President Donald Trump's July 19 executive order establishing the President's National Council for the American Worker is directed at preparing Americans for the workplace of the future. Although short on specifics, the order sends a powerful message about the need for revitalizing educational opportunities if Americans are to thrive in the era of big data, robots and artificial intelligence. The president's intent is to lay the groundwork for tackling a national "skills crisis." His order accepts that Americans need additional skills to fill the current 6.7 million job vacancies. In fact, the executive order gives official imprimatur to what many in industry and academia have feared for some time: "The economy is changing at a rapid pace because of the technology, automation, and artificial intelligence," and existing programs have "prepared Americans for the economy of the past."

Although the Japanese company Honda is widely known as one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world and also the largest manufacturer of motorcycles, it is increasingly on the front edge of technological innovation outside the automotive world. The company's investment in research and development landed it on the "Top 20 R&D Spenders" list that includes five other automakers but representatives from other industries as well. Based upon the innovations Honda has shared publicly, it's using some of this R&D budget to get ready for the 4th industrial revolution by using AI and big data to not only design safer and more personalized autos, but also create robots. With the tremendous amount of data that's created from a wide variety of sources including sensors on cars, customer surveys, smartphones and social media, Honda's research and development team uses data analytics tools to comb through data sets in order to gain insights it can incorporate into future auto designs. As the company's big data maturity has increased, its engineers are learning to work with and leverage data, that had previously been to cumbersome to find meaning, thanks to the assistance of big data technology and analytics tools. There are more than 100 Honda R&D engineers who are now trained in big data analytics.

Although the Japanese company Honda is widely known as one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world and also the largest manufacturer of motorcycles, it is increasingly on the front edge of technological innovation outside the automotive world. The company's investment in research and development landed it on the "Top 20 R&D Spenders" list that includes five other automakers but representatives from other industries as well. Based upon the innovations Honda has shared publicly, it's using some of this R&D budget to get ready for the 4th industrial revolution by using AI and big data to not only design safer and more personalized autos, but also create robots. With the tremendous amount of data that's created from a wide variety of sources including sensors on cars, customer surveys, smartphones and social media, Honda's research and development team uses data analytics tools to comb through data sets in order to gain insights it can incorporate into future auto designs. As the company's big data maturity has increased, its engineers are learning to work with and leverage data, that had previously been to cumbersome to find meaning, thanks to the assistance of big data technology and analytics tools.