"So what do you do?" It's a question that most of us have asked – or been asked – at some point. We often use it as an easy way to start a conversation and to establish some common ground.
But what if people thought our jobs incomprehensible? I think that's exactly what would happen if we could talk to somebody from the early 19th century and try to explain what working life looks like in 2016. This quick thought-experiment shows just how much has changed in our economies and societies over the past 200 years – and indicates the level of transformation that is still to come.
The latest Ericsson Mobility Report shows that there are now over 7 billion mobile subscriptions globally, and that over 90 percent of the world´s population will be covered by mobile broadband networks by 2021. As a direct result of technologies such as broadband, mobility and cloud, value chains are being reshaped, business models digitalized and previously unimaginable possibilities are created.
Information and communication technology (ICT) is, in short, enabling a radically new era. While it took 100 years to connect 1 billion places, only 25 years were required to connect 5 billion people. Today, not only places and people are connected, but things too – in fact, Ericsson forecasts 26 billion connected devices in 2020.
The industrial age – where the competitive advantage of a company was primarily built on scale, ownership and concentration – is being rapidly replaced by the Networked Society, where people are using connectivity as the starting point for new ways of innovating, collaborating and socializing.
This explains why AirBnB, which own a single room now has a higher market valuation than any global hotel chain. Digital transformation is happening across industries – in TV and media, for example, where Ericsson research has found that over 50 percent of consumers now watch streamed on-demand video content at least once a day. And when was the last time you bought a CD from a store, rather than streaming your favorite music?
Of course, other challenges remain. For example, how can the positive possibilities of ICT be maximized? Which skills do people, businesses and governments require? And how can regulation support innovation while protecting the rights of individuals?
Finding good answers to these questions requires a multi-stakeholder dialog – nobody can solve them alone. I firmly believe that when companies, policymakers and society engage, like they do in Davos during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, we can develop effective, inclusive visions that bring the benefits of ICT to all.