From empty workplaces in 2020 to AI colleagues in 2025, the best way we work has been utterly reshaped over the previous 5 years. Our visitor on this week’s GeekWire Podcast research these modifications intently along with her colleagues at Microsoft.
Colette Stallbaumer is co-founder of Microsoft WorkLab, normal supervisor of Microsoft 365 Copilot, and creator of the brand new e-book, WorkLab: Five years that shook the business world and unleashed an AI-first futureof Microsoft 8080 Books.
As Stallbaumer explains within the e-book, the five-year interval starting with the pandemic and persevering with by way of the present period of AI represents an ongoing transformation in the best way we work, and it is not over but.
“The change is the one fixed shift in norms that when took a long time to develop now materialize in months or weeks,” she writes. “As we stay up for the following 5 years, it’s virtually unattainable to think about how far more work will change.”
Take heed to our dialog, recorded on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, under. Subscribe on Apple or Spotify and skim on for key insights from the dialog.
The ‘Hollywood mannequin’ of groups: “What we’re seeing is that this motion into groups, the place we’ll type a small group of people that carry their very own area experience, however we’ll additionally add AI to the combo. They arrive collectively such as you would to provide a film. A gaggle of individuals come collectively to provide a blockbuster, and then you definately disperse and return to your day job.”
The idea of ‘border firm’: “They don’t seem to be including AI as an ingredient. AI is the enterprise mannequin. It is the core. And these frontier corporations can have a small variety of folks utilizing AI on this means, driving a fairly excessive execution fee. So it is a complete new mind-set about transport and creating and innovating.”
The ‘AI technique’ fallacy: “The concept you simply must have an ‘AI technique’ is a little bit of a fallacy. In actual fact, you wish to begin with the enterprise drawback after which apply AI. … The place are you spending probably the most and the place do you’ve got the largest challenges? These are nice areas to essentially take into consideration placing AI to give you the results you want.”
Adapting to AI: “You need to construct the behavior and the muscle tissue to work on this new means and have that second of ‘Oh wait, I do not really need to do that.’”
The most important danger associated to AI: “The most important danger is not AI itself. It is that individuals do not evolve quick sufficient with AI. It is human danger and the flexibility to really begin utilizing these new instruments and construct the behavior.”
Human creativity and AI: “You continue to want that spark and that seed of creativity. And if you mix that with these new instruments, that is the place I’ve quite a lot of hope and optimism for what folks will be capable to do and invent sooner or later.”
Audio enhancing by Curt Milton.
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