Videos
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Michelle R. Weise: 4 tips to future-proof your career -
How to prepare for a good life of work | Dr. Michelle Weise | TEDxAndover Live -
Michelle R. Weise | At the Crossroads of the Futures of Work and Education
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What Living Longer Means for the Future of Work and Education With Dr. Michelle Weise
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Class of 2024 Commencement
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How We Work Podcast: Preparing for Jobs That Don't Exist Yet With Dr. Michelle Weise
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Michelle Weise | Preparing for the Lifelong Learner
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Michelle Weise, Conferencia Magistral CIIE 2017
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Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don't Even Exist Yet with Michelle Weise
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Michelle Weise on Long Life Learning -
Kaplan Bold Leaders In Learning Ep 42: Michelle Rhee Weise
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CLOSE IT DistributED 22Jan2021_Dr. Angela Jackson, New Profit & Author, Michelle Weise Fireside Chat
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Online Education will Revolutionize the Workforce - Michelle Weise | ChangSchoolTalks 2016
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Innovating College to Career by Michelle Weise
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Panel 3- Lee Wellington, Jen Faigel, Sonia Moin, Michelle Weise, Cecilia Wessinger
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Skill Shapes: The Matchmaker the Job Market Needs
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Interview with Michelle Weise: Learning and work
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Michelle R Weise from the Clayton Christensen Institute on MOOCs
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Hire Education: Waves of Disruption
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Michelle Weise: What is the Job to Be Done?
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Hire Education: The Dilemma of Academic Inertia
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Hire Education: Online Competency-based Learning
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3 Key Aspects of CBE: Standards, Institutions, and Employers
Learn More About Michelle R. Weise
In today’s fast-moving world, businesses are always looking for new ways to unlock their competitive edge. The key, says Michelle Weise, Ph.D., a leading expert on the future of work, is knowing when to build and when to buy talent.
Companies have long touted human capital as their greatest asset, but few understand at a granular level the actual skills of each employee in their workforce. Weise is on a mission to change the way executives think about internal mobility and training for the jobs ahead.
“It is vital to develop a skills-based approach to articulating your employees’ unique skills while helping them learn new ones that are most needed in your organization ,” explains Weise, author of the acclaimed book “Long Life Learning: Preparing For Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet” (Wiley, 2020). This fresh concept which she calls skill shapes is a novel, skills-based and regional approach to understanding real-time labor market demand within cities, states and regions.
“People talk about skills gaps and tend to assume that there is some sort of broad general or national skills gap. But skills gaps are hyper-local. They depend on the region you’re looking at,” says Weise. “With this data, you can support the design and calibration of training programs that can close gaps between the supply of and demand for talent. Better people analytics – and better ways of visualizing and interacting with that data – will not only help managers and recruiters do a better job of matching people with jobs but will also help companies develop a more accurate picture of their strengths and weaknesses.”
Previously the chief of strategy and innovation for multiple organizations, including National University System, Strada Education Network’s Institute for the Future of Work, and Southern New Hampshire University, Weise now advises clients through her company, Rise & Design. They seek to design education and workforce strategies that will prepare working-age adults for the jobs of today and tomorrow. An expert in disruptive innovation and co-author with the late Clayton Christensen of “Hire Education: Mastery, Modularity and the Workforce Revolution” (2014), Weise advises various funders and for- and non-profit startups in edtech and workforce tech. She has also participated on multiple commissions, including Harvard University’s Task Force on Skills and Employability, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Commission on Lifelong Learning and Digital Innovation, and the Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education.
Weise elaborates on her methods for developing more innovative workforce and talent pipeline strategies in “Long Life Learning.” Called “an invaluable glimpse into a future that many of us have not even begun to imagine,” it makes the case that learners of the future are going to repeatedly seek out educational opportunities throughout the course of their working lives ― which will no longer have a beginning, middle and end.
