Enabled by new technologies, individuals are forging pathways to work that bypass the long-term institutional connections once required for career development.

Disruption in business is not new. We can all think of companies from our past that ceased to exist some time ago. Remember Kodak? What is different today is the pace of change. Established companies are here today and gone tomorrow. New companies appear today, and dominate the market tomorrow.

If you don’t already think automation, artificial intelligence, and all of our hyper-connected smart devices have transformed the world of work as we know it, wait just a few more years.

Our research at ncIMPACT suggests there are four primary drivers: demographics, disruptive technologies, new business models, and the rise of the individual.

As with peers across the state and nation, these local leaders in North Carolina wanted to understand evidence about the opportunity for pre-K to change community metrics in grade-level reading, math and science scores, the social and emotional intelligence of youth, and workforce quality.