When he started his career in Singapore three decades ago with Swedish multinational Electrolux, the disruptions in view were all about the changing geoeconomic balance as first, the Asian Tigers, then China, settled into a period of explosive growth. Driving business expansion in the Asia-Pacific for commercial equipment was a breeze - the swiftly expanding market took care of much of that.

These days, as chairman and chief executive of ManpowerGroup, a world-leading workplace solutions company, Mr Jonas Prising's challenge is disruption of another sort - the vast structural changes happening in the world of work, whether on factory floors, back offices or even outsourcing companies as automation, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things combine to make the most profound changes to the working environment since Ford Motor invented the assembly line 106 years ago this month.