Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Now on Youtube - Race Against the Machine: A Conversation with Andrew McAfee


Andrew McAfee studies how Information Technology (IT) affects businesses and business as a whole. His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. At a higher level, his work also investigates how computerization affects competition itself –  the struggle among rivals for dominance and survival within an industry. 

McAfee's November 2011 talk at the Center for Social Business, based on his recent book, Race Against the Machine, is now on YouTube. In this talk, he brings together statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. Workers whose skills have been mastered by computers have less to offer the job market and see their wages and prospects shrink. Entrepreneurial business models, new organizational structures, and different institutions are needed to ensure that the average worker is not left behind by cutting-edge machines.