Skills Mobility & Future of Work
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Skills Ontology
Assessment
Visual Progression
Game Design
Data Science
Pictured: my early enthusiasm for the entertainment industry.
At Talespin, I led the effort to develop a research-based skills ontology. The behavioral layer consists of 72 skills classified according to cognitive, social, or emotional intelligence. That layer is foundational with subsequent layers focused on more technical skills.
This ontology provides the foundation for a mapping system to create relationships across roles, people, industries, companies, and learning content. Later, this skills layer became the foundation for our upskilling platform.
We then applied this skills layer across our entire client base in dozens of industries.
I’ve seen ‘how people work’ disrupted since I began my career in the entertainment industry in the 1990’s. That represents 30 years but it has been accelerating for many years before that.
I started in in animation at Hannah Barbera two weeks before an acquisition led to the dismissal of most of the staff. I arrived at the lot to see officers from the Los Angeles Police Department guiding away some original artists from Scooby Doo and The Jetsons for smashing display cases in the lobby with original artwork.
My next role was a record label just a few months before Napster and file sharing debuted. Subsequently across multiple industries I have seen this theme repeated over and over again.
For many years the pace of change in how we work has been accelerating. There is no reason to assume it will slow down.