“Workforce Crisis” witten by Dychtwald, Erickson and Morrison and published in 1992 suggested

That the massive boomer generation was beginning to retire and coupled with declining birth rates leading to less younger workers, would lead to a brain drain. 

Was “Workforce Crisis” correct?  What is your experience today?  Is finding talent more difficult and perhaps more expensive than ever?  Are valuable projects and other initiatives being delayed for lack of qualified staff?  What strategies are you encouraging today in 2017 to be ready for the next wave of economic growth that may already be happening?

The Authors provided some advice in 1992 that maybe still valuable today.  Read on…

(1)    What skills will you be needing?

(2)    When will retirements hit?

(3)    Why do your employees stay or leave?

(4)    What are your sources for talent?

(5)    What academic feeder programs are you developing?

By now we have all heard the buzz. Siri has plenty of company. Alexa and Google have invaded the home. Tesla’s artificial intelligence is, well, driving itself. Google’s Deep Mind is running the company’s multi-billion-dollar search business. Even they don’t know how it works — it just does. IBM’s Watson has its own office and is predicting cancer treatments for real patients. You can’t even date online without artificial intelligence (A.I.) hooking you up.

There are even A.I.-based autonomous ships, bots, games and investment and commerce platforms that are emerging. Eventually A.I. will be everywhere. Are you ready for the A.I. revolution? Of course, the answer is no one is ready, because this is only A.I. 1.0 — the beginning of time. So let’s review.

Artificial intelligence has finally emerged, and the prospects for it transforming the enterprise are excellent. Every enterprise should be looking at what blend of A.I. they want to investigate. From machine learning to neural nets, recommendation engines and decision bots — the landscape of the marketplace is full of choices. The real question I would pose is, “What should CIOs be telling their CEOs about the A.I. revolution?” The answer: “Show me the business strategy.”

I would challenge CIOs to work out the strategy question first. What is the business strategy that would benefit and even justify adding artificial intelligence? How could we generate a competitive advantage from investing in machine learning or automated decision support that A.I. could offer? There needs to be a business value or competitive advantage that investing in A.I. makes clear. If not, then you are not ready. Or don’t invest much until you can answer this strategic question.

Too many companies are so impressed with A.I. buzz that they are moving headlong into A.I. without clarifying what the business strategy case could be. Are we going to be able to generate better customer service? Help employees make better decisions? Enable our customer to use more of our products or services? How about fix that problem that those pesky humans don’t seem to be able to handle? How will we be able to monetize artificial intelligence?

Westboro, MA – February 13, 2017 – Trends Equity, Inc. has announced that AI World Conference & Expo 2017 – www.aiworld.com – will be held September 18-20, 2017 at the Boston Marriott Copley in Boston, MA. Now in its’ second year, AI World has become the industry’s largest event focused on the state of the practice of enterprise AI and machine learning. AI World’s mission is to enable enterprise business and technology executives to learn how to successfully harness intelligent technologies to build competitive advantage, drive new business opportunities and accelerate innovation efforts.

Congress set up the H-1B program to help American companies hire foreigners with exceptional skills, to fill open jobs and to help their businesses grow.
But the program has been failing many American employers who cannot get visas for foreigners with the special skills they need.
Instead, the outsourcing firms are increasingly dominating the program, federal records show. In recent years, they have obtained many thousands of the visas — which are limited to 85,000 a year — by learning to game the H-1B system without breaking the rules, researchers and lawyers said.
In some years, an American employer could snag one of these coveted visas almost anytime. But recently, with the economy picking up, the outsourcing companies have sent in tens of thousands of visa requests right after the application window opens on April 1. Employers who apply after a week are out of luck.
“The H-1B program is critical as a way for employers to fill skill gaps and for really talented people to come to the United States,” said Ronil Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies visa programs. “But the outsourcing companies are squeezing out legitimate users of the program,” he said. “The H-1Bs are actually pushing jobs offshore.”

#H-1B  #Visas  #Students

For all IT Professionals who talk and wonder about BIG DATA…Consider what a DATA LAKE is all about! A data lake is a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed. While a hierarchical data warehouse stores data in files or folders, a data lake uses a flat architecture to store data. Each data element in a lake is assigned a unique identifier and tagged with a set of extended metadata tags. When a business question arises, the data lake can be queried for relevant data, and that smaller set  answer the question.