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Digital startups are ten times easier to create than traditional brick-and-mortar startups. They are also significantly less expensive to start since the bulk of their infrastructure is in the cloud, and support staff is available as needed online. Consequently, the digital economy offers a unique opportunity to mass-produce jobs and startup businesses. Affordable Jobenomics Digital Academy & Business Generators can generate well-paying digital careers in every city, town, community, or neighborhood that wants to prioritize locally-owned business creation. Since only one-third of the U.S. workforce has the digital skills to succeed in the digital domain, the need is great.
Part 1: Digital Economy Introduction
The Digital Economy (also known as the web economy, internet economy, or the new economy) is (1) transforming economies, (2) revamping existing institutions, governments, businesses, and workforces, (3) instituting new ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and cultures, and (4) changing human endeavor. The speed of digital transformation is both brilliantly innovative and creatively disruptive.
The digital economy will create tens of millions of jobs with proper focus and leadership. Communities with a laissez-faire approach to the digital age’s transformative power will see their economy, business base, and labor force erode.
There are at least nine unique but intertwined subcategories that define the emerging Digital Economy:
- Electric/Mobile-Commerce: the buying and selling goods and services or transmitting funds or data via digital networks. The pandemic accelerated electronic retail sales (an e-commerce subcategory) a decade ahead of expectations and accounted for over $860 billion in 2020, up 44% from 2019. 80% of smartphone users now engage in mobile commerce to make online purchases.
- Sharing Economy is a peer-to-peer, access-driven business model characterized by the ability to share or trade (goods, knowledge, money, time, skills, content, etc.) rather than buy or own. 86 million Americans have used the sharing economy so far in 2021, with an anticipated 2,000% growth over the next decade.
- On-Demand Economy: a business model where consumer demand is satisfied by near real-time provisioning of goods and services. 22 million U.S. users. Worldwide the on-demand economy should exceed $1 trillion in 2021, accelerated by increased usage (pandemic related) of online entertainment, next-day delivery, and meals-to-go.
- App/Bot/AI Economy refers to the range of economic activity surrounding intelligent web-based applications. Apps (applications) are the digital interface through which we live, work, play, and the primary way we engage with media, brands, and ultimately with each other. A bot, also known as a web robot, an internet chatbot, or simply bot, is an interactive, artificial intelligence-driven software application that runs automated tasks or simulates a conversation to deliver text-, voice- or video-based information via a networked device. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software that can do things typically done by people. AI economy impact is estimated at 14.5% of U.S. GDP ($3.7 trillion) by 2030.
- Platform Economy encompasses DTR-enabled social, business, and government activities. A platform (network) business model creates value by facilitating exchanges between interdependent groups, usually consumers and producers. Retail (pipe model) stores give way to e-retailing (platform model). For example, healthcare is now emphasizing outpatient and telemedicine (platform) services in addition to inpatient (pipe) care. The Platform Economy is also a network platform business model where mega-technology corporations exploit network effects to garnish greater and greater influence and control of significant segments of society and the global economy. The top-5 U.S. tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet/Google, and Facebook) market value is over $8.4 trillion, around 300% more than India’s economy, which supports 1.4 billion people.
- Creator Economy entails earning income from making and distributing online content. With the advent of streaming video, online entertainment, social media, and video sharing, new and fresh forms of content are in high demand. The number of new content producers has skyrocketed with new smartphone video technology and inexpensive and high-quality mobile action cameras (e.g., GoPro). The fledgling Creator Economy (paid) consists of more than 50 million independent content creators, curators, and community builders, including social media influencers, bloggers, videographers, and technology providers, of which 2 million are full-time professionals. These statistics do not include content creators that work for the established television, film, and streaming service industries—a huge source of business and jobs for these independent creators.
- Gig/Contingent Workforce Economy is an environment where temporary positions are common, and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. The Gig/Contingent Workforce Economy is creating an employment landscape that provides an opportunity for workers in the future economy where part-time and temporary workers outnumber full-time workers with standard workforce agreements. The gig/contingent workforce soon will be the dominant (50%) form of labor in the United States based on (1) the emerging digital economy, (2) revolution in digital and network technologies, (3) automation of manual and cognitive jobs, (4) shift from full-time to task-oriented labor, and (5) cultural differences of new labor force entrants.
- Data-Driven Economy involves accessing and exploiting information and knowledge in big-data pools to maximize operational efficiencies and reduce costs. While difficult to measure, McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the economic impact of Big Data could generate $30 trillion in additional value this decade in seven industries (education, transportation, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, health care, and consumer finance).
- Internet of Everything (IoE) Economy expands Internet of Things (IoT) machine-to-machine interactions to an ecosystem encompassing people and processes. IoE is well on its way to connecting tens of billions of things to enable billions of connected people. Cisco estimates that 99.4 percent of physical objects that may one day be part of the IoE are still unconnected. With only about 10 billion out of 1.5 trillion things currently connected globally y, there is vast potential to “connect the unconnected.” The economic impact of IoT alone is estimated at $11 trillion by 2025, with 75 billion connected devices. The Internet of Behaviors (IoB) uses IoT/IoE technology to influence behavioral changes from healthcare wearables to consumer monitoring to behavioral care applications (mental illness, childcare, etc.).
The Industrial Revolution (IR) transformed America from an agricultural-based society to an industrial-based nation. The post-WWII Military Technology Revolution (MTR) underpinned the creation of the world’s largest economic superpower. The 1980s Information Technology Revolution (ITR) ushered in an information age of prosperity and international commerce. The Digital Technology Revolution (DTR) has transformed the global economy.
The DTR is not ITR 2.0. While both are revolutionary, the DTR is significantly more disruptive than its earlier and benign ITR cousin. ITR tools assist and enhance humanity’s productivity. DTR’s artificially intelligent agents and bots not only augment but replace human endeavor. The DTR represents a perfect storm of technologies that emulate human form, attributes, and intelligence. The DTR will create 10s of millions of net new American jobs. On the other hand, numerous studies forecast that the DTR will eliminate about half of all American jobs within the next two decades.
Part 2. Digital Literacy. (Caption) The United States workforce is woefully ill-equipped to perform and compete effectively in the digital domain. Although most working-age adults use the internet every day, they lack the skills to meet today’s growing demand for trained digital professionals.
Jobenomics specializes in mass-producing local startup businesses and sustainable jobs in underserved and under-resourced communities. The Jobenomics International Grassroots Movement has reached over 30 million people via national media, Jobenomics TV, website, blog, and lectures. As a result of this exposure, Jobenomics’ unique economic, community, business, and workforce development activities gained international recognition. Over 40 cities and regions on 4 Continents (North America, South America, Africa, and the Middle East) implemented Jobenomics Chapters. To meet local citizens’ immediate needs, Jobenomics forms partnerships with leading companies and institutions to create a wide variety of highly scalable startup programs that could quickly mass-produce new locally-owned and operated startup businesses.
The Jobenomics website contains numerous documents on Jobenomics initiatives and turnkey startup business programs. For more information, see https://jobenomics.com/ and https://jobenomics.com/library/.
