Is Brazil ready for a knowledge economy?
Posted by By IT Decisions at 18 July, at 17 : 25 PM Print
As Brazil becomes the world’s economic darling, the lack of qualified professionals emerges as one of the country’s most critical barriers to prosperity. A London-based Brazilian, the marketing head at talent community specialist Brave New Talent Ramon Pedrollo Bez comments on how Brazil can use technology to nurture skills for a knowledge-based economy, in a guest article for IT Decisions.
As technology evolves, Brazil simply can’t afford not to build an educational system that will include its population in the digital revolution in order to remain competitive in the international market.
According to Accenture’s study New Era of Sustainability, 72% global CEOs see education as the most critical global development issue to address in order to ensure the future success of their businesses. Climate change ranks second, chosen by 66% of those polled.
However, the latest, most signficant educational in general terms dates back to the Industrial Revolution, when most countries in the world were adapting to the technology changes that happened around that period. The third wave of development is now upon us – and the educational system is no longer fit for purpose in a society where technology has taken a totally different role, impacting heavily the workforce that no longer needs discipline and technical skills, but critical thinking and ability to solve problems creatively.
While places such as the Silicon Valley in California and the Silicon Roundabout in London have become hubs of knowledge and creativity, the rest of the world’s population remains at the margins of the revolution. CEOs understand the need to use bleeding edge innovation, but struggle to find the talent necessary to take their organizations forward on a global innovation scale. Of the world’s most important resources, talent is by far our most underutilised capital, as we place the majority of the active population on jobs that are not appropriate for their skills.
In Brazil, that gap is even deeper. While the economy registers steady growth, the educational system is not only insufficient in terms of numbers of schools and universities, but also – and especially – in terms of quality. Brazilian universities charge excessive amounts of money to deliver an appalling quality of teaching.
The end result is that the majority of the Brazilian working population – which wasn’t even prepared to face the second industrial revolution – now face the challenges of a knowledge-based international market and the risks of missing out on yet another global change.
I see those developments as an untapped opportunity. If you think about the amount of time and money that is currently spent in matching people to products, on cross-selling and upselling goods, as well as other people in an online dating sense, it seems clear that there’s an opportunity to use better systems to match people to jobs.
Matching talent to right career paths for them widens the scope of educational opportunities. Technology is now enabling the recruitment industry to develop and engage with candidates before hiring them. The education topic has become part of the recruitment process, which makes it possible for employers to train and develop people in large numbers, delivering tailored content online anywhere in the globe through social media. It’s about engaging, evangelising and educating while recruiting.
Countries like the UK and the US are slowly moving away from established educational paradigms to cope with change, and there’s an open door of opportunity for Brazil to sprint ahead and invest in technology to produce an educational system that needs to be developed, in all honesty, pretty much from scratch.
To stay competitive, investing in education is a mandatory option for Brazil, but that certainly doesn’t mean building millions of schools that apply ancient methods of education.
Further reading:
>>FutureSkills: IT Decisions’ initiative to fund IT education
>>Brazil to invest 7% of GDP in education
>> Skilled foreigners struggle to get Brazilian visas
>> WEF: Skills gap threatens Brazil’s growth
>> Investment in education is key to Brazil’s growth
>>Digital inclusion in Brazil: a social right
>> Interview: Virgilio Almeida, IT policy secretary
Image by Pink Sherbet Photography licensed under Creative Commons.
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