With a focus on equity that takes a holistic view of working learners’ potential, she’s shifting the conversation from the future of work to the future of workers. Her advisory work, that stems from her award-winning book, includes interactive workshops and engaging keynotes to show leaders and teams how to change the culture of their organization to one that embraces lifelong learning, skill building and job mobility.
Changing the Conversation from the Future of Work to the Future of Workers
When Weise thinks about the scientific advancements extending human lifespans, her mind immediately considers the impact a longer life could have on workforce education.
“We have to prepare students for work that doesn’t exist yet,” emphasizes Weise. “In 2014, LinkedIn’s top ten jobs were jobs that hadn’t existed five years prior: social media intern, iOS/Android developer, cloud manager, big data architect, or UI/UX designer as examples. How many new jobs that don’t exist today will a person have during a 150-year lifespan?”
Both visionary and practical, Weise brings businesses concrete strategies for welcoming a longer career and putting this cultural shift into action, including investing in upskilling and reskilling programs, deploying new skills and labor market analytics, and creating more flexible earn-and-learn arrangements.
Weise helps business leaders understand the change management processes that go along with massive internal, digital transformation efforts. She teaches accessible, design thinking-based frameworks for how organizations can pursue the cultural changes required to “think bigger” about the future. Her workshops focus on organizational design, transparency, and psychological safety – all while keeping teams aligned and in step with one another.
How to Acquire Top Talent: Buy vs. Build
By shining a light on the elements that comprise the talent ecosystem, Weise lays out a clear and easy-to-follow roadmap for building a sustainable, dynamic workforce. She gives companies the insights they need to access a deeper talent pool while simultaneously unlocking the full potential of their people. The result is Weise’s encouragement for organizations to not buy talent but build it instead.
With access to internal mobility pathways, workers will find themselves compelled to remain with the company, boosting the organization’s talent retention and transforming a disjointed workforce into a connected community.
“In simplest terms, we must stop thinking of learning and work as separate activities, as if the workplace and the classroom are two distinct virtual or physical spaces,” Weise sums up. “Companies must adopt a whole new mindset: The workplace must become the classroom of the future. It’s time to reimagine on-the-job training as a way for workers to build new skills for emerging and better jobs.”
Michelle Weise is the founder of Rise & Design. Her voice has been featured in all top-tier business outlets such as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, as well as all major education publications, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, EdSurge and Inside Higher Ed. Thinkers50 named her one of 30 management and leadership thinkers in the world to watch in 2021.
Previously the entrepreneur-in-residence and senior advisor at Imaginable Futures, Weise was also the chief innovation officer at Strada Education Network’s Institute for the Future of Work. Prior to that, she was chief innovation officer at Southern New Hampshire University and designed and led the Sandbox ColLABorative, an innovation lab and research consultancy.
Weise has held several instructional positions, serving as a professor at Skidmore College and an instructor at Stanford University. A former Fulbright Scholar, Weise is a graduate of Harvard University, and earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from Stanford University.
Michelle Weise is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Ecosystem-Building for the Future of Work
What is a learning ecosystem? According to Michelle Weise, Ph.D., an ecosystem grows and thrives by the health of its limiting factors. And in our particular value chain made up of millions of educators, learners, and employers and layers of federal, state, and local policies and technologies, the most critical contingent we must pay attention to are the people who are being left behind. Those facing the greatest burdens today illuminate the 5 principles required for a healthier learning ecosystem of the future. Ultimately, we need to design a new learning ecosystem that is fundamentally more navigable, supported, targeted, integrated, and transparent. Businesses and community leaders, educators and human resource managers can apply Weise’s invaluable frameworks and tools for educating and training workers who can meet the needs of the work of the future.
Skilling Up for the Future of Work: Are We AI-Ready?
Generative AI has just begun to make its mark on the world. Tomorrow’s workplace will require workers with a hybrid of human skills and tech skills – intellectual dexterity mixed with technical expertise. Michelle Weise, Ph.D., dispels the fear-mongering myths that AI and automation will replace people and points instead to the high-leverage opportunities ahead to upskill, retool and outskill workers for an increasingly turbulent future of work.
