Heather McGowan: Inflection Point is Now

I encountered Heather McGowan through my readings of Thomas Friedman’s writings. He was writing on a topic about the future, where we will be forced to continuously learn because technology will be progressing so fast that skills become rapidly outmoded. That is pretty much Heather McGowan’s contention: we will be continuously adapting and learning as change proceeds faster and faster.

She recently wrote an article in Forbes saying that coronavirus has sped up the technological automation and that the inflection point is upon us now. We’re at a point that we as a society must change the way we think about work, and if we do it thoughtfully, we have a chance to improve our work lives and provide so much more meaning. According to her, the future of work will be all about human capital and not about shareholder value.

This article was about the history of work and how we got here; her next article will be about where she thinks we will go from here. That article hasn’t been written yet, so I’ll be on the lookout for that. But in the meantime, I’m searching out videos on YouTube to see if she has given any talks. And she has a book out which I need to get reading (but I first have to finish another book!)