August 29, 2017

WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE FOR MY BUSINESS – THE WIDENING SKILL GAP

While there is a clear demonstration of the need for Industry to integrate Robotics and IoT to deliver more value, integration of newer technologies necessitates employment of people with a different set of skills.
While the technology change is rapid, the evolution of people with the requisite skills to maintain and run these systems is not in keeping up with the pace. There is an increasing need at Industry’s end to employ people with skillsets that match these newer technologies to manage and execute Robotics projects to reap benefits from such advances.
Insufficient staffing and lack of expertise is the most cited barrier for organizations currently looking to implement and benefit from Robotics and IoT, according to research from Gartner. The research goes further to point out that 3/4th of all projects in this space will go on for twice the time because of insufficient talent in key areas.
This clearly means that student graduates need a sound grounding in the technologies that enable solutioning, design thinking, manufacture and execution and maintenance of IoT and Robotics applications in Industry. Educational systems have been slow to integrate these learnings into curricula to keep up with the pace of change. However, that said, robotics, IoT and AI are slowly and steadily making their way into B-school curriculum aside from being mainstream Engineering courses themselves.
However, the pace at which technology is changing and the rate of churn from educational institutions do not match and as a consequence, there continues to exist a wide skill gap on what Industry Needs and that which Education can Fill