How to Prepare for Jobs that Don’t Exist Yet
Rapid technological changes have been reshaping the nature of work and refinding jobs and the types of skills needed to perform those jobs. As a result, explains Michelle Weise, Ph.D., educators are struggling to keep pace and employers are having trouble articulating the skills they need. Energizing and action-oriented, Weise provides a roadmap for turning the challenge of preparing for the future of continuous learning into an opportunity to reshape training and future-proof an organization.
Precision Education
As ongoing skill development becomes the new normal, working learners will be seeking the most direct route to their next career destination. Michelle Weise, Ph.D., an expert on building brief, targeted, and precise education and training programs to help more people get access to better economic opportunities, explains that it’s not just about technical or technological skills development. In this presentation, she will illuminate the human skills critical to complement the work of machines in the future of work. Precision education offers employers, training providers, colleges, universities, and Workforce Investment Boards clear opportunities to adjust their programming to serve the new consumers of education. Weise also highlights the value of “try-before-you-buy” apprenticeship programs which have been shown to result in demonstrable outcomes and proof points.
Skills for the Future: How to Accelerate Internal Talent Development
Do you know the talent gold you’re sitting on in your organization? According to Michelle Weise, Ph.D., in order to move confidently into the future of work, you need a deeper understanding of your workforce’s skills – and not just their skill sets, but their skill shapes, too. In this engaging presentation, she explains “Skill Shape” – think about a role like a cybersecurity specialist – it turns out that that same role looks different in terms of its skill shape, depending on where we’re looking. There are certain areas of skill development that are emphasized depending on a metropolitan area of a state. That’s because skill demands are shaped by the supply chain, employers, and dynamics in a specific locality. With an understanding of the labor market dynamics at a hyperlocal level, you can attract and train the right talent pools for your workforce needs. Audiences will learn how to discern the skills gaps and skills surpluses in your area and how to build the right learning pathways to get your people to the right level of skill demand.
Education for Life: Tapping into the Lifelong Learning Market
A new kind of working learner is emerging, one who must continuously learn while earning a living in order to keep up with a rapidly evolving economy. Drawing from her book, “Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet,” Michelle Weise, Ph.D. offers a blueprint for how to cultivate the workforce of the future. The lifelong-learning market has yet to be tapped into, and that is a significant miss, says Weise. She helps audiences harness those opportunities, outlining ways to reshape business models to serve job seekers and employers – all while capitalizing on new forms of revenue.
The New “Gold Watch” Generation: The New 40-year Career
How many of us have heard the story that goes like this: if you invest in your own people, they will leave you for your competition? According to Michelle Weise, Ph.D., it turns out that this narrative has absolutely no data to support it. It’s a myth — one of the most enduring myths at that! In this engaging presentation, she explains how sadly, over the last four decades, we have witnessed a massive disinvestment from training incumbent workers, with many companies somehow resigning themselves to high levels of churn. But it doesn’t have to be that way, she emphasizes, the idea of a 40-year career with one organization can become the new ideal. She shows how, by taking the long view on your existing talent and investing in building their skills for the jobs of the future, your employees will see how your company is committed to their skills development. Prospective job candidates of the future will become choosier about working with an organization that is building talent from within. She helps attendees answer key questions: does your company have clear roadmaps for internal advancement? Is your company investing in creative pathways for employees to fill their skills gaps on the job? Weise shows leaders how cultivating the careers of your organization’s own people will be the best way to increase brand loyalty for the future.
Disruptive Innovation
What is disruptive innovation and its benefits? In this fascinating presentation based on her collaborative research with Dr. Clayton Christensen and his Institute for Disruptive Innovation — a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to improving the world through disruptive innovation — Michelle Weise, Ph.D., discusses the importance of tailoring services for nonconsumers when developing future business models. Nonconsumers are the people being left behind by the deficiencies of our education and workforce systems. Today, that amounts to more than 40 million Americans who are not thriving in the job market. Audiences will learn how the theories of disruptive innovation help us move beyond our current systems, which are brittle and rigid, to design more seamless on- and off-ramps for learners navigating between learning and work.
