In our “Managing Innovation in Organizations” course, we have a class on how innovation shapes society and organizations (and yes, that is such a huge question that we just barely scratch the surface). In the class this year, we had Zlatko Bodrozic guest lecturing on how technological revolutions shape management models (this paper) and what alternative futures the current technological revolution may result in (this paper). The guest lecture was great and ran somewhat over time (good things deserve time), meaning that we didn’t get to talk about another question that was on the agenda for the day: automation and whether robots will take our jobs.

To compensate for that, two students volunteered to record a podcast with me where we talked about Autor’s paper “Why are there still so many jobs?” and the case of port automation (we’re referring to this podcast specifically). Here’s that podcast:

(yes, it’d be awesomer if it was on Spotify; no, I don’t have a way to get it there).

You may find some of my earlier scriblings on automation and some of the other papers we discuss in the podcast relevant:

The End of Scarcity, A Cause for Anxiety, (Quiet) Optimism, Context and Strategy, and (in Danish) “Robotterne tager vores arbejde. Heldigvis.“

Thanks to Malte and Mads for volunteering!