Upskilling, reskilling, deepskilling

In a critical age, when the job’s world is undergoing important and impactful transformations by the bunch of phenomena directly referring to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (whether it's automation, machine learning, big data or the more popular Artificial Intelligence), technology imposes pressing evolution to the skills required to perform most professions. This is a challenge for both careers and organisations and, hence, for the economies and Countries within which they operate. Keeping up with innovation, thus, becomes the mantra of our day, an imperative that requires (to companies, universities and governments themselves) upskilling, reskilling and deepskilling actions against a variable, that of talent, which never as today seems to be in full, continuous, rapid transformation.

The two-thirds of the world's population, including nine out of 10 emerging economies, do not have the so-called critical skills. For this reason, it requires a potential massive educational investment, with the aim of ensuring that their Countries have at least a minimum threshold of competitiveness to front an ultra-globalised market. Technological innovation can serve as a keystone to open up opportunities for acquisition of new skills already in the immediate future. The national best practices are well aware of this, we are talking about Chile and Colombia, but also about the nearest Hungary, Romania, Belarus, which emerge, although still in isolation, in the mass. Heavy skills imbalances are found in Asia and the Pacific area, as well as in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. As for the States, although universally known for the innovation and pioneering attitude that has always been introduced in the business, they do not reach levels of remarkable excellence because of the regional differences that, combined, unbalance the overall average.

Thanks to Finland and Switzerland, Austria and Sweden, Germany and Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands, Europe, on the other hand, seems to be shaping up as a kind of global "skill leader" in areas such as Business, Technology and Data Science. All this comes directly from a mix of important educational and professional start-up investments, on the one hand, and public education initiatives on the other. It is also true, however, that Europe is not a monolithic continent, with stable and consolidated performance levels in positive respect to the total of "his" Countries. Compared to the West, in fact, the Eastern part struggles to excel, with tail lights represented by Turkey, Ukraine and Greece.