 Good afternoon and welcome to those in the audience at the World Economic Forum, but also those of you who are streaming in. What we're going to speak about today is something we've talked about a great deal at Davos this week, which is the issue of skills, the fact that the labor markets are incredibly tight at the moment, particularly in developed countries. And one of the oddest things about the labor market is that on the one hand, people would like to get jobs, but they're not getting jobs, and why is that? And one of the conclusions is that over the years we've focused a great deal on degrees and certification as a way of getting a job. But of course, millions of people around the world don't have a degree, and so how do they get into the labor market? And we see this at the World Economic Forum as a really important issue. I'm Linda Gratton. I'm Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School, and I chair the World Economic Forum Council on wages and jobs. And of course, the issue is also around people like immigrants and refugees who find it incredibly difficult as they move countries to bring their certificates with us. So what we're going to talk about today in this session is how do we really focus on this problem? What are the new solutions? What are organizations doing? What are the new technology platforms doing? And to help us to think about that, I'm joined by three astonishing people who are going to tell us a great deal about this problem. Can I first of all introduce Jeff Madgeon Calder, who's a CEO of Coursera? And some of you, many of you will know Coursera. Perhaps you've done a Coursera course. There's more than 100 million people around the world who have done that. Can I next introduce Judith Weisch, who's the Chief People and Sustainability Officer at Siemens. Siemens, as you know, employs more than 300,000 people around the world. And for Judith, the real focus is on bringing skills and development to every single one of those employees, whatever type of jobs that they do. And finally, can I introduce Hadi Patua, who's the founder and CEO of Code.org. And he's been absolutely focused on how do we bring computer skills to primary and secondary school students. In fact, he and Code.org have touched the lives and upskilled in computer science more than 75 million students. So what I think is really important about this panel today is that we're not just talking about individual initiatives. We're talking about enormous scaling opportunities. And what we'd like to really focus on is how do we make more of that. Now, just to remind you of what the WEF has done in this field, the WEF has created the Future Skills Alliance and the Global Skills Taxonomy to help organizations around the world to think about this. Okay, Jeff, may I open with you? Because right across Davos this week, we've heard a lot about how issues of scaling and globalization can be solved through technology platforms. Technology platforms, Jeff, like Coursera. Yeah, I think, first of all, thank you. And it's a pleasure to be here. I think that technology is a huge part of the story here. I don't think it's the only part, but it's a big part of it. And when we look at what happened during the pandemic with individual learners who could, even though their campuses were closed and in the case of businesses where employees had the offices closed, they could go online and they could learn online. No matter where they were, what time it was or what their backgrounds were in, in the employment space, it was amazing for me as an employer and big companies as well to see what it was like to have employees work online. I think a major legacy of the pandemic is going to be that almost every teacher and student got to taste what online learning looks like. Now it's not the best at everything, it's getting better quickly and that will accelerate in 2023 with certain new technologies and AI coming out. But the idea that education doesn't have to be place-based so that global access is more possible is a big part of it. But there's another part which is the curriculum. You mentioned something really important. A lot of the best-paying jobs currently require a college degree. But there are many jobs in very high demand that pay very well that you can learn to do without a college degree, you can learn to do without prior work experience and you can learn the skills online. And we started with Google but now have expanded to 27 of these. We call them professional certificates, others might call them industry micro-credentials. They're sort of sub-degree credentials that help someone who has not had a background in technology learn the skills and have the chance to get those kinds of jobs. What I think is also exciting about scalability beyond the technology is the collaboration. So we worked with a bunch of industry partners to put together these industry micro-credentials and now we're working with universities so that someone can start this process of learning these job skills even if they're not going to university but the credits can count towards a college degree. And we just are announcing this week a partnership with the government of Kazakhstan. I met with the Minister of Education last week where the government is actually going to be taking these professional certificates and inserting them into the college curriculum of most of the public universities in Kazakhstan. So to upgrade the curriculum so that when students go through those systems, the system is sort of