The End of Employment and the Birth of the Innovation Economy

I find the books of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi incredibly inspirational. Csikszentmihalyi has been described as the world’s leading expert on positive psychology. His book FLOW helped me to decide to focus my life and my career on things that fully engage me, like the theatre development process.I’m reading Csikszentmihalyi’s book CREATIVITY, and I found this excerpt to perfectly summarize a concept I have been struggling to reduce to words.[C]reative individuals usually are forced to invent the jobs that they will be doing all through their lives. One could not have been a psychoanalyst before Freud, an aeronautical engineer before the Wright brothers, an electrician before Galvani, Volta and Edison, or a radiologist before Roentgen. These individuals not only discovered new ways of thinking and of doing things but also made it possible for others to have jobs and careers in them. So creative individuals don’t have careers; they create them.Here’s why this is a revolutionary yet timely concept. The Great Recession has left the world economy fundamentally changed. The economy is not generating enough jobs. Most of the people who were laid off during the recession, and most of the students coming out of college now, are going to have to make their way through the world without jobs.Moreover, technology is forever changing the jobs that do exist. More and more, offices are becoming redundant. With cloud computing, teleconferencing and other technologies, the need for many businesses to invest in the expense of offices and other overhead is waning. The next generation of workers will not “go to work,” their work will follow them wherever they go.Simply put, we are facing the end of employment as we have known it.While many see this as a crisis, I see it as the opportunity of a lifetime. Each and every one of us now gets to build our own career, our own job. All that is required to thrive in this new economy is the ability to innovate, which is why I call it the Innovation EconomyFor me, I am choosing to transform from a traditional lawyer into a more innovative service provider. As a lawyer, I highlight risks for my clients, help them devise strategies to minimize risk, and draft documents that help them conduct their business. I have also become a professionally trained and court certified mediator, which means in addition to helping clients manage risk I can also help clients manage conflict. Further, I am beginning training as a coach, so that in addition to risk management and conflict management, I will be able to help my clients innovate and create novel solutions to their business and career challenges.In other words, I am taking advantage of the freedom I have as a self-employed person to evolve, to invent my own job and create my own career. And in so doing, I am paving the way for others to do the same.Csikszentmihalyi, then, has summarized in a few words what I have been working to express. In the Innovation Economy, we will all have the freedom to be more creative and more fulfilled.Both FLOW and CREATIVITY are available through Amazon.