Are you ready for the knowledge age?

In 2022 Forbes said that having the “right” degree or experience in a particular field doesn’t guarantee that a person has the skills required to do today’s job. In the article, Joseph Fuller, a management professor at Harvard Business School, could not be more clear: “The shelf life of people’s skills for a lot of decent-paying jobs has been shortening.” In addition, one of Forbes’ research estimates that by 2030, the global economy will need 25 million new project management professionals to keep up with demand.

A few months later, McKinsey in the paper “Taking a skill based approach to building the future workforce” asks: “Should employers limit themselves by considering only degrees when hiring?”

Finally, Matt Sigelman,  President of the Burning Glass Institute, Chairman of Lightcast, and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School with its paper “Building a skills engine for the human economy” nailed the final confirmation based on the famous rule “three clues are a proof”. Siegelman’s open statement does not leave space to uncertainty: “The future will be won by skills. Skills differentiate careers, express the dynamism of the economy, measure the distance between people and opportunity, and open new avenues for equity.”

The knowledge age is built on skills. Organisations are leaving behind the traditional frames of degrees and certificates.

The lifetime of skills is shrinking nearly on a weekly basis, following a pattern we have already seen in the lifetime of companies in the S&P index. Staying at the top of the game is a matter of continuous learning. Time is shortening, change is accelerating, complexity is growing at a pacing never seen before. Students, professionals, employees and organisations are part of the same game: lifetime learning. 

Rule #1: learn or die.

At H-FARM College, this has been the vision since the very first day that we preached to students and companies. Of course, we are the first to do what we preach. So, we need to learn fast and change often, which is a very difficult thing to do for a university institution. 

In 2023 we totally revised our Enhancing Courses introducing subjects like “Ethics of AI” where students are confronted with the trickiest of dilemmas, “Generative AI” where students learn how to interact with Large Language Models to get the most, and “The Exponential Future”  where they walkthrough the incredible changes over the next 30 years to learn to navigate the complexity and the breadth and depth of change, fostering a growth mindset. 

All degrees in Finance and Marketing at H-FARM College, in addition to these Enhancing Courses, get a solid formation with the course “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence” where students learn to think data-driven, how to generate value out of these technologies, and how to transform companies in data-driven companies. They do it through a mix of frontal lessons and flipped learning while impersonating companies like Netflix, Amazon, Uber, and Lemonade, that have built their value on data and AI.  

In 2024 we launched two new STEM BSc degrees, AI and Data Science and Technology Management with Cybersecurity. Both degrees capture the latest market need for professionals, the first to transform data into business value and the second being professionals managing complex technology environments with a special attention to the growing cyber threats and growing regulatory obligations. 

At same time, we are increasing our support to business organisations to upskill and reskill their resources and update their processes. A 2020 Glint survey reveals that 97% of employees want to expand or continue the amount of time they spend on learning.

So, we have just launched the H-FARM Business School, that is partnering with companies to create tailored learning paths and internal academies fostering the attractiveness of the companies with emerging talents. In addition, we work together with HR departments to review and enhance their workforce skill profiles. 

After having moved across the Industrial Revolution and the Computer age, Artificial Intelligence progresses are signalling that we are at the dawn of a new age: the age of Knowledge. In the industrial revolution we moved “leg” work to machines, in the Information age we moved computation and memory to computers. 

In the knowledge age we are going to share with machines the two most important resources of humanity: intelligence and knowledge.

Are you ready to step into the future?

Pierluigi Fasano, Chief Learning Architect, Professor of practice