evolving by incorporating the technology and the curriculum that's being created by industry. So it's a nice collaboration between universities industry. It's a nice combination of technology and institutional collaboration. So I guess, Jeff, what we're seeing here is a real turbocharging after the pandemic. We're seeing some really interesting innovations around curricula and I think importantly and again this is a big WEF theme, partnerships between organizations, governments, education institutions to try and really scale some of this. Judith, you do an astonishing job in one of the world's large corporations and I know for you reaching every single employee is absolutely crucial. You know, you've got many, one of the things that's come out in WEF this week is that now we're in, you know, economic turbulence and many CEOs are asking themselves, where am I going to spend my money? Where am I going to spend my resources? You know, Judith, you have to keep on making the case, don't you, for why would you spend money on learning and upskilling and reskinning? What sort of case, how do you demonstrate that as an investment case? And also, is there anything that you're doing in terms of the skill-based approach that you'd like to share with us today? Yeah, fortunately, unfortunately, the case is actually getting easier by the day because as we have demographic change in the large geographies in the West but also in China and as a technology company that combines hardware and software, we're looking both into labor shortage on the one end and we're looking into territory of extremely sought-after skills in the software and digital space. So, put that together creates a wonderful case in terms of why investment into up and reskilling actually makes total sense for us and we're doing that through a number of ways. One is that we're working very closely with our various businesses, whether that's manufacturing sites, technical service, sales or the software parts of the organization to say, what are you seeing? How are capabilities needed from an organizational perspective and how does that actually translate into role profiles for people? So, looking into the future as much as we can and then really translate that for jobs and job profiles. We started off using that methodology initially with the brilliant volunteers and by now we really take this where we know that strategically things are going to be shifting. Take the shop floor, somebody who was a mechatronic 10 years ago, a mechanic 10 years ago, we know needs to have the skills of a mechatronic. We have a German heritage of professional education that we're now leveraging to the full because these guys know best what that skill differential is between those two different jobs and this is exactly where we're investing and so we're now also leveraging some of the skills that we have internally from a capability building and applying them in uncharted territory and maybe one last word, also building on Jeff because we do work very well with Coursera as well. We have an internal learning platform as well that really works like the platform economy. There's various constituents who actually bring content to then the 300,000 people who might want to need that and we by now have a reach of 97% of all our people going into that. We're able to push content. Part of that is a section called My Skills where people can actually visit, do self-assessments and get input on what are relevant skills of the future to learn and then have the learning there and then like you said, the nature of learning has completely shifted aided by the pandemic as well for all walks of life. I just wanted to ask a question about apprenticeships because Germany is very well known as a place where the whole apprenticeship system has been developed and one of the things that we've talked about quite a bit at the WEF this week is if we move towards a skills-based approach and think more about experience and less about did you get a degree, what's your certificate? Then we actually look often to apprenticeship systems as a good role model and of course we look to Germany. So tell us, is that something you think the rest of the world could learn in terms of apprenticeships? Yeah, and we have some very real interests from parts of the world. We also have other constituents, governments come and talk to us and wanting to explore that because it just takes skills and learning very close to the place of work. I mean, there's some very fascinating research when you ask academics whether they think what they teach people is relevant. The score is immensely high in business, it's immensely low on the other way around. So I think bringing learning and skills adoption to the place where it's actually applied and having people being trained in the business and go to school at the same time. We do the same with dual study programs. So they do lead to a degree but the essence is the same. You learn on the job as well as in school. And of course, Hattie, when you think about code.org and those 75 million students that you've put through that education that's going to help them so much to do the jobs that are going to be important for the future and you look at the education system. I speak as an educator here. I mean, what would you like to see change to help those students? That's a great question. I was actually at a panel earlier today where one of the panelists basically asked the audience, is the education system working to prepare students for the skills