A great opinion-editorial by Michael Malone in the May 19th edition of The Wall Street Journal lays out what Americans can expect over the next several decades as our workforce shifts from a traditional brick-and-mortar-30-years-and-gold-watch workplace to the serial entrepreneurship that the next generation is exploring.
Malone highlights a telling trend:
"We still have companies and corporations, but now they are virtualized,with online work teams handing off assignments to each other 24/7around the world. Men and women go to work, but the office isincreasingly likely to be in the den. In 2005, an Intel survey of itsemployees found that nearly 20% of its professionals had never mettheir boss face-to-face. Half of them never expected to. Last summer,when the Media X institute at Stanford extended that survey to IBM,Sun, HP, Microsoft and Cisco, the percentages turned out to be evengreater."
Things change. And in this day and age, things can change quickly.
Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment ismore secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges anduniversities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% ofGen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs,according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are startingcompanies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today'shigh schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to aGallup poll.
Just as soon as one startup company hits it big, another one goes down in flames. Fortunately, in a competitive and innovative marketplace, there will always be a premium for smart entrepreneurs and savvy consumers. So while some may face the future with trepidation, those that are skilled in the ways of innovation view the upcoming decades as a chance to emulate the successes of today's tech movers and shakers.