The Best Response to Automation is to Create your own Job

Labor-first entrepreneurship and cooperatives

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

This week, I read an interesting fact from a not very well-known country.

I learned that the Finish government invests a heavy part of its budget in human resources.

It provides its citizens with long-lasting education and financially supports its researchers. It also enables unemployed and entrepreneurs to venture into new occupations thanks to social protection.

So when new automation solutions are implemented, Finish companies can rely on the country’s existing pool of talent. They can leverage automation less to reduce labor than to create new and better jobs.

This vision seemed to me too good to be true, but after thinking about it, it helps me reconsider the way we usually face automation. We take it as a threat to our skills and autonomy. We think that it makes us slowly obsolete.

We might also view it from an entrepreneur’s point of view: as an opportunity to be adaptable, open to new learning, and to create unique job positions for us and others.

Of course, this is easier in a country or organization that highly values human work.