they're going to need in the future? Anybody who thinks it's working, raise your hand. And nobody raises their hand. Not just single class, son. And another stat that's related to what you asked about, the necessity of a college degree is 80% of technology CEOs and founders have now said that they no longer believe a college degree or university degree is necessary for employment, the skills are what's important. And the problem is our education system is dead unless it evolves to teach the skills of the future. There was a New York Times article that just came out today that blew my mind. It talked about how the school system is revamping education to deal with the new AI tools that have come out and this is the revamp that they're doing. Universities are now not only banning use of AI for students doing their work, they're forcing students to write their essays with handwriting and not using computers to make sure that AI tools are not being used. And if you think about it, handwriting is clearly a skill of the past and learning how to use AI is clearly a skill of the future. The Education 4.0 Alliance of the West has said that the skills of the future need to focus on computer science, digital skills, creativity and collaboration and we need the school system to teach those things. And that's part of what my organization code.org is working to do. And when you say skills-based, tell me how that would look. I mean, what would an education system of a 10-year-old, for example, that was skilled-based, what would it actually look like? So first of all, we should think about the right skills. Reading and writing for sure need to be taught, but there's so much we currently expect of schools that are is basically irrelevant. Like every student right now in the world learns how to divide big numbers by each other by hand because that actually used to be a job skill 100 years ago. It's no longer done in any job other than teaching math to the next generation to learn how to do this. So we should first figure out the right skills, but then the education system can work in a way where students pick which path they wanna go and learn in a more personalized way, learning with AI as a tutor, not instead of without AI. And student mastery of skills should be the way you decide whether students graduate or not, rather than you're in this grade, then you're in this grade. And the whole concept of grades should be adjusted for a world of personalized learning and lifelong learning, where you're learning the skills you need in an entering the workforce. One of the things that we've been debating right this week, over this week at the World Economic Forum at Davos is how do we scale and globalize? These initiatives, not yours, but many initiatives are too small. They're too focused on developed countries. They don't really hit those hundreds of millions of people who are in real need of skills and better jobs. And we've got the most astonishing group here who actually represent not government, unfortunately, but almost every other stakeholder. If I were to ask you separately or even together, what would you wish, in terms of how we now really scale that the initiatives that you've taken in your platform, in the work that you've been doing in the US and globally as well, and indeed the work you've done in Siemens, what would that look like, Jeff? Well, when the pandemic broke out, our servers got really taxed pretty hard. We had 47 million learners at the beginning of 2020. Another 30 million came in 2020. So it was almost doubling and it was not volume that we'd ever seen before. So part of it is, of course, the technology piece of it and also being able to deliver services when you can directly to individuals. But there's, especially with education, there's a lot that really benefits from institutional coordination, support, financing, et cetera. I mentioned that technology completely changed online learning, create more global access to learning and education. But I think the remote work side is really part and parcel of this. It's great if anyone anywhere can learn skills that could qualify for a good job. But if those jobs are not in your community, then either you don't get a good job or you have to move. That's sort of what the pre-pandemic world would look like. First of all, you often didn't have access to good education. Online learning helps to solve that. But if you learn all these great skills and there's no jobs available, then you either have to leave or that really you can't realize a lot of the benefit. Remote work really is changing things. I mean, the idea that many companies, and Coursera is one of them, who are embracing, we call it work from anywhere. So we still have offices, but our employees don't have to come to offices. The Job Rules Act Coursera don't require people to come to offices. So it's optional. This has allowed us to find talent in completely different places than we'd ever experienced before. This is a really important. Yeah, we're able to hire much more diverse talent in new talent pools. And when you flip that around to an employer, it looks like a new talent pool. To an individual who has those skills in a rural village in Africa, it looks like new job opportunities. So I think the globalization of talent goes two ways. Employers will find talent all over the world, and individuals will find job opportunities in far greater numbers than they have. We just had a meeting just before I came here of the people, like me, who chaired the councils