Q&A with George Westerman, Founder of the Global Opportunity Initiative

December 21, 2022

George Westerman, GOI Founder, works at the intersection of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, and now with MIT’s Office of Open Learning too, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation.

As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping organizations to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world. 

How did you conceive of the Global Opportunity Initiative?

I’ve been privileged to be part of teams that did phenomenal research on digital transformation. The work has helped thousands of leaders to understand how to change their companies given the new capabilities of the digital world. But, as much as leaders are changing companies and jobs, it became very apparent that we haven’t changed the way we prepare people for those jobs. Workers need better ways to get the skills they need to grow and thrive in their careers.

Then as my colleagues started studying what would happen when the robots eat all the jobs – something that won’t happen by the way – the need felt even more urgent.  I felt that, while studying labor trends and informing managers about digital topics was important, I needed to do more. While I was putting together the plans for a new book, and some new digital transformation research projects, this problem kept nagging me. I needed to do something that actually helped the workers adapt. I envisioned a global community of organizations, all of whom care about helping workers grow, and all of whom only had some pieces of the puzzle. If we could bring them together to tell their stories, share practices, and solve some problems together, we could have a real impact on the world.  

And then I met Sanjay Sarma, who introduced me to what MIT Open Learning has to offer. I started by helping to build a workforce learning practice within the new Jameel World Education Laboratory (MIT J-WEL). During my time there, my colleagues and I studied corporate learning and development processes (The Transformer CLO), developed a new framework and tools for the “human skills” that workers need to thrive in today’s organizations (The Human Skills Matrix), and even advised the World Health Organization in the design and launch of its global health academy (WHO Academy). However, throughout all of the work, and the challenges of adjusting to the pandemic, the broader vision of building a world-wide community always stayed in the back of my mind.   

Finally, in June, we launched the Global Opportunity Initiative. We have a good team and some good collaborators. We’ve conducted two major events, with more on the way.  We have a newsletter, podcast series, and a continuing set of short articles on important workforce topics. We’re already doing important projects in the US and the Philippines, and we’ll start some important new activities in the coming months. It’s exciting, and exhausting, and exactly what I believe the world needs right now. 

Where is the need greatest, and in what industry are we seeing the most challenges?

There are so many challenges. We think about three and a half main ones.  People need help in career navigation.  They need more agile ways to gain skills.  They need better ways to show the skills they have. And the half is that we need good job/skill ontologies to provide a common language across the many players in the labor market ecosystem.   

Manufacturing is an interesting sector for this work. The bulk of the opportunity is for middle-skilled workers, who have more than a high school education, but not a college degree. Advanced manufacturing occupations, working with Industry 4.0, robotics, and other techs, require a higher degree of skill than current manufacturing technician programs teach.

One of the more promising areas for innovation in workforce learning is healthcare. Occupation demand exceeds supply in many countries, and most occupations don’t require advanced degrees. Plus, certifications exist to help educators and employers understand what skills are needed.  We’re starting some work in this space and I expect to see many fascinating new approaches that other industries can learn from. 

What excites you most about the GOI?

The vision for GOI is big and collaborative and focused on individuals who can really benefit from what we do.  The most exciting, and most challenging, part for me is the collaborative aspect of it.  We purposely built the GOI vision to be too big for MIT to try to do alone. MIT brings many important assets for each of the GOI challenges. But we can’t possibly solve the problems for every occupation in every sector in every part of the world.  Fortunately, each of these has some group that cares about helping workers and employers in that area.  Steve and Vijay and I are learning a lot about building collaborations beyond what we control. Leading a movement instead of running a project or organization.  It’s challenging but really exciting.  

Where do you see the Global Opportunity Initiative in five years? 

If we are successful, the GOI will be truly global and truly helpful for workers – and their employers – around the world. The GOI aims to assist organizations in helping individuals thrive in their careers.  In five years I hope to see hundreds of organizations sharing their practices, vibrant communication in many directions, good media attention, and a dozen or more working groups and sponsored projects tackling specific challenges. I’d like to be able to count the number of people helped in the tens of thousands, with many more in the coming years. Our goal is to transform the process of workforce learning globally – to have an appreciable and countable impact on the lives of millions of people.  Even if we only get part way to that goal, we’ll have made a difference.

What do you like most about working at MIT? 

MIT encourages people to think big.  And it demands excellence. It assembles the most talented people, and gives them space to do great things.  It’s not free; we need to find the funding, assemble the right people, and make solid progress. But the MIT environment makes it possible.  

The constant drive and the excellence of the MIT community is challenging because, no matter what you do, somebody else is doing something better.  And there’s always someone pushing you to do more and do it better.  But it’s also highly motivating.  

Our team is very excited to make the GOI happen. We’re starting this among MIT and a small group of collaborators. But, if we’re successful, MIT will become only one player in a self-sustaining global community that helps millions of people thrive in their careers.

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