So we got our Bye Bye Facebook event last night. It seems to have rocked the Facebook boat somewhat but a first estimate shows that only some 10000 Dutch FB accounts have been cancelled. Expect some more and also expect some repentants who just felt that after a few days their life seemed strangely empty…
In our research on the Dutch digital economy we concluded that the total value-add generated by the digital workforce amounted to €182 billion in 2016. This means that our gross digital domestic product (GDDP) already contributes 28% of our total GDP. © The METISfiles, 2017 However, this is just the direct impact of the digital…
On behalf of Nederland ICT, The METISfiles recently researched and analyzed the size and growth of the Dutch digital workforce and its associated value add to the Dutch economy. The study shows that 1,57 million people in the Netherlands use ICT for more than 50% of their working hours to execute their primary business tasks.…
In our series on the future of work we have touched upon several lines of business where humans are in the process of being replaced by machines. From the 2013 study from Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne called The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization? It became clear that many…
Retail Last year the METISfiles reported on the demise of retail shops in city centers. With consumer e-commerce growth reaching 17% in 2016, and total consumer commerce growing 1.7% traditional commerce is up the creeks. It is not that 1.7% growth in consumer commerce is low, on the contrary, it is a healthy number compared…
In discussing the advance of robotics we tend to concentrate on machines that carry out a seemingly for ever increasing variety of manual tasks: think of flipping burgers, mowing the lawn, vacuum cleaning, dispensing food, medicines or manufacturing cars, boats, things etc. It is just the beginning. Industrial robots were the first to arrive and…
In our series on the future work we watch the development of innovative robotized functions hitting the market. So far we covered the robotized prison guard, burger flipper, order pickers and cars as innovations where robot technology redefines an existing function. But innovations that really captures people’s imagination are drone based appliances; for the sake…
Every economist knows that there is a delay between an investment decision and the time it is delivering results. And when things look good, investing seems the right thing to do. So if prices of pork are high, pork producers all want to profit from it and start to invest in their pork production capacity.…
Last week The METISfiles published a report on Dutch mobile workers on behalf of Citrix. The research was a quick check on how mobile workers in the Netherlands perceive the new normal of mobile working and whether they thought the companies they worked for actually supported mobile work. The view of mobile workers on how…
Rankings and scores always capture the imagination of people. They give you a bird’s eye view on a specific topic, a summary of the key results on a particular theme and therefore your best conversation guide at parties. For people that are directly involved in the specific topic there is a more important reason to…