03/23/2021
By Patricia Morena

GE2 and IUCEE webinar: The Future of Work and The Reskilling Revolution
Monday, March 29 at 9 a.m. EDT (6:30 p.m. IST, 1 p.m. GMT)

Register online.

Industry workforce needs are rapidly evolving as the future of work unfolds. The future of work – the notion that disruptive technologies, such as robotics, block chain, and artificial intelligence – will alter the structure and nature of work in unprecedented ways. In the next two decades, the economy will witness wide scale labor displacement across industry sectors from retail to healthcare, from biotech to financial services; no sector will be untouched by this next industrial revolution. Industry leaders anticipate a rapidly emerging skills mismatch between the skills that workers currently have and the skills that will be necessary to tackle this new world of work. In response to the pending crisis, policymakers, business leaders, and economists are calling for a ‘reskilling revolution’ to help individuals adapt to the future of work. What are the skills that people will need to adapt to the future of work? We will provide guidance from the emerging research.

Presenter:

Scott Latham worked for 12 years in the software industry, where he experienced the highs and lows of the .com boom. He managed several small, entrepreneurial organizations, in a business development capacity. His career took him throughout the world; he has lived and worked in Europe and Asia. During his career, noted achievements include guiding a high tech start up from 6 to a 100 people in a four years span, consulting Fortune 500 companies e-commerce and supply chain implementations, and saving a company after an aborted IPO.

After leaving industry, in 2005 he earned a Ph.D. in strategic management. His research focuses on organizational decline, environmental turbulence, and innovation; it's published in the top journals in the field, including Academy of Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. He is an internationally recognized expert in the future of work and the future higher education. His perspective has been published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Ed, and Inside Higher Ed.

In addition to time as a faculty member, from 2009 - 2018 he has held several senior administrative positions at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, including Associate Dean/Director, Ph.D. Program (2010 - 2014), Interim Dean - Manning School of Business (2014 - 2016), and Vice Provost, Graduate and Professional Education (2016 - 2018).

He is very engaged in industry consulting and advising. He has worked with a wide range of organizations, including the National Park Service, Nippon Kayaku, Enel Green Power, and others. His recent research on the future of work and innovation has been the basis of support from the NSF, NIH, and the Department of Labor. In the past year, he has been involved in funded efforts by the NIH to evaluate the business viability of starts ups in testing, diagnostics, and treatment of COVID. He sits on several advisory boards, including Exec. Director, M2D2 - Massachusetts Medical Device to Market incubator at UMass Lowell and UMass Medical School that fosters and supports biotech, digital health, and medical device starts ups; Exec. Director, Ethos Discovery Science Council - Accelerator for commercializing veterinary care innovations; Advisory Board Member - Boston Federal Reserve Bank's Reimagining Work initiative which aims to ensure the future of work is equitable and accessible to all.