Increasing workforce productivity: smarter people and machines

Abstract

Progress is often defined in terms of power, profit, innovation or wealth creating increasing productivity. Productivity is the ratio of output to input where input consists of labour, material, capital and services; and outputs are measurements of results in products or services. Industrial productivity is a top competitive advantage factor for companies and for nations. The aim of this paper is to explore how productivity will continue to drive progress for organisations and nations and be improved by a mixture of smarter people, smarter machines, mass production, robotics and improved capturing of global ideas. Technology will continue to facilitate doing much more with less. Business and government transactions are being revolutionised by some of them occurring at the speed of light. Personal productivity has increased due to information communications leaps. Illustrative paradigm shift cases are included, including scenarios falling within The Law of Space Abundance1.