As Canada’s knowledge economy evolves to face the realities of digital transformation that will enable it to compete globally as well as provide all Canadians with the goods and services they need, knowledge is becoming democratized, even commoditized. Access to knowledge grows cheaper and more readily available with every new device connected to the internet so knowledge economies, like Canada, which has been competing globally based on the knowledge capital of its workforce, is being forced to find new ways to compete as other economies enter the ‘knowledge game’.
But it’s not just new entrants into the global knowledge economy we need to be concerned about. Digital transformation and innovation in machine learning and artificial intelligence are also reducing the value of knowledge capital. The value is no longer derived simply from possessing the knowledge, but from what you do with it and from the skills you can leverage to create new economic value out of the knowledge you possess.
We are therefore seeing a new skills economy emerge where the preferred currency of exchange between an employer and an employee is not just knowledge, i.e. “Come work for us and we’ll enable you to gain more knowledge”. Instead the exchange has become “Come work for us, use your existing skills and we’ll enable you to develop more skills which will increase your value in the labour market.” Skills are therefore becoming the new preferred currency of exchange.
Equally, not all organizations are committing to develop the skills of their workforce. Instead they rely on the individual employee’s recognition of the need and invest in their own lifelong learning to remain meaningfully employed. However, there is a growing body of evidence that organizations that actively invest in workforce development are not only winning the war for talent but also creating and capturing more economic value for their shareholders.
