Mr Jobs

WHAT the World Economic Forum (WEF) has labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Jonas Prising calls the human age. Indeed, while there has been hand-wringing over the potential loss of jobs to algorithms and robots in "Industry 4.0" transformations set to fundamentally change how we live and work, the chairman and CEO of global recruitment firm ManpowerGroup is rather more sanguine. After all, the phenomenon about technology - manifest largely in digitisation these days - advancing so quickly that many people feel left behind, is not new, he reminds you.

"We're living at a time of great disruption as it relates to the labour market and globally," says the Swede. "Much in the same way as we lived through the industrial revolution, we're now feeling the effects of globalisation and digitisation." The changes now under way that mark the 4IR are fuelled by a fusion of technologies that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

Mr Prising - who holds both a Swedish and an American passport - speaks super fast, like a machine gun in rapid-fire mode. He's also highly conversant in (besides English and his native tongue) German, French and Italian. The rapid clip at which he speaks also tells, perhaps, of an expert grasp of the issues he's talking about.