1. Abolition by automation An old acronym introduced by the Clinton administration in the U.S. read EWAKI: “End Welfare As We Know It.” This acronym stemming from the 1990s can be adapted to „End Work As We Know It.” We…

Some call him the global warrior for workers’ rights. And indeed, Philip J. Jennings gets emotional when talking about the well-being of workers. “I call on the students to take up the spirit of 1968!” he said during a debate…

Automation and digitisation will threaten the livelihoods of billions of employees. Yet another consequence is less widely discussed: In the Western world at least, automation may mean the end of the welfare state as we know it. Policymakers around the…

The 48th St. Gallen Symposium marked the first collaboration with the 6 Degrees event, organised by the Institute of Canadian Citizenship. The goal was to provoke conversation about inclusion and exclusion, and what steps we should be taking in order to…

You might think that a country can only have one royal family. In most cases that’s true, but that is not the case in Sweden. The Nordic nation’s unofficial ruler arrives in St. Gallen wearing a black suit and green…

Data analytics have begun to transform the world of medicine. An algorithm that can scan databases of randomised controlled trials, as well as actual patient outcomes, is something pretty revolutionary, if you think about it. If the whole world used…

People have been making money by exploiting human emotions since the dawn of time, and loneliness is no exception. The Industrial Revolution – which saw people leaving their families and farms to move to cities in search of greener pastures,…

Dominic Barton’s black overnight bag has travelled hundreds of thousands of miles. Inside a zippered pocket are odds and ends: Letters from his mother, family pictures, and other small presents. He finds it funny when, once in a while, the…

Good news, nine-to-fivers! Your working lives could soon get an exciting makeover due to the innovative rise of occupational gamification. By placing a focus on  challenge and achievement, the gamification of work is a strategy designed to motivate employees to perform…

The new workplace is constantly changing, inspired by the arrival of new technologies and increasingly uninhibited by geographical boundaries. As new technologies facilitate remote work, the physical and temporal bounds of the workplace are becoming more flexible. Many enterprises are working towards…