HP Innovation Journal Issue 13: Winter 2019 | Page 9

Secondly, we need to enable faster, better insights and
decisions to adjust to rapidly evolving market conditions
and to drive higher efficiency for the company. Strategy,
like balance, is an agile process that adjusts at the speed
of a digital economy. more fiercely for talent, particularly in the hottest
marketplaces across the globe. By some accounts, there
will be a 16% global shortage of workers with four-year
degrees by 2030. This shortage will also drive up the cost
of labor around the world.
This is especially exciting. Imagine a world where we
know where the customer is at every point in their jour-
ney, where we can anticipate what they want to buy and
where we amaze them with a seamless buying experience
tailored to their unique needs. We are not alone in this
work—in fact, you could say that we’re seeing a new kind
of arms race across the business world: 69% of digital
leaders are adopting new ways of working, empowering
innovation to fuel a digitally-enabled sales motion. In
fact, some predictions say that by 2024, 20% of business-
to-consumer companies will digitize and automate their
physical outlets. The key to success will be staying ahead of what skills
are needed for the future. It starts with understanding
the skillsets of our current employee base to determine
whether they are the right ones for the company’s path
forward. It continues with developing accelerated training
programs to help employees learn these skills and giving
them meaningful opportunities to enrich their careers.
Third, this rapid acceleration of technology advance-
ments is prompting HP and other companies like us to
re-evaluate how we prepare our employees with new skill
sets. With unemployment rates at an all-time low, and
niche skill sets on the rise, companies will be competing
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in healthcare,
consumer goods, and factory automation. I’ve spear-
headed and witnessed all manner of organizational
transformations and if there’s one thing I learned, it’s
that if you want to transform­—people must be at the
center of what you do. For HP, that means customers,
employees, and partners.
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