What are you thinking about today?

Ten years after its mind-changing launch, Fast Company is celebrating its anniversary with new ideas on who and what will shape our lives in the next ten years. Even as many have started to doubt the value of a publication that embraces the passion in work and scoffs at the popularly held belief that we should build a barrier between the office and rest-of-life, I think it’s an evolving and invaluable refuge for optimistic people who believe that work should be fun, can be meaningful and is as much a part of our “real” lives as the hours of television and tons of Doritos we consume after 5.

A few excerpts from this month’s Fast Company – the people who will change how we work and live over the next 50 years –

From Fast Talk: What’s the biggest change facing business in the next 10 years:

"During my research for Bait and Switch, I was told again and again that the basis of hiring is not your skills or experience, but how likable you are. The rationale is that you have to be a 'team player' and conform, in great detail, down to the shape of your lapel pin. In what kind of team does everyone have to be the same?

There seems to be a growing culture of incompetence where who knows whom and who likes whom weigh more than getting the job done."

>>Barbara Ehrenreich, Writer

"When people are in front of a screen, they can either lean back or lean forward. You have to engage consumers emotionally, tell them a story, so they lean in and get involved. That's the challenge for business going forward. Steve Jobs understands that any MP3 player does what the iPod does. But he has made his products irresistible. You're engaged, so it doesn't matter that the batteries still don't work."

>>Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi

"The Web creates transparency, which will make competition tougher and in turn, business better. When a company messes up, it will be very visible…
There will be a profound change in psychology as people realize how much power they hold. Empowered people are going to begin to realize this. When they walk into a Wal-Mart, they're going to want to know how a product was made and under what conditions. They will assume they have the right to ask because they can do so on the Web."

>>Esther Dyson, Editor, Release 1.0 (for CNet Networks)

"…you have to assume everything is an open book. You better not have anything going on that if it were known, we'd be ashamed of. When there are fewer secrets, there is greater motivation to do the right thing.

I think this is part of a larger trend, toward business having a greater responsibility in society than just maximizing profits. Customers want that, employees want that, and shareholders want that: They want businesses to be good citizens."

>>John Mackey, Chairman, CEO, and cofounder, Whole Foods Market Inc.

http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/103/fast-talk.html

From Demographics: The population Hourglass

And, on the topic of demographics, Andrew Zolli takes us into the demographic shifts that will “will upend our political, economic, and technological priorities and redefine our markets” in the next 10 years.

Check out these topline notes for us Xers:

"This great boomer tri-furcation will in turn create a paradox for the gen-Xers coming up behind them. Some Xers will find themselves in the midst of an enormous job boom created by the vacating boomers, who will leave open far more jobs than there are qualified Xers to fill them. (And there will be much rejoicing.) At the same time, some Xers will find themselves trapped behind a new glass ceiling--the boomer "ass ceiling" if you will--blocked from their next career step because an all-too-healthy or all-too-indebted precursor just can't or won't retire.

Making all of this intergenerational jockeying even more complex, the millennials will soon begin showing up in the workforce en masse, carting along a heady mix of ravenous careerism, natural social networking and IT skills, a thirst for learning, and a rather presumptuous expectation of direct contact with senior management. How this perky generation, which is more like the boomers than any generation in between, will get along with the perennially annoyed Xers will be the fodder for beloved sitcoms in 2013. "

And, yet another warning to product planners and markets about the dominance of women in the marketplace:

"Women's economic achievement is already seeding the clouds for a deluge of distaff marketing and product development. According to the National Association of Realtors, the percentage of single female home buyers in the past 20 years has nearly doubled, placing them second only to married couples. And the number of women buying high-end consumer electronics like plasma televisions is growing faster than the number of men (a reality yet to sink in at the big-box stores)."

http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/103/open_essay-demographics.html

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