Briefings On Talent & Leadership 12 A t testing facilities around the world, global powers are racing to find the engineering breakthrough. They’re throwing thousands of scientists at the problem, some- times plucking them right out of hallowed academia, other times enticing them from rivals with offers of money or power. There are even allegations of stealing top-secret technology. The stakes couldn’t be higher as solving the problem could well change the course of human history. Or at least drive it in the right direction, as instead of a Cold War-era race to develop the atom bomb, this human drama is over the development of a more utilitarian offering: the driverless car. Indeed, with nearly everyone acknowledging it’s only a matter of time before the roads will be full of autonomous vehicles, carmakers and tech firms alike are spending billions to come out with the right technology. And for the most part, the money isn’t going to parts or engines, but almost entirely toward attracting top- notch PhDs and software wizards. Call it the new battleground for talent—one of the biggest ever. By some estimates, the auto industry has spent $3 billion to $5 billion just to lock up the top tech performers in the driver- less space. That doesn’t count the hundreds of millions more that technology firms big and small are spending on their own engineers to take the lead in the race to succeed first. In demand: the know-how to code software and write algorithms so a vehicle can drive on its own safely on any road and in any weather. That skill narrows the field to small group of highly qualified computer scientists, software engineers and roboticists. “The expertise in software and artificial intelligence appli- cable to driverless technology is in extremely short supply,” says Carla J. Bailo, a former Nissan research executive who now does research at the Ohio State University. “Automakers and other employers are ready to hire whomever they can educate.” Toyota alone is spending $1 billion to build a staff of 200 and create a research institute focused on driverless tech. Uber recruited about 50 Carnegie Mellon University professors and grad students to join its research center for self-driving vehicles, not far from campus, and later announced a $40 million partnership with CMU to help ensure access to future talent. Engineers at auto-parts manu- facturer Bosch spent 1,400 hours and $225,000 just to make two Tesla sedans fully autonomous. (Bosch says it has around 2,000 engineers devoted to driver- assistance technology, of which driverless vehicles are a part.) The effort, of course, makes sense, given how valuable the Car firms are spending billions on experts who can develop the right technology. Call it the new battleground for talent— one of the biggest ever. The Human Talent War Steering Driverless Cars BY DORON LEVIN ON THE HORIZON TALENT SHOW