technology, Media & Telecommunication Industry team. In this article, we innovatively defined the ecosystems taxonomy, and provided examples of some firms to illustrate the differences between these types. We hope to provide a much more innovative decision framework for executives, thus help them examine the forward way of enterprises from a higher perspective of ecosystem.

This report provides an overview of the definitions and competency frameworks of data literacy, as well as the assessment tools used to measure it. These are based on the existing literature and current practices around the world. Data literacy, or the ability to derive meaningful information from data, is a relatively new concept. However, it is gaining increasing recognition as a vital skillset in the information age. Existing approaches to measuring data literacy—from self-assessment tools to objective measures, and from individual to organizational assessments—are discussed in this report to inform the development of an assessment tool for data literacy in the Canadian public service.

Will pessimistic predictions of the rise of the robots come true? Will humans be made redundant by artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, unable to find work and left to face a future defined by an absence of jobs? Or will the optimists be right? Will historical norms reassert themselves and technology create more jobs than it destroys, resulting in new occupations that require new skills and knowledge and new ways of working?

L’industrie canadienne des médias numériques est dynamique, diversifiée et créative. Au Canada, on dénombre environ 2 300 (Industrie Canada, 2010) à 3 200 (CRHSC, 2009) entreprises œuvrant dans le secteur des médias numériques (MN), dont 85 % sont entièrement détenues par des intérêts canadiens (CIAIC, 2009). Ces entreprises offriraient de l’emploi à plus de 52 000 personnes (CRHSC, 2009). Leur chiffre d’affaires s’élève à 3,5 milliards de dollars (Industrie Canada, 2010) et elles génèrent des revenus annuels de plus de 5,1 milliards de dollars (CRHSC, 2009). Il s’agit d’une « jeune » industrie, dont les entreprises comptent en moyenne neuf ans d’existence; près de 15 % d’entre elles ont été mises sur pied entre 2006 et 2008 (CIAIC, 2009). Les entreprises œuvrant dans le secteur des médias numériques sont établies partout au Canada, et on en retrouve d’importantes grappes à Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal et Halifax.