Dual Transformation
When an organization wants to foster a disruptive innovation, careful steps must be taken, according to disruptive workforce design expert Michelle Weise, Ph.D. In this engaging presentation, she explains how pursuing a culture of innovation and transformation can provoke unexpected responses within an organization, and a successful strategy requires deliberate mobilization and coordination of teams. Encouraging and collaborative, Weise illuminates how leaders and teams can create autonomous growth/innovation units that can easily break out for collaboration, then seamlessly reintegrate back into the larger organization. Audiences will learn how her actionable and practical guidance around change management and organizational design create a unified action plan for fostering internal disruptive innovation that preserves relationships and boosts teamwork.
Hybrid Skills Are Ascendant in the Post-Pandemic Talent Economy
November 30, 2021
Obama’s Dead-End Community College Plan
January 12, 2015
Michelle Weise, Ph.D., founder of Rise & Design and a leading expert on learning, longevity and the future of work, is on a mission to change the way executives think about skills, training, education and career mobility. The acclaimed author of “Long Life Learning: Preparing For Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet” (2021), Weise partners with leaders to show them how to gain a closer understanding of the unique skill demands of their field while simultaneously painting a picture of their workforce’s existing skills. By combining these insights, organizations can accomplish more without adding additional costs to their bottom line.
The former chief innovation officer at Strada Education Network’s Institute for the Future of Work, Weise has a proven track record of helping businesses mobilize their talent and embrace a more creative culture. An accomplished advisor, she has partnered with all levels of funders, policymakers and nonprofit institutions and consulted multiple commissions – including Harvard University’s Task Force on Skills and Employability, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Commission on Lifelong Learning and Digital Innovation, and the Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education – to develop and deploy her future-focused approach to training.
Weise’s consulting and advisory services transform organizations by revealing hidden opportunities for disruptive design that increase innovation, spark creativity and increase collaboration. Other organizations that have benefited from Weise’s expertise include the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, National University, BrightHive, Imaginable Futures, and Southern New Hampshire University.
How to Leverage the Skills Within an Organization for Ongoing Growth and Development
Author of the acclaimed book “Long Life Learning: Preparing For Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet” (2020), Michelle Weise is refocusing the conversation about the future of work to center on the future of workers. Weise leverages the framework of a learning ecosystem to reveal the five principles that enable working learners to thrive in an uncertain world of work. These principles around career navigation, wraparound supports, targeted education, integrated earn and learn opportunities, and fair and transparent hiring practices are the keys to unlocking business model innovation and a virtuous cycle of continuous returns to learning throughout a longer work life.
As new game-changing technologies seem to launch almost every day, organizations need to re-evaluate their approach to talent, training and development to stay relevant and retain a top-notch workforce. Moreover, companies are being forced to manage both their current day-to-day business while also anticipating their future business model long before their current business begins to decline. This idea of jumping to your next S-curve requires an openness to making greater investments in very different-looking approaches. A renowned expert in disruptive innovation, design thinking and lifelong learning, Weise leverages the theories of disruption to illuminate hidden opportunities that increase innovation and transform cultures.
Workshops for Businesses
The workshops for businesses include primers on disruptive innovation and how to leverage Clayton Christensen’s theories to spot disruptions on the margins. Weise also uses foresight and futures thinking to help leaders design new business models for future sustainability. This includes a clearer understanding of parsing signals from the noise, evaluating potential threats, and reimagining product offerings to meet the needs of nonconsumers, or those who are currently unserved by today’s market offerings. These highly engaging and creative workshops pave the way for a new blueprint for delivering value and generating new streams of revenue.
