based on a survey of business leaders the world economic forum in predicted that by over a third of the core skill sets in most occupations will involve skills that were not considered crucial at the time of the survey demand will grow more for social skills such as persuasion emotional intelligence and teaching than for narrow technical skills such as programming or operating and controlling equipment this does not mean that technical skills will not be needed but that they will have to be complemented by social and collaboration skills on the one hand automation is likely to make complex problemsolving less necessary in industries that are heavily technical today on the other hand problemsolving will gain importance in industries that are expected to become more complex and analytical the world economic forum survey highlights a number of underused but promising approaches to handling the impact on jobs of technological developments such as artificial intelligence machine learning robotics nanotechnology and d printing