Heather McGowan - The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work

Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley are prophets of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Their extraordinary insights and tools challenge and empower organizations, leaders, and people across society to thrive in a future marked by exceptional technological and societal change.

Major General James Johnson, U.S. Air Force (ret), former Director of Air Force Integrated Resilience

The Adaptation Advantage brings sense to the sometimes confusing and scary world of change. McGowan and Shipley give us permission to be entrepreneurial by exploring the nature of opportunity and a natural pathway to engagement. Ambiguity is our friend in a world that understands change as a chance to improve lives. The authors beautifully weave macroeconomic phenomenon with a prod for introspection. Their book is a self-help meets personal empowerment treatise. Reading this book is a therapy session with motivational power. You'll want to reread it again and again.

Stephen Spinelli Jr., PhD., President, Babson College, co-founder of Jiffy Lube

The Adaptation Advantage is fueled by the power of an elegant idea: our ability to learn and adapt is inseparable from our sense of identity. And as automation driven by machine intelligence remakes our world, the need to continually transform our identities becomes the very foundation of human growthand how we thrive. McGowan and Shipley have wrapped a vivid and immensely readable narrative around this idea. My advice: read it!

Randy Swearer, PhD., Vice President of Learning Futures, Autodesk

In The Adaptation Advantage, McGowan and Shipley deliver a powerful message for corporate leaders about success in the future of work. Learning and identity are not only intertwined but fundamental to any organization's ability to adapt and create value. How exciting to read a book built on the core premise that learning unleashes our human potential while also driving competitive advantage.

Sean Gallagher, PhD., Executive Director, Centre for the New Workforce, Swinburne University

The Adaptive Advantage needs to be on every educator's bookshelf, preferably dog-eared with highlighted pages, guiding their efforts to reorient the education system into continuous and future-focused learning. McGowan and Shipley's advice is both simple and profoundour students competitive advantage is their exponential and expansive capacity as humans to adapt, advance, and add value, rather than to compete with artificial intelligence that mimics their genius.

Tonya Allen, CEO, Skillman Foundation

The Adaptive Advantage lays out a clear, compelling case to stop defining ourselves by our jobs, to extend formal education into lifelong learning, and to let curiosity lead us through the arc of our working lives. That way we remain resilient no matter how forceful the waves of change become. Most books about the future of work put automation at the center of the story. McGowan and Shipley put humans at the centeras well they should. Many essential capabilities can't be replacedcreativity, collaboration, judgment, sensemaking, empathy, and other forms of social and emotional intelligence are uniquely human. And while technology will continue to evolve the way we work, we have immense agency to determine and design what we do and why we do it.

Sandy Speicher, CEO, IDEO

The Adaptation Advantage tackles head-on the most critical challenge facing all of us in the near future: Where do we find purpose and prosperity in a world that increasingly feels beyond anyone's control? The extent to which we adapt to a radically shifted concept of work will inevitably be determined by our ability to rethink learning away from a fixed-term preparation for employment, to a continuous way of living. Accordingly, this vital book offers a road map to the oldest question of all: How, then, should we live? Among a growing cadre of dystopians, it's refreshing to hear a much-needed optimistic analysis from McGowen and Shipley.

David Price, OBE, Best-selling author of Open: How We Will Work, Learn, and Live in the Future

An insightful comprehension of the velocity and force of the multi-tiered and numerous elements of change offer leaders the insight and capability to creatively lead transformations. Resilient and adaptive learners will be the change-makers of the future. How thrilling to read the book that potentially allows us to embrace change as a propellant versus a weight.

Lynne Greene, Former Group President, Estee Lauder Companies

McGowan and Shipley's The Adaptation Advantage nails it. Adaptive identity requires letting go letting go of a job or skill set identity in order to thrive in a world of rapidly changing societal norms and technologies. This is required reading for all students of service science, such as myself.

Jim Spohrer, PhD., IBM Director, Cognitive Open Technologies

In a world of exponential change, we all need strategies to help us continually adapt. With The Adaptation Advantage, Shipley and McGowan have given us the user manual.

Gary A. Bolles, Chair for the Future of Work, Singularity University

Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley have crystalized what the future of work looks like and it is good news for us humans, providing we embrace change, get comfortable with the unknown, and keep adapting and learning. That last bit bodes well for the business events industry, which is the ideal vehicle for professionals to develop and maintain an agile learning mindset, to retool and retrain, and to hone the uniquely human skillslike creativity, empathy, and communicationthat will ensure our future success, individually in our careers and collectively as a species.

Sherrif Karamat, President and CEO, Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA)

Twenty years of research have shown me the importance of bringing humans to the forefront of the future of work. By recognizing the centrality of human potential, The Adaptation Advantage illuminates the value of resilience, adaptability, and the qualities that make us uniquely human in the future of culture, work, and self.

Vivienne Ming, PhD., Theoretical neuroscientist, founder, Socos Labs

The Adaptation Advantage is the clearest, most compelling, and most original examination of the present and future workplace. Packed with powerful data-driven insights and provocative examples, this book is a masterclass in how individuals and organizations can and must develop the capacity to change fast and learn faster. McGowan and Shipley offer sage advice and wise counsel on every page, and it's imperative that you take their lessons to heart. But the big surprise in this book is that it's not about learning to live with more robots, but rather learning to become more human. Whether you were born digital or born analog, The Adaptation Advantage is your indispensable resource for thriving in a world that is transforming as you read this.

Jim Kouzes, Coauthor of The Leadership Challenge and Executive Fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

This book is an essential guide for anyone who seeks to understand what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines. The sources of advantage in the future of work have shifted to our uniquely human capabilities. Heather and Chris urge us to go on an inward journey to uncover who we are and consider how we manifest our passion, character and collaborative spirit as our most enduring and sustainable means of making positive progress as people, leaders, and institutions.