Heena Sharma Blog

  The Covid-19 pandemic is making companies automate their workforce faster than expected globally, while firms with operations in India are accelerating their automation and digitisation above the global average, a World Economic Forum (WEF) study showed on Wednesday. The year-long study on effects of automation in the workplace and the outlook for robot revolution found that the ‘future of work’ has arrived early due to Covid-19 and may lead to 85 million jobs getting displaced in the next five years in medium and large businesses across just 15 industries and 26 economies. At the same time, the robot revolution will create 97 million new jobs, but communities most at risk from disruption will need support from businesses and governments, the World Economic Forum said. These new jobs would mostly emerge in the care economy, in fourth industrial revolution technology industries like artificial intelligence, and in content creation fields. Read More

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "creating a Hindu nationalist state" in India, said US financier and philanthropist George Soros on Thursday in a speech attacking "would-be and actual dictators" in the world. Soros, who was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said nationalism was making further headway around the world, and the "biggest and most frightening setback" was in India. Soros criticised rising populism internationally and picked out US president Donald Trump, China’s Xi Jinping, Modi and Brexit. He described Trump as a "conman and the ultimate narcissist" but said the current surge in economic strength for the United States may have come too soon for the US leader as he faces re-election later this year. "Trump... has managed to overheat an already buoyant economy. An overheated economy can't be kept at the boiling point for too long," warned Soros, credited with correctly predicting major market s...

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and XLRI- Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur have been ranked among top thirty global business schools in the first edition of Positive Impact Rating (PIR) 2020. The rating was released today at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The rating is done by students and for students. An official release from PIR said it is the first time that students around the world assessed their business schools on how they perceive their positive impact in the world. The two Indian schools have featured alongside other premier management institutions in US, Canada and Europe. "The purpose of this PIR 2020 is to measure how business schools contribute to solving societal challenges by energizing the school and its culture, by educating current and future leaders, by providing relevant research results and offers for continuing education, by participating in the public debate and by being a role model institution," XLRI, Xavier School of...

With weak or stolen passwords accounting for an average of four out of five global data breaches, a new study has said it is safer not to have a password . The new report released by the World Economic Forum, here during its 2020 annual meeting, said that freeing ourselves of passwords will actually make individuals safer and businesses more efficient. Cybercrime is set to cost the global economy US2.9 million every minute in 2020, and some 80 per cent of these attacks are password-related. Knowledge-based authentication whether with PINs, passwords, passphrases, or whatever we need to remember is not only a major headache for users, it is costly to maintain, the study found. For larger businesses, it is estimated that nearly 50 per cent of IT help desk costs are allocated to password resets, with average annual spend for companies now at over US1 million for staffing alone. "Passwordless authentication does not mean removing all security barriers to our digitalize...

Robots will handle 52 per cent of current work tasks by 2025, almost twice as many as now, a World Economic Forum (WEF) study said Monday. The sharp increase could also see a net gain in "new roles" for humans, who will have to revamp skills to keep pace with the "seismic shift" in how we work with machines and computer programmes, the forum estimated. "By 2025 more than half of all current workplace tasks will be performed by machines as opposed to 29 per cent today," a statement by the Swiss non-profit organisation said. Simultaneously, rapid changes in machines and algorithms, or computer processes that are designed to solve problems, "could create 133 million new roles in place of 75 million that will be displaced between now and 2022," the group forecast. Its report, The Future of Jobs 2018 , foresees robots swiftly replacing humans in the accounting, client management, industrial, postal and secretarial sectors. Read our ful...