Measuring Innovation in the Workplace

Below just the intro, an interesting piece our of Microsoft Research.   An example they say of using machine learning to derive and measure insights from connected data.  In a work environment that has changed considerably in the last year.    In particular interesting is how you do the measurement with tools like knowledge graphs.   Lots of interesting hints here about how they are leveraging their own infrastructure. Technical.

Advancing organizational science using network machine learning to measure innovation in the workplace

Published March 24, 2021

By Carolyn Buractaon , Senior Program Manager  Amber Hoak , Software Development Engineer  David Tittsworth , Software Engineer  Neha Shah , Viva Insights: Director of Solution Design  Jonathan Larson , Principal Data Architect

Is innovation another loss due to the global COVID-19 pandemic? Indicators reveal challenges to overcome—as well as opportunities to build on our collective experience gained in the last year. Measuring collaboration using network machine learning provides a powerful diagnostic tool to address issues as they arise. One challenge lies in how we build relationships in the workplace. With many transitioning to work-from-home environments, more flexible schedules, and new methods of working, there is evidence that interactions at work have been impacted in multifaceted ways.

REPORT

Work Trend Index 

This year’s Work Trend Index shows that the world’s information workers have begun a fundamental transition into a new world of work. According to the report, over 70 percent of global workers surveyed want flexible, remote work options to continue. At the same time, over 65 percent say they want more in-person time with teams. This future is dependent on utilizing new technologies for communication and collaboration, meeting the needs of individuals when it comes to motivation and mental health, and evolving ideas to accommodate modern workplaces—big and small.

As the world over the past year has changed in the wake of COVID-19, employees’ networks have narrowed. It’s important that we find ways to rebuild our wider work networks as we adjust to new ways of collaborating with others. Innovative teams have been shown to frequently have access to novel information from across their organization and to create new collaborations on a regular basis. Workers will need to tap into a diversity of ideas and viewpoints to foster creativity. The bottom line is that social ties and support networks are important to both our productivity and our ability to adapt at work. You can learn more about some of the takeaways for business leaders and workplaces in this Harvard Business Review article.

Within Microsoft Research, we are developing network machine learning to derive insights from connected data. In the case of the Work Trend Index, this technique can be applied to understand global patterns across Microsoft 365. Our Graph AI efforts have led us to develop tools and techniques to use connected data to service a wide variety of research application areas, such as tech fraud in the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, search in Microsoft Bing, and others. The graspologic open-source Python package, developed jointly with Johns Hopkins University performs partitioning, visual layouts, and network embeddings based on our research methods. Recently, we’ve been making advances in applying network machine learning to inform new solutions across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva. In order to advance both theoretical research in Graph AI and applied research in organizational science, we have formed collaborations with research organizations, including Johns Hopkins University Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics and the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.  ... " 

IBM Introduces Watson Works with AI

Newly introduced:

Watson Works
Work safe, work smart, and ensure the health and productivity of your people in a changing workplace  ... 

Watson Works is a curated set of products that embeds Watson AI models and applications to help you:

Decide when employees can return to the workplace 
Organize and manage facilities and adhere to new protocols
Answer customer and employee questions on COVID-19
Maximize the effectiveness of contact tracing
Secure and protect your employees and organization

Schedule a consultation  ... 

AI as Workplace Disrupter

Expected for jobs that require high skills, but these same jobs will morph to related tasks as well.  Being better skilled usually means you have the ability to re-train.   And today there are many more ways to re-train and become certified in new areas.

AI is the Next Workplace Disrupter, and It's Coming for High-Skilled Jobs
The Wall Street Journal
Eric Morath
February 23, 2020

A Brookings Institution study predicts that the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven automation will target white-collar professions like marketing specialists, financial advisers, and computer programmers. AI enables computers to analyze data, anticipate outcomes, and learn from experience by recognizing patterns and making decisions—jobs typically performed by highly skilled, well-educated employees. Stanford University's Michael Webb used AI to review more than 16,000 AI-related patents to ascertain capabilities like disease diagnosis or object recognition, while examining a U.S. Labor Department database of occupations to catalog specific tasks needed for jobs. By matching the frequency of overlap between these two factors, Webb found that holders of bachelor's degrees are five times more likely to be impacted by AI than those with high-school diplomas. AI may potentially automate certain tasks for some professionals without entirely replacing them, while others could find their jobs simplified and easily filled by less-educated workers. ... '

Robots as our Bosses

Does not necessarily mean there will soon be android devices wandering the aisles of your workplace.  And most workplaces are measured by goals attained.  Measured and analyzed digitally.  But the complete systemization of that has never been there,  and we are moving that way.  Will we see this more ominously?

 

How Hard Will the Robots Make us Work?

In warehouses, call centers, and other sectors, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they’re making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous

By Josh Dzieza@joshdzieza  in TheVerge

 

OnOn conference stages and at campaign rallies, tech executives and politicians warn of a looming automation crisis — one where workers are gradually, then all at once, replaced by intelligent machines. But their warnings mask the fact that an automation crisis has already arrived. The robots are here, they’re working in management, and they’re grinding workers into the ground.

The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to call center workers, telling them what to say, how to say it, and keeping them constantly, maximally busy. While we’ve been watching the horizon for the self-driving trucks, perpetually five years away, the robots arrived in the form of the supervisor, the foreman, the middle manager. .... "

Understanding the Digitization of the Workforce

Came to this piece by seeing the mention of O*NET, which we also used to look at the assemblage of work based on looking at component tasks.    Irving does a great job looking at workplace digitization, here a short excerpt:

By Irving Wladawsky-Berger:

The Digitalization of the American Workforce

“Over the past half century, wave after wave of digital innovation has ensured that digitalization - the diffusion of digital technologies into nearly every business and workplace and pocket - has been remaking the U.S. economy and the world of work,” said the Brookings Institution in Digitalization and the American Workforce.  The digitalization of everything has both increased the potential of individuals and societies while contributing to widespread anxiety about its impact on jobs and economic inequalities.  “And yet, for all of the evidence that big changes are underway, surprisingly little data exists to track the spread of digital adoption.” .... 

The Brookings report quantified the spread of digitalization by analyzing the changes in the digital content of 545 occupations between 2002 and 2016 based on O*NET, the most comprehensive data on US occupations sponsored by the US Department of Labor.  O*NET includes highly detailed, task-level information on hundreds of occupations, and includes quantitative measures of knowledge requirements, skills, tools, education, training and work activities. In addition, the report collected information on the occupations’ particular industries, pay, growth rates, geographical locations and distribution across educational and demographic groups. .... '

Toward the Intelligent Workplace

ake many experimental moves in this direction, starting with the issuing of iPads and Apps, but none were completely satisfactory.  More like issuing tools and training rather than creating systems that would initiate and help with work skills, and even alert, give management orders, and track progress towards goals.  Amazon has a program moving in this direction, have heard less out of Google..

Taking First Steps Toward the Intelligent Workplace
David Maffei, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Akumina

CIOs must focus on smarter workplace experiences with technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital assistants -- or risk being left behind.

When envisioning an intelligent workplace, it’s easy to get carried away imagining robotic coffee machines and “Minority Report”-style desks. Although those possibilities are exciting (and quite within the realm of possibility in our lifetimes), chief information officers and IT leaders today should be thinking of the intelligent workplace as one where we’re more seamlessly delivering insights, connections and context to knowledge workers. Beyond physical paper pushing and even traditional intranets, the intelligent workplace promises smarter, technology-enabled interactions with people and resources, which will enhance the employee experience and make teams more productive.

Unfortunately, the intelligent workplace hasn’t become a reality for most organizations yet. While businesses have been pouring resources into digital transformation for customer experience, employee experience hasn’t kept pace. The customer is often the one receiving a streamlined, omnichannel experience while internal knowledge workers are left combatting outdated documents and software to maintain a seamless front for the end user.  ... " 

Workplace Surveillance

Agree that doing this more universally will much chage the workplace.   Indications are that Amazon has closed the loop for warehouse workers, but the the idea is likely implemented most everywhere.    Will this then be posted publically in a game format to induce competition?

AI Surveillance Is Coming: How will it Change Your Workplace? in InformationWeek

There isn't much you can do to stop AI surveillance's encroachment on your life, but you can equip yourself with better understanding and more appropriate skills and behaviors.
Your employer probably has some kind of monitoring system in place. They might have stationary cameras in your store, monitoring software to track your online activity, or some other system designed to keep an automated eye on things.

But we’re about to see the rise of new, high-tech systems that take surveillance to a new level of awareness and sophistication — artificial intelligence driven surveillance — and it has the potential to completely change the workplace as we know it.  .... "

Machines Firing Humans

First I had heard of such a thing, certainly the PR would be bad enough to add a human in the loop.  Somewhat skeptical, but perhaps a warning of the future.

