Top 35 Richard Susskind Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Automation is what most professionals have in mind when they think of the relevance of technology for their disciplines.”

— Richard Susskind

2. “We are advancing into a post-professional society.”

— Richard Susskind

3. “People generally prefer problem-avoidance and problem-containment to problem-solving.”

— Richard Susskind

4. “The end of the professional era is characterized by four trends: the move from bespoke service; the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers; a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to professional work; and the more-for-less challenge.”

— Richard Susskind

5. “The deeper issue here is that any changes in the work that people do tend to originate at the level of particular tasks involved, and not with the job in general terms.”

— Richard Susskind

6. “If we leave it to professionals themselves to reinvent their workplace, are we asking the rabbits to guard the lettuce?”

— Richard Susskind

7. “Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably.9.”

— Richard Susskind

8. “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. CLAY SHIRKY.”

— Richard Susskind

9. “It is interesting to note, harking back again to the exponential growth of information technology, that the hardware on which Watson ran in 2011 was said to be about the size of the average bedroom. Today, we are told, it runs on a machine that is the size of three pizza boxes, and by the early 2020s Watson will sit comfortably in a smartphone.”

— Richard Susskind

10. “This automation therefore complements but does not fundamentally change the central way in which services are delivered.”

— Richard Susskind

11. “This is a new division of labour, and traditional professionals sometimes struggle here because they are no longer in the driving-seat.”

— Richard Susskind

12. “Technology will be the main driver of this change. And, in the long run, we will neither need nor want professionals to work in the way that they did in the twentieth century and before.”

— Richard Susskind

13. “Half of US doctors use the app known as Epocrates, a digital drug-reference resource that computerizes the task of finding out how different drugs interact. This task was once a time-consuming, often inconclusive piece of excavation from a 2,500-page drug-reference manual, known as the Physicians Desk Reference.”

— Richard Susskind

14. “Our second objection to the professions under the grand bargain is that, by and large, the arrangement presupposes a model of professional work, especially advisory work, that rests on increasingly antiquated techniques for creating and sharing knowledge.”

— Richard Susskind

15. “Surgeons scan patient parts and print models of them, to practice on before operating in earnest.”

— Richard Susskind

16. “Sending e-mails and texts is an automated version of writing letters, whereas social networking is an innovative technology, by which we mean, in this context, that it gives rise to ways of communicating that were not possible in the past.”

— Richard Susskind

17. “More than this, however, professionals should become directly involved in the development of the systems that handle and deliver practical expertise.”

— Richard Susskind

18. “When professional work is decomposed, constituent tasks tend to be allocated to the least costly sources consistent with the quality and nature of the work involved.”

— Richard Susskind

19. “The first is the notion that machines and systems will work alongside tomorrow’s professionals as partners. The challenge here is to allocate tasks, as between human beings and machines, according to their relative strengths.”

— Richard Susskind

20. “We also see intra-professional friction, when, for example, nurses take on work that used to be exclusive to doctors, or paralegals are engaged to perform tasks that formerly were the province of lawyers.”

— Richard Susskind

21. “In the past, machines have taken on the grunt work, releasing professionals to focus on tasks that require their brains or dexterity.”

— Richard Susskind

22. “Watson Doesn’t Know It Won on “Jeopardy!”

— Richard Susskind

23. “To put this more concretely, we argue that professional work should be decomposed, that is, broken down into its constituent ‘tasks’ –.”

— Richard Susskind

24. “There will be very few jobs for life, much less security, and very little predictability. There will be an emphasis instead on being able to learn, develop, and adapt rapidly as new roles and tasks arise. Different ways of communicating Not many decades ago professionals communicated in three ways – face-to-face, in writing, and by telephone. That was it.”

— Richard Susskind

25. “Knowledge, however, is non-rival.”

— Richard Susskind

26. “Readers may call us radical, but if we can foresee a day when the average laptop has more processing power than all of humanity combined, then it might be time for professionals to revisit some of their current working practices.”

— Richard Susskind

27. “Put bluntly, professionals tend not to like sharing what they know with other professionals.”

— Richard Susskind

28. “But in practice there is no clear reason why a division of labour in society should necessarily imply a division of moral behaviour as well.”

— Richard Susskind

29. “At the other end, prospective entrants to the professions are having second thoughts about committing.”

— Richard Susskind

30. “Our view is that there is nothing so special or unique about professionals’ knowledge to suggest that some of it cannot be made easily accessible and understandable on an online basis.”

— Richard Susskind

31. “Instead, they have to build their own portfolios, made up of capabilities and competencies – being proficient at a range of particular tasks rather than at a specific job.”

— Richard Susskind

32. “Checklists, which are a form of routinization, ‘remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit’.”

— Richard Susskind

33. “Industry and commerce are becoming increasingly complex, which means that there are more calls for professional help from lawyers, consultants, accountants, tax advisers, amongst others.”

— Richard Susskind

34. “Our main claim is that we are on the brink of a period of fundamental and irreversible change in the way that the expertise of these specialists is made available in society. Technology will be the main driver of this change.”

— Richard Susskind

35. “For example, in 2009 the British Government published, online, 700,000 individual documents that related to the expenses of British MPs. In response, the Guardian newspaper built an online platform to host these documents, and asked readers collectively to sift through them, a task too large for one person alone, and flag those that might be of interest, adding analysis if need be. A community of over 20,000 individuals engaged in what was, in effect, a public audit.”

— Richard Susskind

36. “As Voltaire would caution, in reforming or transforming the professions, we should not let the best be the enemy of the good.”

— Richard Susskind