And he did it again! Nat Ware, Winner of the 29th St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Awards, surprised the crowd and swept away the trophy again this year. Janis Goldschmidt and João Abreu, respectively second and third, joined him on the podium after proudly defending their idea on stage in front of a relentless jury.  

This year’s essay question, Robots are coming for you job. How would you augment yourself to stay economically relevant, forced them to push the boundaries of their vision of traditional work and reinvent their dream job. Among the 1200 submitted essays, the three stood out by exposing brilliant and innovative ideas which won over the members of the academic and award jury.

Nathaniel Ware (AU), Ph.D. Candidate in Economics, University of Oxford
Nat Ware is a social entrepreneur and development economist. He is the Founder and CEO of 180 Degrees Consulting, the world’s largest consultancy for non-profits and social enterprises with 87 branches across 35 countries and over 6000 consultants. Nat has won numerous awards, including Top Oxford MBA Student, Forbes 30 Under 30, Australian Young Achiever of the Year, Best Performance in Development Economics at Oxford . He is a Rhodes Scholar, Goldman Sachs Global Leader, WEF Global Shaper, has swum the English Channel, was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton, lectured a postgraduate course at age 21, has completed an Ironman triathlon, and has given three acclaimed TEDx talks.

A 5 steps solution for human-machine cooperation
Nat Ware in his essay “Hybridization as an augmentation strategy” exposes in 5 steps how to achieve a shift from a binary economy towards a hybrid system where labour and capital are in perfect symbiosis. From taxation to education, he presents a comprehensive and integrated approach to diminishing the effect of technologies on human capital and offers a hopeful glimpse of a future where inequalities and social issues were to be slowly but surely abolished.

Janis Goldschmidt (DE), Ph.D. Candidate in Non-Linear Dynamics, University of Potsdam
Janis Goldschmidt is a Ph.D. researcher in nonlinear dynamics, and Co-Founder of a neurotech start-up. He builds and simulates mathematical models to gain insight into how cognition comes about, how our brain works, and how to build technologies that influences it. He also does research in computational sociology, where he applies natural language processing to investigate patterns in the language used by online news media.

The future of education
Janis Goldschmidt depicts a new sort of threat in his essay “The robot apocalypse is technological illiteracy in disguise”. Although illiteracy in developed countries has been reduced to a minimum, society may face a new kind of ignorance. Indeed, computer language remains a skills held by a minority of engineers and although people seem to enjoy sharing their little knowledge on the subject, they remain predominantly incapable of using it, let alone working with it. Reforms in education are necessary in order to allow people to keep competing with machines.

João Abreu (BR), Master’s Candidate in Public Administration and International Development, Harvard University
João Abreu holds a Bachelor in Economics from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and studied Public Administration for two years at Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil, before joining SP Negócios, the PPP unit of São Paulo City Hall. João participated in the design of several public-private partnerships, from the world’s largest public lightning PPP to the regulation of e-hailing apps like Uber in São Paulo – considered the most innovative solution by the World Bank. He also led the adoption of transportation apps by the local government itself, saving USD 100 million/year and increasing accountability and data availability; the project was later replicated at state and federal levels.

The Future of Labour International Organization (FLIO)
In his essay “Avoiding the “useless masses”: global governance to keep humans relevant”, João Abreu creates his own Non-Governmental Organisation in charge of safeguarding the future of work. Developing countries being less prone to suffer immediately from the consequences of automation, developed countries are however on the front line. But it also implies steady widening of the inequality gap. As a way of lessening the effect of technologies on the labour market, the young Brazilian came up with 3 different instruments that would be implemented by the FLIO targeting the effect of advanced technologies on jobs in all type of economies.

Chloe Dunning