Organizing for the future

Platform-based talent markets help put the emphasis in human-capital management back where it belongs--on humans. The best way to organize corporations--it's a perennial debate. But the discussion is becoming more urgent as digital technology begins to penetrate the labor force. Although consumers have largely gone digital, the digitization of jobs, and of the tasks and activities within them, is still in the early stages, according to a recent study by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Even companies and industries at the forefront of digital spending and usage have yet to digitize the workforce fully (Exhibit 1).1 1.See McKinsey Global Institute, "Digital America: A tale of the haves and have-mores," December 2015. The stage is set for sweeping change as artificial intelligence, after years of hype and debate, brings workplace automation not just to physically intensive roles and repetitive routines but also to a wide range of other tasks. MGI estimates that roughly up to 45 percent of the activities employees perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies.