Leading the AI Industry with AI driven transformation

How to top aluminium producer tapped the power of AI to transform the organization and scale impact across operations

Alternative work arrangements have gained in prominence, typically in the form of self-employment, temporary work, part-time work, workplace fissuring, or zero-hour contracts. Such arrangements have enabled greater labor market participation: part-time paid work was the primary driver of the increase in overall employment between 2000 and 2018. Its share rose in 18 out of 21 countries, by an average of 4.1 percentage points, equivalent to 29 million jobs, while that of full-time employment declined by 1.4 percentage points.

As Barra learned, any leader two or three years out from the top job faces a final ascent as fraught with challenges as the one on Mount Everest. Some executives find themselves sidelined. Others become part of the top team only to discover that they have no desire to step up further. Still others become disoriented, lose their balance, and fall. For some, external factors interrupt the path to becoming the CEO—at least at their company. As Brad Smith, former CEO of Intuit, recounts, “When I stepped down, the conditions were such that Sasan Goodarzi was best suited for our next chapter. The other three candidates were ready to be CEOs in different environments, and they all went on to lead other companies

While the cost of discretionary goods and services has been falling, the cost of basics—especially housing, which accounts for 24 percent of household consumption—has risen much faster than general consumer prices and is absorbing a substantial part of households’ income (Exhibit 3).

Increasing longevity and the decline in birth rates are making saving for retirement both a greater imperative and a greater challenge. While access and variety of saving and investment options have expanded, many households are not saving at all, and median wealth growth has been falling.

As people live longer, the number of expected years spent in retirement across our 22 sample countries has increased from 16 in 1980 to 20 in 2018. These gains and expansions in productive working life are a hallmark of progress in the 21st century, yet they also pose a considerable challenge for both institutional and individual savers. Institutional pensions, whether public sector or employer provided, will need to deal with higher pension pay-outs and lower receipts, even after accounting for longer working age. Individual savers will need to save more for themselves for their longer lives and compensate for the shortfall in institutional saving.

Along with disruptive global trends and slow GDP growth, a shifting social contract is affecting these outcomes, through the changing roles of public and private sector institutions, and interventions that shape individual or institutional responsibility for economic outcomes. Our research suggests that in 19 out of 22 countries, institutions are intervening less in the marketplace, while governments in 18 out of 22 countries have somewhat stepped up their spending (Exhibit 5).