--- title: How Digital Twins Are Unlocking Remote Work for Blue-Collar Workers description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7278900/how-digital-twins-are-unlocking-remote-work-for-blue-collar-workers/ author: Michelle Peng article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-04-20T10:30:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:07:30.830Z article:section: Charter og:title: How Digital Twins Are Unlocking Remote Work for Blue-Collar Workers og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Apr 20, 2025 10:30 AM UTC  Art: Charter  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Apr 20, 2025 10:30 AM UTC The ability to work from anywhere may seem like a lot to ask while some organizations are still locked in a debate on whether to allow any remote-work days, but Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj Choudhury argues that even traditional hybrid-work arrangements don’t go far enough in his forthcoming book, [_The World Is Your Office_](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9781647824716)_._ He notes that hybrid policies still generally require most workers to be onsite a few times each week. “They’ve gone from one model, which was five days in person in the office, to this knee-jerk movement to a weekly hybrid, and they got stuck there,” says Choudhury, a [Charter 30 honoree](https://www.charterworks.com/charter-30-prithwiraj-choudhury/). “They haven’t fully realized the benefits of remote work.” We spoke to Choudhury about the case for allowing people to work from anywhere, and new approaches that are making the benefits of remote work more broadly available, including to blue-collar workers. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity: Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **You write that your book is about work from anywhere (WFA), not work from home or traditional hybrid work. What is the difference and what is the comparative advantage of WFA?** Work from anywhere is a work arrangement which lets individual workers choose where they want to live—which city, which town, which state, and sometimes even which country they want to live. From that location, they could be working from home, they could be working from a coworking space, if five people of the same company are in that location, they can start a satellite office. Work from anywhere is all of that. The strategic advantage to companies for work from anywhere is that now the company can hire from a much larger geographic area. So they can, instead of just hiring talent from Boston or New York or San Francisco, they can hire from the entire state or the entire country or sometimes even globally based on how much work, what is the expense of work from anywhere. So that's the benefit. It's the labor market access. I see work from anywhere as a talent access strategy. **What are practices you recommend for making WFA successful?** In a more monthly and a quarterly hybrid model, it's critical to share knowledge in real time because you have a more distributed team. You're not seeing each other for three weeks and you can't tap the shoulder and ask a question. You have to codify knowledge, which means you have to write up everything you've done—meeting with a customer, what the customer said. Earlier, it was much harder to do that documentation in real time because people just don't like writing about the work. We just hate documentation. Now with generative AI, it's very easy to document what we are working on. This call could be transcribed and summarized in seconds, so it’s very easy to create a real-time repository of all the knowledge, all the meetings, all the project details and solve the knowledge-sharing problem. The other piece that is really important is that the debate we often have about RTO \[return to office\] versus remote work is honestly a second-order question. To me, the most important question is, ‘How do we make in-person time more effective?’ One thing I mention in the book is this bias that people have when they go to an in-person event, which could be going into the office or going to an offsite. They have this bias of homophily, which is a bias of trying to spend time with people just like them, based on gender or ethnicity, which is a phenomenon I document in [my research](https://www.charterworks.com/research-spotlight-strengthening-relationships-in-person/). The idea that I propose as a best practice is what I call engineering serendipity. You can't just leave people to their own devices to make in-person connections. Then they will do it in a very siloed way. Men will do it with men, women with women, and it'll also happen within ethnic silos. Engineering serendipity is the idea where you're trying to engineer in-person interactions so that people are making diverse connections. The quick example I'll give is from one of my research projects, which found that when people were traveling to a retreat, people made diverse connections when they shared the same taxi ride from the airport to the retreat. Because when you're in the back of a taxi, it doesn't matter who's sitting next to you, it feels normal. You then strike up a conversation and then you make a connection on Slack. **How are new technologies like AI reshaping companies’ approaches to WFA?