The good news is that many organizations are adapting. In the preliminary findings of a Cisco survey of more than 1300 knowledge workers across nine countries, 93 percent believed that their organizations are making changes for the future of work. But that doesn’t mean it’s enough. In looking at changes implemented across key areas, the survey revealed that many organizations still have a long way to go. This is true for investing in the technology foundation — including collaboration tools, devices, applications, mobility, and automation — where 69 percent are driving changes. But it is especially critical when it comes to driving cultural changes, adapting the work environment, and changing the way work is being done. True transformation occurs when organizations drive change on multiple fronts, including creating the kind of culture that values trust, individual growth, work/life balance, diversity, and the free exchange of ideas, as well as the organizational structure that enables faster and more dynamic ways of working.

This document describes the development of analytic rubrics for competency assessment project. The purpose of this report is to describe the process of developing a set of general analytic rubrics to assess competencies in design, communication and teamwork, and a set of outcomes and indicators to assess problem analysis and investigation. The work to develop the rubrics was structured into three main phases. In the first or planning phase, a review of the literature was carried out to create a comprehensive list of learning outcomes in the five competency areas under investigation. A list of more specific, measurable learning outcomes, called indicators, was also compiled. The resulting comprehensive list of learning outcomes and indicators was distilled by removing redundancy between the systems, filling content gaps, and grouping indicators into common learning outcome categories. In phase two, rubric descriptors for design, communication and teamwork were drafted and modified through consultation with instructors and departmental administrators. The outcomes and indicators for problem analysis and investigation were validated through a systematic Delphi technique and are presented in this report. Work on a set of descriptors for the problem analysis and investigation indicators is ongoing. The third and final phase involved testing of the design, communication and teamwork rubrics. In the case of design and communication, shadow testing sessions were conducted with graduate students with grading experience (assessors). In particular, assessors were asked to evaluate samples of student work using the rubrics and provide feedback through focus groups. Testing of the teamwork rubric consisted of quasi‐ implementation with teaching assistants (TAs) and think‐aloud sessions with instructors (experts). The objective of testing was to further validate the outcomes, indicators and rubric descriptors and to obtain feedback on how they could be improved.

I identify local, inter-industry productivity spillovers net of congestion and competition in twentieth century US manufacturing. I do so along four “Marshallian” industry connectivities: input supplying, output consuming, labor pooling, and ideas sharing. For identification, I use as natural experiments two major inventions in newly digitized, city-industry-year level US Censuses of Manufactures spanning 1880-1990: the automobile in 1904 and the semiconductor in 1958. Because both inventions were large, unanticipated demand shocks to supplier industries, I can use the pre-invention share of a city’s manufacturing employment in the shocked supplier industries an exogenous measure of the city’s invention shock. I can then identify the net connectivity spillovers by comparing pre- and post-invention employment between supplier-connected and - unconnected industries, across cities with large versus small pre-invention supplier shares. I find that in the early twentieth century, net connectivity spillovers were near zero, except for negative net output consuming spillovers. In the late twentieth century, net output consuming spillovers attenuated to zero while net labor pooling spillovers became negative. These results are consistent with falling transportation costs, increased occupational specialization, and reduced worker migration. Together, they point to limited and decreasing local, inter-industry productivity spillovers relative to congestion and competition in twentieth century US manufacturing.

This discussion paper argues that public policy should seek to accelerate automation to reap the productivity benefits, while building new institutions to ensure the dividends of technological change are broadly shared. To that end, it sets out five propositions. The first two are primarily analytical, relating to the likely macroeconomic effects of automation and its potential to accelerate inequalities of wealth and income. The final three set out how we believe public policy should make sure that automation works for the common good. These propositions discuss how best to manage the acceleration of automation, the public institutions needed to manage the ethical and regulatory challenges that autonomous technologies will create, and the new models of common ownership needed to ensure the fruits of automation are fairly shared. Together, we believe these ideas can ensure a new machine age helps us all lead fuller human lives.

