Real Work, Real Potential
Who will be the workers of the future—and how will we help them reach their real potential? IFTF has four scenarios for matching people with real work.
Real potential is not something you can pin down with a number. It’s not a test score, not a batting average. It’s who you’re becoming and what you can make of an uncertain future. For yourself. And for everyone else.
In a future of distributed learning and work, traditional standardized tests and scores will no longer tell the story of who’s ready for work or how they can build their unique potential for unexpected tasks and unprecedented projects.
Already, we see new platforms and pathways emerging to cultivate individual potential—and to connect the dots between that potential and opportunities for work that matters. With our goggles set on 2030, we see four different scenarios for discovering individual work+learn paths:
Gaming the Future—using the games of tomorrow to grow our real potential today
Recommending Paths to the Future—revealing our real potential the same way we build our viewing profiles on Netflix
Social Learning Our Way to the Future—discovering our real potential by following others who inspire us and then building our own followings
Graphing Our Future Identities—finding our real potential in graphs of our daily interactions and transactions
Watch a video of each Scenario
On February 19-20, IFTF convened leaders from the worlds of education, workforce development, and social impact in a two-day colloquium to re-imagine our tools for assessing learning and work-readiness in a world where algorithms match people to projects and big data provides penetrating insights into personalized work+learn paths.
With the help of experts from innovators like PiMetrics, Cornerstone OnDemand, Google Social Learning, and ConSensus, among others, we worked together to create a shared visions of the kinds of trusted services young workers and learners will need over the next decade to create meaningful work+learn paths that match their skills and their passions.
Read our findings from this convening of experts here.
Download the infographic illustrating these findings here.
If you would like to join this ongoing conversation, please contact Parminder Jassal | pjassal@iftf.org.
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Interested in learning more about working with Institute for the Future?
Sean Ness | sness@iftf.org | 650.233.9517