at the World Economic Forum. One of the things we talked about in terms of fairness was the importance of connectivity. The truth is that your African village will not have connectivity. Unless they have a Wi-Fi tower. And they won't, lots won't. So one of the things that we've really got to tackle if we want to democratize education and create jobs that are virtual, is we have to put an emphasis on making sure that anybody who can, who wants to, can connect to some sort of site or website. Absolutely. I think it's like water electricity connectivity. It's a really big issue. Did you want to jump in here? Because you must be serving some communities where the connectivity is poor or they're not really used to using, I mean, how do you think about that? With respect to your question of scale, and this is certainly between Coursera and Code.org, the way to scale skilling is through online learning. And connectivity is critical to that. But not everybody has that. And Code.org is, for our work, we're doing two approaches. One is creating an offline version of Code.org so that you can sort of download it on a USB stick and put it on a computer in a place that doesn't have good internet. The other is imagining a mobile, native mobile app version. Because even in places, communities in Africa that don't have schools with Chromebooks and internet connections, they still have smartphones. And so if they can learn through that system, that can reach the developing world. Judith. Yeah, part of what we do is also multiply through customers, right? Because, of course, we sell digitalization. We sell technology, and for that to get adopted fast, our customers have a very vested interest in up and re-skilling their people as well. And then there are more developmental projects as well. If I think about the latest deal with Egypt, for instance, where we're building a high-speed train line, that with that will come jobs, with that will come enabling of communities who are now connected along the line, the tracks. And we're bringing some of the German apprenticeship and the skill building also then to these particular geographies as well. And maybe turning some of what you said on its head, because I've just come out of a previous session where we're talking about augmented workforce. So whilst we have the people who can now work from anywhere, there are also people who have to work either on the shop floor or they're out there as technical service people with a customer. And the more we can enable these people through connectivity and devices as well so that learning can actually happen as micro-learning on the shop floor or it can be done outside with traveling to customers and from customers is also hugely enabling. Yeah, one of the things that people say about Davos is it's full of large corporations and there's some truth in that. But those large corporations like Siemens have massive supply chains and we're hearing quite a lot about how they're influencing the geographies that they work in through their supply chains. Time for questions. We would like to ask a question. Any questions? Okay, let me, yes. Oh, two questions, two, suddenly. Could you say who you are and just as a question, these are always the great web principles. This is a question, not an observation. Yes, hi everyone. This is Komald Adlani, CEO and co-founder at Lab4U. It's an education startup from Latin America. Thank you. So my question is, you spoke about the infrastructure needed, connectivity. So for example, in Latin America and many of the schools that we work in, connectivity is a real issue. And teachers, training teachers is also an issue. I know that Jeff in Coursera and you're working in higher ed and co.org, also in K-12. But how can we really make a difference in K-12 in order for the young students to be prepared for the future of the workforce, not only in higher ed or with subscription models, but really in K-12 where it is needed the most. Let's hear the other question and then I'm going to go ahead to you because I think this is right up. Yeah. Hi everyone, I'm Hongyi from China, I'm a global shipper. I was a social entrepreneur in global education based in China, in Chengdu. So my question is around global competency. So we've been talking about the future of work, get our young population ready for the future job markets. There are some unique problems to certain cultures, say China, there are many barriers that are very unique regarding languages, culture differences, access to information, global engagement opportunities. So I'm very privileged to be here as a youth representative here in Davos, my first trip in Europe by the way. So I just want to get your thoughts on that part. How do you engage the vast young population in China into global education to help them to become more globally competent in a sense they are more informed on the global issues, they're able to engage and even make a difference. Yeah, thank you so much. And it's great that we have two younger members of our community asking really important questions about issues around globalization. Hadi, I'm going to go to you. Sure, I'll start with the primary and secondary education question, I asked it to my colleagues for the China question. But as I was mentioning earlier, there's so many places like rural Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, large parts of India, Indonesia that lack connected devices in schools. And so even though we've spread at massive scale through delivering online learning, we