I am a CEO which was raised by a truck driver and a factory worker. The 2.7 billion workers based on world changes need technology that works for them

I grew up looking at two of them every day – my mother working for long hours in a shoe factory and my father driving a truck by all kinds of time. Their work was not glamorous, but it was essential. I saw the first hand how the unpredictable hours, physical requests and economic pressures shaped not only their work, but also the daily life of our family. These experiences taught me about the gap between the way technology is designed and the way most of the world really works.

This disconnection is not only personal – it is systemic. The next era of innovation should not start with code or capital. It should start with people. When I look at how to fill this gap, I always come back to the theory of “work to do” by Professor of Harvard Clayton Christsen: people hire products to solve real and daily problems. But too many solutions are still imagined in conference rooms, far from break rooms and stores where these problems experience.

Almost 80% of the global workforce is based on the quarter, but they remain largely invisible to the innovation economy. While knowledge workers benefit from the advantages of remote tools, flexible hours and automation, the front line industries are still struggling with professional exhaustion, staff shortages and unpredictable hours. And this gap is only expanding, with less than 1% of technological investments ranging to people working on their feet.

What shade of a barista showed me

Recently, I spent a day when observing Baristas in one of our customers’ locations. I looked at how something as small as a confusing schedule or a delayed rupture could kiss throughout the day, affecting not only the worker’s mood, but also the energy of the team and the customer experience. Real progress requires proximity; You have to see the friction to understand it.

A barista said to me: “I want to be the person who guides you through your order and gets you exactly what you want.” It is not only a question of coffee – it is a question of pride of work. The question for us as an innovators is: Do we build systems that protect this pride or this distance?

Christensen’s setting offers a path to follow: start with the real “work” that people hire your product to do. Not the work imagined in your pitch deck, but the real in their lives. If we have applied this goal to the workforce, we would clearly see the problem: many decision -makers have never known the unpredictability of the work of a quarter work, the juggling several jobs or anxiety to wait for the calendar next week – but they design solutions for these same challenges.

The goal should not be to replace people – it should be to make work more stable, predictable and worthy for those whose work requires them to be on site. Problems such as unpredictable changes and last -minute calls are not only operational ineffectiveness – these are human costs. More than 85% of hourly workers say that unpredictable hours have an impact on their health and their ability to plan in advance. And for many, this unpredictability also collapses in their families. From the health worker who is trying to organize last -minute childcare services to the retail managers missing school pickups, or changes in baristas trading to take care of an aging parent – these are real job technologies must help resolve if we want a company that can prosper inside and outside the work.

I saw the difference when technology actually works for people: when workers can see their hours and their gains clearly, exchange a quarter of work without stress and count on a calendar that does not change at the last minute. The appetite for better solutions is clear: 80% of hourly workers think that digital tools would improve their performance, and 70% of leading workers want better technology. The demand is there, just like the opportunity.

My challenge for manufacturers, investors and innovators is as follows: expanding your definition of “the user”. Go to coffee at 6 am, talk to a nurse during her break. Look at a store director manage a last minute change compared to the parking lot. Listen. SO Conceive with this reality in the mind.

The same care that we take to the design for office employees – intuitive tools, real -time ideas, pleasure in detail – should be the benchmark for people who keep the world on. When we start there, we do not do better work. We build a future of work that really reflects the functioning of most of the world.

Because if we are serious about shaping the future, we must start where work really occurs – with real work to do.

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