Co-Creating Knowledge Work Automation Content
Veselinovic, Nenad (2017)
Veselinovic, Nenad
Laurea-ammattikorkeakoulu
2017
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201702142373
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201702142373
Tiivistelmä
A number of trends undoubtedly show that what is today known as knowledge work will significantly change in the future. Stable employment will be increasingly a thing of the past. Employees will work in freelance mode, on a small piece of a bigger project, on their own time and with tools of their own choice. Yet they will have to smoothly cooperate and build and use organizational knowledge together. Knowledge will have “legs” and employees will have to make sure they are re-employable after every gig. Organizations will have to be increasingly agile and at the same time provide meaningful employee experiences in order to attract customers and talent. Automation will have a major effect on improving productivity and releasing time for more creative work. At the same it will also come with threat of loosing control to robots.
The objective of this thesis was 1) to explore possibilities behind the automation of knowledge work, 2) make a contribution towards reducing negative effects associated with it and 3) turn it to a knowledge worker’s own advantage. By using a rich set of Service Design techniques a service business model has been proposed to meet the needs of the future agile organization, atomization of knowledge work, knowledge sharing between people and robots, bridging the gap between employees and their tools and putting the knowledge worker in control. The business model has been made around co-creation of reusable, atomic automation content. A hypothesis has been made that a digital knowledge worker, a.k.a. software robot, when smoothly embedded within the proposed business model, can significantly empower a human knowledge worker instead of simply being a threat.
The above hypothesis was first validated by means of business simulations. It was shown that by carefully balancing investments between new business opportunities, manual- as well as digital workforce the ecosystem behind the proposed service can thrive and create value for all stake-holders. Furthermore, the business model has been validated by conducting interviews with the key stakeholders. It was confirmed that reusable, atomic automation content would bring value. It was concluded that automation has to be two-directional (human-robot-human) in order to ultimately bring value, enable learning and not harm innovation. It was also identified that creating such content is not easy, and requires special skill. This only confirms the need for the proposed service. Based on the results of validation, the proposed service model has been adjusted to better serve the real customer needs. Possible future research directions are laid out as well.
The objective of this thesis was 1) to explore possibilities behind the automation of knowledge work, 2) make a contribution towards reducing negative effects associated with it and 3) turn it to a knowledge worker’s own advantage. By using a rich set of Service Design techniques a service business model has been proposed to meet the needs of the future agile organization, atomization of knowledge work, knowledge sharing between people and robots, bridging the gap between employees and their tools and putting the knowledge worker in control. The business model has been made around co-creation of reusable, atomic automation content. A hypothesis has been made that a digital knowledge worker, a.k.a. software robot, when smoothly embedded within the proposed business model, can significantly empower a human knowledge worker instead of simply being a threat.
The above hypothesis was first validated by means of business simulations. It was shown that by carefully balancing investments between new business opportunities, manual- as well as digital workforce the ecosystem behind the proposed service can thrive and create value for all stake-holders. Furthermore, the business model has been validated by conducting interviews with the key stakeholders. It was confirmed that reusable, atomic automation content would bring value. It was concluded that automation has to be two-directional (human-robot-human) in order to ultimately bring value, enable learning and not harm innovation. It was also identified that creating such content is not easy, and requires special skill. This only confirms the need for the proposed service. Based on the results of validation, the proposed service model has been adjusted to better serve the real customer needs. Possible future research directions are laid out as well.