A session organized by the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) in Sochi on the Youth Enterprise Day discussed the trends affecting business and the measures young entrepreneurs will have to take tomorrow in order to succeed.

Vadim Malych, IIDF deputy director of educational projects, cited examples of digitalization everyone has grown so used to that we often take them for granted: ATMs instead of bank branches, online services instead of travel agency offices, mobile apps instead of taxi depots, etc. Digitalization is about building management systems capable of replacing humans in extremely complex environments and under stress. AI algorithms allow for predicting how the situation will unfold and identify potential bottlenecks.

Denis Popovtsev, chief analyst of IIDF’s Education Department, offered: “One cannot ignore the increasingly rapid change caused by the introduction of digital technology in business, and the associated threats and opportunities.” He believes that digital economy is bound to influence all segments of doing business, including personnel policies. In other words, it will primarily affect young professionals.

IIDF forecasts that 6 to 7 million jobs (up to 10% of the overall total) may disappear in Russia over the next 10 years due to digitalization of the economy.

The hardest hit will be for those involved in “routine cognitive activities”: recruiters, accountants, call centre operators, bank clerks, etc. Another 20 million or so jobs will undergo qualitative changes, requiring new skills and competencies. Demand will grow for entrepreneurs, developers of complex technologies and those able to adjust to change and accept uncertainty as the norm. These people will become conduits and catalysers of economic digitization.

All this will result from two trends: universal robotization and algorithmizing of workflows. Robots will continue to take on more and more physical tasks, whereas the use of algorithms will help automate many routine intellectual processes.