Inventing our Future

The Professor

Back in my undergraduate college as a student of Manufacturing Science & Engineering, it was charting an unknown territory. In 1996, except one IIT, no other engineering college or, university had any such stream of studies that aimed to elevate and specialise components of traditional Mechanical Engineering.

The courses were heavy on design, mathematics, manufacturing science from prehistoric metallurgy to robotics, computer aided design and manufacturing.

It was a tough experiment for the professor who founded it as there weren’t many professors, teaching staff or fully developed laboratories that could reliably deliver the course or, the vision.

I belonged to the first batch of students post the launch of this branch of engineering studies.

The several moving parts that fuelled uncertainty about the future were calmly sedated by the founding professor. He was in his mid-40s, wearing multiple hats from course design, administration to developing the branch and lab infrastructure.

He never appeared fragile, pretentious or, assuring; only exuded overwhelming purpose.

The Network Scientist

Few days back I came across this Ted Talk “The real relationship between your age and your chance of success” by Albert-László Barabási, a Network Scientist dedicated to uncover hidden order in complex systems.

It provided a compelling distinction between performance and success; most interestingly, it goes on to provide a data packed critique to Albert Einstein’s remark “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.”

The extent of his research spans Nobel Prize winning scientists, artists to Silicon Valley Tech entrepreneurs, who provided successful exits.

Beating general belief that most successful people tend to be in their 20s, 30s and max early 40s, it provides a refreshing connection between how persistently one should keep trying irrespective of age, and success follows.

Hence, productivity has no age, and success is randomized; only makes sense to keep trying.

Looking back, my professor in college was extending his productivity as an academician and researcher well into his 50s, while his peers were slowing down with retirement in mind. Extending the network scientist’s inferences, the chances of my professor achieving success into his 50s was higher.

Intuitively, he was buying more lottery tickets into his 50s and improving his chances of winning.

Democratizing success

There is increasing evidence how applying the principles of more productivity to a larger demographic base does create more success.

Social media companies from Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Sharechat et al, have been instrumental in offering platforms accessible to over 4bn of world population and creating the largest base of solopreneurs, celebrities or, influencers as they are called.

Ride hailing companies Uber, Ola increasingly publish the cab driver’s number of rides, brief profile and their rating. It is not uncommon for a driver post a drop, to request you to rate him/her well. The rating economy applied at large scale is driving productivity towards an improved success rate.

Artists, content creators on social media to education platforms, ecommerce extendable to food, groceries, medicines et al, have given a monumental jump to human productivity, and potentially improving the chances of individual success at unprecedented scale.

What started as a simple and mundane movement from Point A to Point B, is now a sophisticated science combining man and machine, and creating a large scale impact towards the future of work and employment.

As transactions generate more data, the transaction journey gets more nuanced and computing tools and technology develop, there is significant scope to democratize success.

Defining Purpose

The implication for governments and organizations is to develop that thinking of more access, skills and providing more tools to citizens, employees at all levels to support a large scale productivity.

To give an example, the Smart Cities project that aims at a multi-lateral intervention for urban development across infrastructure, education, health, security aimed at 100 cities with smart solutions, can be a transformative journey to a large population and private enterprise.

At organizations, entry to mid-level employees that form the majority of employees can be invested in realizing goals that are beyond their transactional KRAs.  

The progressive thinking needs to institutionalize their voice, define their roles and push the democratizing technologies to engineer the future over long-term, 5, 10, 15 or may be 20 years; that would tap into their exponential creative potential.

Inventing

Back to my college days, the peers in other mature and developed engineering streams looked at this new stream with sympathy and some healthy satire about an unknown future.

It got disrupted the day, the founding professor got the Advanced Manufacturing Lab live kicking off with a Laser beam machining instrument and basic sensors for Robotics.

It spawned purpose, resilience and passion for the future.

A Smart City can be that moment; trying out several bold ideas and to keep trying can be that moment.