Functional Smartness Vs Business Smartness – Navi Radjou

Navi Radjou, Innovation and Leadership Thinker/Advisor (Silicon Valley), Author of Conscious Society (2018), Co-author of Frugal Innovation and From Smart To Wise sharing his insights on ‘Beyond Smartness: Leading Wisely in a Conscious Society’ at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit 2017. Excerpts –

Navi Radjou at AIMA's 15th National HRM Summit

Navi Radjou at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit

Assuming we are entering the age of disruption, that is going to happen and is already happening, it’s a given now. How are you going to deal with this disruption? I think there are two approaches, there is a smart approach and there is a wise approach. Of course, if I were standing at Silicon Valley, where I live, and ask these questions to HR leaders there, they will say of course we need to address this disruption smartly because it’s all about smartness in Silicon Valley. And it is true because in the Western societies and increasingly in developing countries like India, smartness, and particularly intelligence, sells well. We heard about marketing right? So anything smart packaged as a marketing slogan sells well, for example, smartphones, we will be wearing soon smart clothes, smart appliances at home, like smart fridges that talk to us. We also have smart homes and buildings now, and then everybody is obsessed now about building smart cities. And not only that, it goes even further because if you read Yuval Noah Harari’s book. It is about man’s attempt to become God. And his interpretation of God is the ultimate mind, the super smart, or as Aurobindo calls, the supermind. And what he’s saying is that essentially we are not smart enough and the rich people in the future will be able to use, like embed technology in their brain to augment intelligence, we call it augmented intelligence.

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HR will be dead by 2020 – Vineet Nayar at the 14th National HRM Summit

The 14th HRM National Summit of AIMA featured some of the top HR professionals and delegates from Industry, Government, Media, and Academia.  Below is an excerpt from an enlightening speech by Mr. Vineet Nayar, Founder, & Chairman Sampark Foundation and Former CEO, HCL Technologies at the 14th National HRM Summit on the topic ‘HR Organisation in the Age of Automation’.

Vineet Nayar addressing 14th National HRM Summit

Vineet Nayar addressing 14th National HRM Summit

When I talk to HR community I am reminded of a CEO I met a few years ago. This was the CEO of the company called Kodak and especially people of my age would remember that each one of us had a Kodak moment of our life where we took very selective photographs because you could take only a few photos at a time. The world was different at that time, it has changed now. And When I met that CEO I asked him “Didn’t you know that the digital photography will make Kodak, as a company, obsolete?”. He told me that he knew about it at least 10 years before. I am an advisor to the McKinsey Leadership institute when I met the McKinsey team which was involved in advising Kodak, I asked them that if they knew ten years in advance that Kodak was about to die why didn’t  they do something about it. They told me that they did  a very interesting research, over 6 decades, of the companies who lost their market share and there were two conclusions: Anybody who loses market share or becomes obsolete knows at least 5 years in advance that they are going to become obsolete and the only reason they become obsolete is because they don’t do anything about it. So they were the part of the gang that became obsolete.

So one thing I would definitely predict is that the HR is going to be dead by 2020. The three megatrends change happening in the world will make the HR job obsolete.

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TV Mohandas Pai talks about ‘Automation’ at 14th HRM Summit

AIMA organized its 14th HRM National Summit on 1st December 2016 at New Delhi. The Summit featured some of the top HR professionals and delegates from Industry, Government, Media, and Academia. Over 250 professionals from across India participated in the Summit.

Below is an excerpt from a very informative speech by Mr. TV Mohandas Pai, Sr. Vice President, AIMA and Chairperson, Manipal Global Education Services at 14th National HRM Summit on the topic ‘Jobs in the Era of Automation’.

Mohandas Pai at AIMA's 14th National HRM Summit

Mohandas Pai at AIMA’s 14th National HRM Summit

” For the last many years AIMA has been holding the HR summit and every time we chose a cutting edge topic, primarily because we believe in the power of ideas. Ideas have moved civilizations, ideas have moved societies, and we believe at AIMA that we must be at the cutting edge with new ideas looking at what is happening in the world and that’s why we’ve chosen this very important topic – Jobs in Era of Automation.

 Automation has been there for a pretty long period of time starting with the invention of the steam engine. Imagine the world before the machine was invented. The world was based upon labor, human muscle, and animal power. And the wealth of a nation depended upon the size of the population. So China and India, were the richest countries and the greatest countries in the world because they had very large population. And in the mid 18th century China-India made up to 45% of the world GDP and there was trade from Europe with the rest of the world. But then a very singular event happened in the Great Britain when the steam engine was invented and suddenly you could use kinetic energy for motive power and create the machine which could do the work of many human beings, particularly where there was heavy use of human or animal power. And it meant that the heavy work and heavy lifting suddenly could be done very differently, it could be repeated, it could be standardized, and that set off a chain of events which changed the face of civilization on the planet.

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