Innovation for Jobs (i4j.info) recently published a booka describing a new, people-centered view of work. In some ways, this is a kind of revolutionary Copernican view of work. Rather than organizing work around tasks, the idea is to organize work around people and their skills. One thesis of this book is that organizing work around tasks leads companies to focus on reducing the cost of tasks by increasing productivity, reducing the need for people to do work. Automation and robotics derive their attraction in part from this incentive.

David Nordfors is the co-chair and co-founder of the i4j Innovation for Jobs Summit together with Vint Cerf. There is a common misunderstanding about the coming automated economy that may destroy us all. Most people in business and finance (and most people, frankly) think that the new economy (of artificial intelligence and autonomous machines) is like the old economy: satisfying customers' needs for products and services. The real heart of the new economy will be about helping people need each other more. To build a new economy (and a decent, functional society), innovation must help us need each other more and in better ways… to bind us to each other.