New Accenture Strategy research1 shows 78 percent of business leaders expect their organizations to be a digital business in the next three years. And if they are to realize the benefits, they anticipate from being digital, the readiness of their workforce must become a priority. From concerns around artificial intelligence, to those about employee resistance, the perceived landmines can mean organizations hesitate to make the workforce changes needed to advance their digital journeys. Indeed, business leaders feel one of the greatest challenges to being digital is not having the required skills and capabilities. Yet they should feel confident about moving forward with their workforce plans. Our research shows executives and employees are well aligned on the benefits of being digital. If anything, employees are even more positive than their leaders about the impact of digital on their work and jobs, and more proactive in addressing gaps in digital competencies. Business leaders should develop their teams with the know-how to support their digital strategies and experiment with different ways of organizing work. They need to form new types of partnerships to make the most of non-traditional talent pools. They must build a diverse, digitally savvy team that can inspire flexible, agile ways of working. And they must lead by example. This report is one of a series offering pragmatic advice on how to embrace digital technologies to not only compete, but also drive new value to help businesses grow. As business leaders seek to increase productivity and agility, how can their organizations be digital by default and secure the skills and talent needed to innovate and build the workforce of the future?

This report contains labour market intelligence for the land-based and environmental industries derived from nationally available statistics. The land-based and environmental sector is dominated by small businesses. Eighty-five per cent of these businesses employ fewer than five people. The sector is forecast to require nearly 600,000 new entrants before 2020 as more than half the people currently employed in the sector are over the age of 45. This report reviews the workforce development issues and skill needs for this sector.

Viewing political trends in the US and Western Europe simply as rising nationalism is misleading. We must distinguish between civic and ethnic nationalism.

Depuis plusieurs années, Montréal se positionne à l’avant-plan dans les secteurs des nouvelles technologies, de la créativité et de l'innovation2. Plus récemment, c'est en intelligence artificielle (IA) que le positionnement international de Montréal se révèle3. Le secteur montréalais de l’IA bénéficie effectivement d’un écosystème propice à son développement accéléré. On retrouve en effet de la recherche universitaire de premier plan, des entreprises technologiques, petites et grandes, des structures d'incubation adaptées, du capital de croissance de même que d’importants investissements publics4. Cette combinaison de facteurs laisserait présager dans les années à venir une multiplication des succès du secteur montréalais de l’IA. L’intérêt grandissant porté, ici comme ailleurs, à l’IA se conjugue en effet à plusieurs autres développements technologiques pour ouvrir de nouvelles voies. Ainsi, l'émergence successive du Big Data, de l'analyse de données, de l’IA, puis de l’apprentissage profond, alimente de nouvelles formes de produits, services et de communications. Le secteur des services financiers ne peut rester insensible à ces développements d’application en IA. Les institutions bancaires et les compagnies d’assurances ont en effet toujours été de grands utilisateurs de modèles prédictifs. L'explosion des sources de données, combinée à l’infonuagique, pousse plus loin le secteur dans la généralisation des méthodes et des outils dans tous les départements des entreprises financières. L’industrie des services financiers a amorcé, il y a déjà plusieurs années, un grand virage afin d’exploiter dans plusieurs de ses opérations les bénéfices du Big Data. L’IA s’inscrit en quelque sorte comme étant la suite de ces avancées. Cette transformation soulève donc, à juste titre, plusieurs questions importantes pour le secteur des services financiers à Montréal. Par exemple, est-ce que le secteur financier montréalais peut capitaliser sur la force de recherche en IA? Quels seront les impacts sur l'emploi, sur les processus d’affaires, sur les produits offerts? Comment tirer profit des opportunités que ce domaine émergent génère? Y a-t-il des sous-secteurs qui sont plus à risque? C’est dans ce contexte que Finance Montréal et KPMG se penchent sur ces questions dans le cadre d’une étude de l’impact de l’intelligence artificielle sur le secteur des services financiers montréalais.

A significant proportion of Canada’s youth have poor literacy and numeracy skills. This is bad news for them, for employers and for our economy. These skills still matter. Level 3 literacy, the level at which readers begin to analyze, evaluate and apply what they have read in new and different situations and to easily problem-solve, is needed to perform well in every new job that is being created. What’s more, literacy and numeracy are the core “learning to learn” skills, and more than ever, our young people will need to keep learning to keep pace with the changing world of work. Building basic skills is the mandate of the K-12 system, but despite rising high school graduation rates, average literacy and numeracy scores of Canada’s high school aged youth are actually declining. The solution must begin here. More immediate results would be realized if the literacy and numeracy skills of the more than 80 per cent of youth who attend post-secondary education were assessed and, where necessary, boosted, upon entry to their post-secondary institutions. This would guarantee that graduates have these essential skills and would have the added benefit of ensuring students get more out of their expensive education. Finally, there is a need to embed these fundamental skills into any workplace training, including orientation training offered as new graduates begin their careers.