Workshops for Higher Education Institutions
Weise’s workshops for higher education institutions are geared toward schools that understand that the learner market is shifting in tectonic ways and are seeking to create more on- and off-ramps in and out of learning and work. These are postsecondary institutions that understand that although they serve current students well, they must also make way for a growing universe of more mature learners who are seeking more direct connections to good work and specific skills. These are working learners coming with different needs and expectations – so how do institutions work against the very natural and substantial academic inertia to transform from within? Disruptions occur not because there was an unwillingness to change or a lack of awareness of the need for change, but because of the fact that business models cannot evolve easily, particularly in the face of rapid innovation. The real opportunity for educators is to push the boundaries of what is possible with the things that are in their control. Weise combines academic and business experience to show organizations how to make the most with what they already have.
The founder of Rise & Design, an advisory service tailored for organizations seeking to design education and workforce strategies that will prepare working-age adults for the jobs of today and tomorrow, Weise’s workshops are threaded with customized guidance. Organizations gain a deeper understanding of their team members’ skills and strengths, allowing them to leverage this knowledge for ongoing growth and development and giving them a powerful approach to innovation and talent management that drives success for years to come.
“Michelle’s presentation was one of the best received of our conference. Her new book “Hire Education; Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution is available on the Clayton Christensen website and we gave a copy of it to each participant… Her talk incited much discussion among our consortium members.”
“On behalf of the entire Distance Teaching and Learning Conference staff, thank you [Michelle] for delivering the opening address during this year’s conference. Your presentation was exceptional and truly enhanced conference-goers’ experiences. Your enthusiasm captured everyone’s attention. The room was filled with great energy and curiosity.”
Praise for "Long-Life Learning"
“Michelle Weise has a knack for distilling the complexities of education, labor, and policy into an integrated approach to building a more hopeful future of work. Weise skillfully links the individual stories of working-age adults to the underlying patterns of dysfunction in the U.S. labor market. In 'Long-life Learning,' Weise shows that the future of work is here, and that we need to act now to construct a learning-to-earning system that works for everyone.”
“Michelle makes a brilliant case not just for the necessity of adults investing in learning throughout their lives, but also for the creation of a new system that systematically supports them across their lives as they do so. This book begins to lay out the puzzle pieces of what that new system should look like.”
“In ‘Long Life Learning,’ Michelle Weise articulates the critical need for adults to access an ever-evolving menu of learning and workforce skills development to remain relevant in the future economy and a 100-year work life.”
“A prescient exploration of higher education’s coming shift from ‘all you can eat in one sitting’ to ‘what you need when you need it’ by one of the most creative and respected thinkers in the field.”
“Without hand-wringing about the rise of automation, or finger-pointing at our current systems of education and employment, 'Long-Life Learning' advances a vision of the future that puts the needs of workers at the center. Recasting us all as ‘working learners,’ Michelle Weise illustrates not just the value of repeated returns to learning, but the critical importance of seamlessly interweaving education and work throughout our careers.”
“Weise brings sky-high projections about the future of work down to earth with forward-looking and actionable steps to advance career-focused learning and training. Her examination of higher education goes beyond the usual calls for change to demonstrate how burgeoning innovations are laying the foundation of a learning ecosystem of the future—flexible enough for all people—to move consistently in and out of learning and work.”
“By examining economic trends, innovations in education and hiring, and the lived experiences of working learners, Weise reveals the shortcomings of our fragmented education and workforce systems and challenges us to reimagine the future of learning. Weise demonstrates how and why we must all become working learners, and presents a clear, optimistic vision for a new learning ecosystem in which we can all take part.”
“‘Long Life Learning’ is a lifeboat for those of us swimming in the sea of confusing—and often contradicting—narratives about the future of learning, working, and living. Throughout, Michelle brings thoughtful and diverse evidence to bear on a host of pressing challenges facing not just schools but all of society and offers a deeply integrative set of insights from her years as a student of disruptive innovation to chart a better way forward—robots and all.”
