The Human Economy?

I just finished reading a Harvard Business Review article where the author argued that, just as we previously moved from an agricultural economy to a industrial economy and from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy, we are now moving to a new type of economy. This new economy is the human economy where our own humanity is what makes workers valued. In this new economy, the ability to apply our analytical skills is no longer valued but rather value is derived from our ability to demonstrate compassion toward the stakeholders and make decisions that may contradict our typical business goals.

Valuing compassion and our ability to be connected to humanity certainly sounds noble but I don't agree that this is now the new economy. Organizations are currently focused on realizing the value of the data they collected for the past two decades (or more) and found value mining this data for valuable insight and improved decision making. We also currently value employees who are able to turn information into knowledge to improve the organization's performance. This value of the employee's knowledge attributes will remain valued. In other words, I argue the knowledge economy is not going anywhere.

Having said this, I must admit that there is some merit to the human economy the author describes. The results from our in-depth analysis of our vast amounts of data may lead to incredible insight into business patterns and give use the ability to predict future patterns. These analytics practices are intended to help us make better decisions. However, we have to acknowledge that we cannot rely solely on the results of our data analysis but rather use this data as input into our decision making. This is where the influence of the human economy may be needed. We sometimes need to make decisions that fly in the face of the data in order to make decisions that may be incorrect through short-term metrics but are the right decisions when looking at the bigger and longer-term picture.

While I appreciate the author's perspective on the importance of humanity in the future economy, I argue against any notion that we are moving out of the knowledge economy. We are simply balancing the insight our data-driven knowledge provides with our compassion and bigger-picture thinking that only humans are able to provide.