From The Next Web’s Scott Gerber: While the World Economic Forum suggests that we may lose roughly five million jobs to robots by 2020, what does that actually mean for today’s workforce? Will they be out of a job entirely, or will they simply need to learn new skills?
To find out more about what this means for your average small business, I polled nine business owners from YEC on the following question:
How do you see the rise of the robot affecting your company?
1. With automated manufacturing
We are planning for a point in the near future when the vast majority of product manufacturing will be done by robots. This will have a significant impact in how we design our products and our costs for manufacturing. This reality will disrupt China’s manufacturing advantages, and we’ll see a lot of manufacturing come back to the states as machines can replace even inexpensive Chinese labor. – Andrew Thomas, SkyBell Doorbell
2. Free time for more knowledge-based work
The increase in automation over the last five years has already resulted in a consulting team that’s lean and mean. We almost exclusively spend our time on work that requires extensive knowledge and expertise because business processes within the IoT handle most of our everyday administrative, financial and organizational tasks. We’re excited to continue on this path. – Alexandra Levit, PeopleResults
3. Evolving management skills
One of the most difficult jobs as an entrepreneur is effectively leveraging all of the resources at your disposal. With robots coming in to replace jobs, I see this as an opportunity for me to evolve as a leader. While I feel I’ve become an effective communicator with my staff, I’ll need to learn how to best manage robots to improve my business’ overall productivity. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep
4. Not Much Change
My agencies build relationships with our clients, and you just can’t do that with a robot. So I don’t see a huge change for my companies. On the other hand, as more tasks become automated, I see efficiencies helping to grow my companies exponentially. I’m a huge proponent of automating as many tasks as possible, so perhaps robots could help on that front. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
