In each of the last four industrial revolutions—agricultural, industrial, internet, and now AI—the age at which a person becomes productive in the labor force has steadily risen.
This is not surprising.
Each wave of technological transformation has demanded more advanced skills. With every leap, new tools and paradigms emerged, ones that required more time, education, and adaptability to master. It now takes longer to contribute meaningfully to the economy than ever before.
- During the Agricultural Revolution, children as young as 10 contributed by learning farming skills directly from family.
- In the Industrial Revolution, machines and factory systems required training—workers often became productive between ages 14 and 16.
- The Internet Revolution ushered in the knowledge economy, which demanded digital literacy, critical thinking, and college degrees—raising the bar to around age 21. This coincides with the rise in the need for a college education to be competitive in the workforce.
The AI Revolution raises it again and it is expected that the “entry level” age will rise to 24 years old. But this time, the learning curve is steeper—and moving faster.
To thrive in the AI era, new workers need more than just technical know-how, but also social and emotional. They must:
- Understand how to work alongside intelligent systems,
- Interpret algorithmic outputs,
- Adapt to ever-shifting automated workflows,
- And—most importantly—apply uniquely human judgement when machines fall short.
We're entering an age where systems thinking, ethical reasoning, human-AI collaboration, and real-time decision-making become baseline entry-level skills.
And among traditional education formats, the MBA is perhaps the most vulnerable.
Why?
Because it was designed for a different era.
The modern MBA was built to serve the managerial needs and corporate economy of the Internet era: structured, stable, hierarchical, and linear. But today’s world is anything but. AI is redefining how decisions get made—and doing it at machine speed.
That makes the typical two-year MBA:
- Too slow
- Too rigid and outdated
- Too abstract
- Too expensive
Its frameworks haven’t kept pace with the market’s demands for agility, AI fluency, and judgment under uncertainty.
I say this from experience.
My MBA at Harvard Business School was transformative for me at the time. But if I were to go through it today, I genuinely believe an AI agent could complete the entire program on my behalf. Read the cases. Write the papers. Participate in class discussions with well-crafted prompts. Even outperform human peers with high-quality answers on exams.
That’s not science fiction, it’s a statement about today’s real capabilities.
And the market is responding.
We’re already seeing a migration away from prestige-bound degrees toward modular, just-in-time learning. Operators, founders, and builders are flocking to platforms like Reforge, On Deck, and Section, where application trumps abstraction.
Product managers, analysts, and marketers are mastering new tools—often taught by AI itself—not waiting around for outdated classroom case studies.
If the MBA wants to survive the AI Industrial Revolution, it must reinvent itself fundamentally:
- Make AI literacy foundational, not optional.
- Prioritize working with AI, not just learning about it.
- Offer modular, stackable credentials that grow with the learner.
- Embed real-world projects with live AI systems and industry partnerships.
Some programs are experimenting; Wharton now offers an AI for Business certificate, and Harvard is dabbling in online flexibility. These are encouraging steps, but the change needs to go deeper.
The MBA must become an AI-native platform for leadership development.
Not just teaching people how to manage companies but how to reinvent them for an age where machines and humans collaborate in real time.
The productive age is rising. The demands on entry-level workers are intensifying. If the MBA doesn’t raise the bar with these demands, it won’t survive the AI revolution.
About the author
Guiding early-stage founders to success
