Sustaining U.S. Competitiveness and Innovation

Speaker Rick Stephens, Sr. VP Boeing, Human Resources

Knowledge and experience allows us to succeed in the development for the workforce for the future.

Mr. Stephens related to our experiences growing up…..we didn’t have cell phones, TV viewing, computers in our rooms. As children, we were found outside playing, building tree forts, creating, riding bikes. Children of today average 7.5 hours per day in the electronic simulated world – cell phones, TV, on-line games, on-line social networks. This is their reality.
Imagine 30 years from now – what will relationships be like? What will we create? Will we live in an electrified world with EV’s, smart grids, smart buildings? What will our family and friends relationships become? Facebook relationships?

There is NO LABOR SHORTAGE in America. Yet, there is a SKILLS SHORTAGE.

The concern is that today’s young are not experiencing the real world but a simulated world. What happens when one plays video games and they don’t make it to the next level? What are the consequences? There are none. No real life experience.
To be successful we need Technical Knowledge AND Real world applications.

What we can do:
-focus on students we need to focus on schools and actively participating by providing students with real world experiences.
- Find more ways to interact with our young – IEEE is good at involvement in robotics and Lego student programs

Creating experiences in the real world is critical to success. The real world is not programmed like a computer.

Concept: there are 320 million people in the US, what if each person volunteered one day/year? You do the math. Image the possibilities.

You can contact Rick Stephens at: rick.stephens@boeing.com


-Gary Perman