Amazon's system for tracking its warehouse workers can automatically fire them by Charlotte Jee, Technology review.

A world where people are monitored and supervised by machines isn’t confined to the realms of sci-fi. It’s here now.

Tough conditions: There have been many reports over recent years about unpleasant conditions workers face at Amazon warehouses. Employees are under pressure to pack hundreds of boxes per hour, and face being fired if they aren’t fast enough. .... "

Considering Generation Z

Always somewhat suspicious of such simplistic classifications.   Simply defining them  (generation Z, born after 1995) can create a narrative with a bias.   Does the narrative march on?     At least this piece admits that. 

Make Way for Generation Z in the Workplace      in K@W

As a group, they are “sober, industrious and driven by money,” reports the Wall Street Journal, but also “socially awkward and timid about taking the reins.” They are risk-averse and more diverse, says Inc. magazine. Forbes says they “want to work on their own and be judged on their own merits rather than those of their team.”

Generation Z is arriving, and they are different than previous generations – or at least that’s how this young cohort is being portrayed as it begins to enter the workforce. After the traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X and Generation Y/millennials, we have Generation Z – that group born after 1995 now starting to graduate college.

But is Generation Z really different, and if so, how? When it comes to ascribing characteristics and accepting advice about a particular generation, caveat emptor. Over-generalizing about any group is a slippery business.

“We have to be careful that we are seeing people for the complex beings that they are,” says Wharton assistant management professor Stephanie Creary. Generational categories, she notes, might help us to understand commonalities. “But people are also going to behave in ways that are consistent with their multiple other identities. We want to make sure we are not creating biases.”   .... "

Survey: Understanding the Agile Workplace

McKinsey Survey.  Definitions and Organzations.

The agile manager     By Aaron De Smet in McKinsey
Who manages in an agile organization? And what exactly do they do?

The agile workplace is becoming increasingly common. In a McKinsey survey of more than 2,500 people across company sizes, functional specialties, industries, regions, and tenures, 37 percent of respondents said their organizations are carrying out company-wide agile transformations, and another 4 percent said their companies have fully implemented such transformations. The shift is driven by proof that small, multidisciplinary teams of agile organizations can respond swiftly and promptly to rapidly changing market opportunities and customer demands. Indeed, more than 80 percent of respondents in agile units report that overall performance increased moderately or significantly since their transformations began.  ... "

Seeking Voice Assistants in the Workplace

Now been involved in a number of brainstorm meetings addressing now virtual assistants can be used in the workplace.  Especially how voice can be used without disrupting a typical workplace.    Makes sense to use these for mundane topics.   Handsfree and non disruptive.   Probably with chatbot like feedback on alternatives.   Contact to talk this with me.  Here the first general example I have seen suggested:

In ComputerWeekly:
" ... Within the next three years, workers will be using Alexa-style devices to book time off, update their addresses, and file their expenses.

Voice recognition, powered by intelligent software bots, will take off as companies look to make their IT systems easier for employees to use, according to a specialist on the future of work. ... " 

Staples Tests Echo Competitor

Seems like an unexpected direction, but is not.  Also I like the fact that this could open interactions to the workplace.  'Easy Button', though no longer in their ads,  states the premise.  Increases engagement.

Staples develops an office competitor to Amazon Echo and Google Home
The office supply company turns its Easy Button into device that will be the assistant's assistant  ... 

Massachusetts-based Staples is testing a smart assistant device that looks like its Easy Button, which was launched as a marketing campaign and gained a bit of a cult following, but that customers can use to order products, track shipments and help with returns. ... " 

And in Chain Store Age.

Skipflag Rover

Furthers look at workplace bots.

What would you first want from a workplace conversation bot?  Reminders of how the current conversation relates to the knowledge derived from previous conversations, documents and analyses. Internal and external.

We looked at systems (bots)  that would watch while one developed a document, searched in wikis and other resources, and suggested and filled in links to past knowledge.  Is such straightforward search enough?  Perhaps best linked to a knowledge graph.  With deeper knowledge of natural language and context.

See work by  Skipflag   

" ... Turning conversations into knowledge ... 

