Interacting Skills: High Road Strategies for Digital Transformation

Understood as skilled labour, talent is one of the systemic conditions included in Stam’s model of entrepreneurial ecosystems. In line with the ‘high road perspective’, employers need to harness the skills of their workers in order to achieve both the economic and social goals resulting from successful digital transformation. The skills categorisation developed as part of the BEYOND 4.0 project forms the basis of the theoretical framing for this chapter. The categorisation includes newly emerging skills and skills that are becoming increasingly important in light of digital transformation. The categorisation distinguishes between four transversal skill categories: digital skills on the one hand and personal, social and methodological skills (taken together, also described as non-digital skills) on the other. In addition to these transversal skill categories, job-specific skills related to concrete work tasks and work experience are also seen as playing a critical role. Using the lens of interacting skills, this chapter draws on findings from empirical data from Work Package 6 Understanding future skills: empowering groups to propose one way for companies to develop innovative solutions for the digital transformation. The premise of the chapter is that the uptake and adoption of new digital technologies requires a new approach to thinking about skills. Five practical actions or steps that HR professionals and functional managers in companies can take when developing and implementing company-based skills initiatives in response to digital tranformation are presented.