During the past few decades we have spent a lot of time talking about knowledge workers and knowledge work. However today knowledge is nothing more than a commodity and to be the smartest guy in the room all you need access to is a smartphone. This is especially true when we consider that more “smart assistants” such as the Amazon Echo, Siri, Cortana, and IBM’s Watson enter our professional and personal lives.

So if knowledge is just a commodity then what’s the next evolution of the types of workers we need to see (and will see?) The answer is “learning workers.” That is, people who are able to learn new things and apply those learnings to various scenarios and environments. In essence being able to “learn how to learn.” This is far more valuable and crucial than “knowing” anything and going forward the value and importance of knowledge will only continue to decrease.

In this latest episode of the #futurein5 I explore this idea in more details and talk about the evolution of knowledge workers to learning workers.

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