** For years, it was only possible to work from anywhere if you were a desk worker, if you were working on a computer. Now, with genAI and automation and sensors, it's possible to work from anywhere through a digital twin, even if you are a blue-collar worker. A digital twin is a virtual replica of any physical operation—a replica of a factory or a warehouse or an airport with all the conveyor belts. Or even a hospital ward, where the patients are wearing sensors or the patient beds have sensors. You collect data in real time so that you have a virtual replica of the hospital ward or the factory or the warehouse on the cloud. Then you have AI algorithms predicting how to run that operation. In the case of an airport, which conveyor belt should run. In the case of a power plant, what speed the turbine should run at. In the case of a hospital, which patient needs attention. Once you have that digital twin up and running, then you don't need all the technicians or the doctors, nurses, or other engineers on site. In my book, I document two examples. One is a Unilever detergents factory in Brazil, and then more recently I've studied this Turkish power-generation company, which has created the digital twin headquarters at Istanbul to run multiple power plants all over the country. The engineers and the technicians now don't live locally at the site of the power plant. They're all living in Istanbul and the power plants are being run remotely. **It's really wild to think that these technologies are already in use today…** When I started this digital twin research, I was wowed like you. Having now seen and studied this for at least two-and-a-half to three years, they are much more real than the metaverse. Digital twins are happening in all industries. There are New York hospitals that have an electronic ICU or ‘EICU’ system, where many of the doctors and nurses are not on site at the hospitals. They’re working from home, looking at the patient vitals on a computer. The airports in Rome and Sydney, both have implemented digital twins. BMW is implementing a digital twin for a new factory in Hungary. This is very real and it’s going to usher in the next wave of work from anywhere. **How have we already seen work from anywhere change communities in the US?** We discussed why work from anywhere is, in my opinion, the equilibrium we should be trying to achieve and why it’s good for companies. But there’s another piece that makes me super excited about this model: Smaller towns, the cities and the heartland of the US for instance, now get an opportunity to get some talent back. These smaller towns all over the world, but especially in the US, have lost talent to the large cities for decades. If you grew up in a small town, you finish high school, and then you move to one of the coastal cities, and that's where you live for the rest of your life. Now, with work from anywhere, many of these smaller towns—I’ve studied Tulsa, Oklahoma in particular—are getting back some of these workers because they're remote workers, and they can live anywhere. That has a huge positive benefit for these communities. I see this as creating a level playing field for the cities in the heartland. There are now about 40 to 50 cities in the US heartland that now have incentive programs for remote workers, so if you go live in that city in Wisconsin or West Virginia or Ohio or Michigan, the city will pay you. These are often places which have Republican policymakers. So work from anywhere has a benefit to both blue states and red states, but especially to red states. **Read our coverage of Choudhury’s research, including studies on “**[**engineering serendipity**](https://www.charterworks.com/research-spotlight-strengthening-relationships-in-person/)**” at offsites and using** [**AI for CEO communications**](https://www.charterworks.com/how-ai-could-improve-workplace-communication-and-unlock-distributed-work/)**.** **Watch a** [**recording**](https://www.charterworks.com/charter-workplace-summit-2024-how-hybrid-and-flexible-work-can-unlock-performance-innovation-connection-and-wellbeing/) **of Choudhury’s remarks at the 2024 Charter Workplace Summit.** **Pre-order** **_The World is Your Office_** **from** [**Amazon**](https://amzn.to/3GcMTt4) **or** [**Bookshop**](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9781647824716)**.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/)  ### Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/) [Open article: Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/)  ### Why Leaders Should Ignore Predictions About AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-leaders-should-ignore-predictions-about-ai/) [Open article: What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/)  ### What Jamie Dimon Thinks About Jobs, an AI Bubble, and How to Measure Schools [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-jamie-dimon-thinks-about-jobs-an-ai-bubble-and-how-to-measure-schools/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7278900/how-digital-twins-are-unlocking-remote-work-for-blue-collar-workers/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7278900/how-digital-twins-are-unlocking-remote-work-for-blue-collar-workers/"},"headline":"How Digital Twins Are Unlocking Remote Work for Blue-Collar Workers","datePublished":"2025-04-20T10:30:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:07:30.830Z","description":"HBS professor Prithwiraj Choudhury's case for work-from-anywhere as a strategic business advantage from his new book, 'The World is Your Office.'","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7278900/how-digital-twins-are-unlocking-remote-work-for-blue-collar-workers/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfa0b031c7a53e538/6998c5ee7323af000a2bc70d/charter-choudhury.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Peng","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfa0b031c7a53e538/6998c5ee7323af000a2bc70d/charter-choudhury.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-choudhury","caption":"An illustration featuring a photo of Prithwiraj Choudhury, a South Asian Man with glasses.","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7278900/how-digital-twins-are-unlocking-remote-work-for-blue-collar-workers/","name":"How Digital Twins Are Unlocking Remote Work for Blue-Collar Workers"}}]}] ```