Many have recently written on the end of the industrial age of mass production and the new economy that is emerging. Seth Godin's article is particularly good and another post from Business Insider is equally thoughtful. My first post on the subject, "A Future of Individuals", is here.
Most commentators agree that jobs in big business (and perhaps government) will be greatly reduced and that individuals will need to manage their economic survival much more aggressively. Few have offered plans for how to do this, so I share a few thoughts:
- Ideas will be the product of the 21st century. Executable ideas will be the most valuable because they produce economic and social benefits. Pure theory in general will be less valuable because there is so much data and information available to quickly test theories.
- Successful people will demonstrate great skill in using digital media to disseminate there ideas, whether it be e-books, blogs, webinars or old fashion conferences. Success may be more dependent on digital media skills than on the quality of ideas. Remember several people typically have a new idea at the same time. As the world becomes more connected greater access to information will spawn more ideas....and more entrepreneurship.
- Qualifications will no longer be the exclusive domain of universities. The various approaches of online learning and app stores will create a much more "informal" system of recognition and certification that may become the norm. The lower cost of these offerings may accelerate the trend.
- Entrepreneurship and self-employment are the strategies most likely to succeed if you are not inclined to do manual labor (which will always be required). Such approaches put the responsibility for your economic and social well being squarely in your own hands. Israel Kirzner explained entrepreneurship as "the asymetry of information" or in the vernacular as "a unique insight". As information proliferates and is more widely available the opportunities for an "asymetry" should increase greatly. This is perhaps the good news, but remember there will be a lot more people looking for these asymetries.
- Solutions to social problems will increasingly be the "big market opportunity". The social problems are scaling much faster than the resources governments can bring to bear. While "do good" is popular today, in the future the slogan may be "it's a market, not a mission". C.K. Prahalad introduced this idea perhaps as early as 2002 in his book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". Prahalad argued that market driven solutions could alleviate poverty and its related problems.
- Capital organization has traditionally been viewed as silos: government, non-profits, Wall Street type capital markets. For many of the opportunities of the 21st century, I think this silo system will breakdown and different sources of capital will come together. Social entrepreneurship and certain investment theses at Deutsche Bank may be examples of this trend. Organizing capital in this multi-dimensional environment is a new and valuable skill which should spawn a new branch of the finacial industry. Doing this capital organizing at different requirement levels will generate a lot of new jobs in much the same way that investment banks of all sizes have proliferated in the last ten years.
"However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays." New York Times Not just the manufacturing jobs but all the design, engineering and logistics jobs.
"In any democratic nation with the freedom of speech, information can never be as strongly regulated by the public as our food, water, and air. Yet information is just as vital to our survival as the other three things we consume. That’s why personal responsibility in an age of mostly free information is vital to individual and social health." Clay Johnson The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption from Brain Pickings
“One of my central mathetic tenets is that the construction that takes place “in the head” often happens especially felicitously when it is supported by construction of a more public son “in the world” – a sand castle or a cake, a LEGO house or a corporation, a computer program, a poem, or a theory of the universe. Part of what I mean by “in the world” is that the product can be shown, discussed, examined, probed, and admired. It is out there.” Seymour Papert The Daily Papert