Tired of sifting through information at work? .... 
Rover automatically discovers and organizes what you need to know. ... 
SkipFlag is using machine intelligence to build the knowledge graph for teams. Our software understands the people, projects, and topics in your company, organizing and connecting the dots to proactively keep you up to date. Join our waitlist at http://skipflag.com "   .... '

On Workplace Bots

Interesting on state of the art.   Slackbots and beyond

Jassim Latif on workplace bots
The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: Bots that can respond to groups of users.
By Jon Bruner

Apple Continues Moves in VR

Continued interest by big players in Virtual and Augmented reality moves.  Lets see the big workplace applications.

Apple continues hiring augmented and virtual reality experts
By Jacob Kastrenakes 

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been hinting at Apple's interest in augmented and virtual reality all year, and it seems that interest continues to grow. Business Insider spotted two people who were hired by Apple over the summer after working at a pair of the biggest names in field: one at Oculus VR, the other at Magic Leap.

The two hires don't mean much on their own, but they suggest that Apple is continuing to invest in AR and VR research with the goal of eventually putting out a product. In January, the Financial Times reported that Apple already had "hundreds" of people working on AR and VR, though those employees were said to have come from acquisitions of smaller companies. Their goal, according to the report, was to eventually build some kind of headset. ..... "

The Future of AI in the Home, Office and City

An area we covered for years.  How AI will influence will our home, business and urban worlds by 2030?

Stanford-Hosted Study Examines How AI Might Affect Urban Life in 2030 Stanford News (09/01/16) Tom Abate 

A year-long, Stanford University-hosted study projects how artificial intelligence (AI) will realistically impact North American urban life in eight domains by 2030. Stanford's One Hundred Year Study on AI (AI100) is the result of a standing committee of researchers enlisted to evaluate the technological, economic, and policy ramifications of potential AI applications in a societally relevant environment. Five sections of the new report focus on application areas such as transportation, home/service robots, healthcare, education, and entertainment. The three other sections concentrate on technological effects in domains such as low-resource communities, public safety and security, and employment and the workplace. The AI100 panel says the study seeks to guide ethical development of AI technologies via public discourse. "It is not too soon for social debate on how the fruits of an AI-dominated economy should be shared," the report's authors note. AI100 standing committee chair Barbara Grosz, recipient of the 2009 ACM AAAI Allen Newell Award, says AI technologies can be reliable and yield a wide spectrum of benefits. "Being transparent about their design and deployment challenges will build trust and avert unjustified fear and suspicion," she notes. .... " 

Machines Replacing Humans

Good thoughts from the McKinsey Quarterly.  Agree there will be dramatic differences by sector, but do also expect some dramatic speedups.

Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet)
By Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi

The technical potential for automation differs dramatically across sectors and activities.

As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly great role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, unsurprisingly, become a major focus of research and public concern. The discussion tends toward a Manichean guessing game: which jobs will or won’t be replaced by machines?  ... " 

Predicting Bots Everywhere

The CEO of Automation Anywhere on How Robotic Process and Automation will Transform the Workplace  by Jacob Morgan

What is in this episode and what you should care:

Mihir Shukla is the CEO of Automation Anywhere, an enterprise software company. They are redefining how work gets done by introducing the idea of a digital workforce platform and digital workers that work alongside human employees. This combination is designed to help the human employee accomplish more than they ever could alone. Automation Anywhere has 300 hundred employees in 10 offices worldwide. Mihir’s goal is to become one the world’s largest employer without having any employees. How will they accomplish this? Projections show in the next four years, Automation Anywhere will reach 3 Million software bots worldwide which are producing at the capacity of 3 Million people. While they are a software company, the production levels are so high that they are the world’s largest employer in the digital age.  .... " 

 

Better Digital Work Methods Needed

Again, I would point to some of our work on this to first and foremost getting all the right data to people as they need it to both support decisions and make constraints clear.   Further supported by analytic/cognitive agents.

  See Business Sphere.   Sadly, I don't think this was taken forward very well,  It sits stagnant,  except perhaps in the financial industry.  I am struck by observations that we still start with a big pile of Lego blocks, looking for new data and new solutions, repeating this each and every time.   Done often even in 'modern' data science.   Very wasteful.

Can we achieve a better, more effective digital workplace?
As a confluence of new apps and devices steadily flow into the enterprise, they're encountering a growing sense that the digital workplace has become too complex and fragmented to be properly effective. What can organizations do? .... by Dion Hinchcliffe   ... 

Having a Good Day at Work

Can appreciate the thought now that I spend less time at a physical office.  Podcast, with some useful strategies.    " ... How to Have a Good Day:Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life, author Caroline Webb looks at some of the more fascinating recent discoveries that could could help workplaces everywhere become happier spaces.  ... "