won't reach those places unless the schools purchase internet connectivity and devices and purchasing internet connectivity is impossible in some regions because it's literally non-existent yet. Or if the platforms that create these things enable offline models of distribution or smartphone models. And so for companies like yours, such as Lab4U, getting to that universal reach, once you reach enough scale using laptops and the internet, you're going to need to also figure out how to make the offline version and how to make the mobile first version. That's the best answer I have right now. Judith, I just wondered from the SEMA's perspective, this must be an issue for you as you work right across the globe. I mean, how are you thinking about that? Yeah, when it comes to primary and secondary education, this is obviously where we're less directly involved. Secondary to some extent. But of course, we're trying to work with the various institutions, government, education, et cetera, to really then exude influence in terms of how curriculum is built, how early on. We think that's something like low coding should happen very early on. You get into diversity questions as well. Why are we losing so many girls from STEM education? And I think if you started much earlier, you would be taking barriers away as well. So we have a very vested interest in that as well. We do get involved and I think there's been some connection I think with that for you as well through the SEMA's foundation, where we're trying to actually cover what we don't do as a business very much in schools and in STEM education or STEAM education in particular. And maybe also, should I go to the, we're running out of time, it's a very, very tight. Oh, hang on, I think give them four more minutes. So maybe one word on China. I mean, as a company, of course, China's, even China is part of the family. We've been in China for 150 years. And so therefore our curriculum is very often a global curriculum that we also make accessible to anybody in the SEMA's family in China as well. And China is actually best in class for SEMA's when it comes to working on the shop floor. We have the highest adoption rate and of course have made sure that language is not a barrier to what we're doing there, but have language capability locally as well. Because it's such a huge market for us. Really fascinating. Jeff, final comment. Yeah, I think what we're doing at Coursera is we're betting that governments will take care of the infrastructure part. And the infrastructure is, it's definitely happening. Every minister of information technology I talked to, everybody's working on it. I was in Mexico City, they're doing a fiber backbone out to the Yucatan Peninsula. There was a contingent from Oaxaca saying, we are too far from the fiber line. Make sure the towers are big enough. But it is a very much, it's a big investment. And we, to your point, Adi, what we decided was we're gonna make sure that every course can be learned on a mobile device and offline. And when you get back to a hotspot, it'll sync back up again. So I do think until everything's there, always on connected, make sure that could be done offline and then sync back up, that would be my recommendation. But vast amounts of money is going into building the infrastructure. And I think technology is definitely moving quickly to make connectivity broader and cheaper as well. Well, thank you so much to our panel, looking at this really important question. Let me just make a few remarks in terms of concluding. Jeff started with talking about the pandemic. It's really pushed the use of digital learning faster than we had ever imagined. This is a great moment for us to push it even further. Judith talked about how important it is to have re-skilling right through the organization. She spoke specifically about the shop floor and also talked about how apprenticeship processes, for example, allow people to get great jobs without necessarily having a degree. Haddy spoke about how important skill-based learning is and how we're in a unique position now to really help younger people build these foundational skills, talking about some of the skills that people need and how we can go on and build them. We've talked a lot about scale today. We've talked a lot about connectivity. I was interested, Jeff, in your point that you think it's governments that are going to push that forward, because that is a real issue, as some of you have said already. I want to just finish by reminding you that this is an ongoing conversation within the world, and I wanted to draw your attention to two pieces of resources that I hope you'd find interesting. The first is the re-skill revolution website. Please go to that, which there's a lot of... You've just heard, you know, just a small part of the conversation that's going on about re-skilling around the world. And also, just to remind you that the job summit is taking place on the 2nd to the 3rd of May. I think many of us will be there at the WEF headquarters in Geneva. So skills and skilling, upskilling, re-skilling, is absolutely at the front of our agenda right now. It's going to be crucial to make sure that those hundreds of millions of people around the world get jobs that they deserve, that get jobs that are high quality, that get jobs that are well paid. And I think that what we've heard from today's panel gives some insight indeed and indeed hope about how that might take place. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Linda.