Meconomy. Markus Albers
for lifelong learning, cultural open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, and a belief in their own abilities can be among us. This also means that many will fall through the cracks. The new working environment – let’s call it the Meconomy – will be tough, and it will divide our societies right in the middle.
Granted, not everyone can turn their passion into their profession, shake off the shackles of office life, and strive for self-actualization in our modern world. Those who will profit from this book are people who are attracted to the possibilities of the digital economy, of global mobility and individual branding: Permanent employees who suffer from being directed by others and consider at last doing something meaningful with their lives. Freelancers who have to eek out a living with routine work and bread-and-butter jobs. People who want to invent new jobs that don’t exist yet. Employers who want to find out how to attract the best employees in the future. This book is not directed towards those who appreciate cozy routines, calling it a day on time, and having a completely predictable future. Moreover, there are some occupations in which the promise of the Meconomy simply cannot be realized. This is a book that I essentially wrote for a specific target group: knowledge workers, also referred to as the “Creative Class.” Thus, it is a book for people who deal with information, who develop rather than manufacture products, who offer digital services rather than craftsmanship, and who mainly do computer-based work. Today, this applies to about 50 percent of all jobs – with an upward trend. Still, it doesn’t apply to all jobs.
The main reason why the Meconomy will be hard for all of us is that we will have to do with less security and without some of the guard rails of the old economic order. State, social security systems, and numerous political structures will have to adapt to this new world if they want to remain valid for people. Those who continue to rely on government-based networks, learned routines, and their familiar everyday work life, instead of on their own passions and skills, will encounter difficult times and will probably be on the losing end. The nice years are over. Here come the exciting and demanding years full of dangers and opportunities.
This book is published as an e-book precisely because of the fact that today we don’t need many of the classic institutions anymore. Instead, we are free to take things into our own hands, and this is what I want to prove with this book. I want to find my readers myself – without the backup of a major publisher or bookstores – or, respectively: I hope that readers will find my book. Besides, I believe the digital format to be superior for certain publications. Irrespective of the fact that reading devices are getting more and more user-friendly and that the paid content debate (i.e. the discussion about the pros and cons of selling contents via the Internet) is gaining momentum, the main reason for selling this book as an e-book is speed. My publisher would have needed almost one year to print the German version of the book and to put it into stores. I, in turn, wanted my theses to be discussed as soon as they were relevant: immediately.
This doesn’t mean that this book will never exist on paper. Its initial digital publication is an experiment, and I’m excited to see the result. I would be happy if you helped me prove what I firmly believe in: This distribution channel – which has already proven its relevance for documents, music, photos, and films – will also become dramatically more relevant for longer texts in the near future.
INTRODUCTION
“The future of business will be more startups, fewer giants, and infinite opportunity.”
Chris Anderson
Sometimes we have to be thrown off course in order to find out where we want to go. Sometimes we need a decent push from the outside in order to accept changes which we have long known to be inevitable. And sometimes we just want to try something new, as the old tastes kind of stale and is likely to collapse soon anyway.
During the global economic crisis, we started to realize that many of the values and norms that had given our parents security and reliability had limits to them. We had already sensed that, but now it had become obvious: There was hardly anything that still offered existential security. A job for life? Big company brands? Retirement provisions? Either unreliable or completely obsolete. The supposed predictability of our rhythm of life, the daily way to work, saving money for retirement – suddenly, all of this seemed to be hopelessly outdated, unreliable, and wrong. Things looked pretty bleak. Nevertheless, it was still possible to find good news among the bad. After all, what is it that is waiting to replace the patriarchal system of Rhine capitalism, town houses, and retirement plans? Maybe it is a life that we have already had a taste of in the past but that we haven’t really dared to try yet – a life that offers us freedoms, decision options, and ways of self-actualization we wouldn’t have even thought of a few years ago.
To the magazine Monocle, 2009 was the “rethink year.” Editor-in-chief Andrew Tuck, who publishes voices on this topic from all over the world, told me that people had learned to rely on their abilities: “Many had to face terrible losses, but there were also some beneficial corrections.” Tuck also believes that it has become easier now to reinvent yourself: “I know people who were photographic agents and then retrained as cooks, same as people who were bankers and became farmers, and they do a good job in both fields. I think that’s great. It’s never too late to do what you really love.” During and after the crisis, many people learned what actually makes them happy.
It is said “Do what you love and you won’t work a single day in your life.” What sounded like an overblown romanticism of self-discovery some time ago has all of a sudden become possible. Especially the digital economy makes it easier and, at the same time, even more necessary to find target groups, supporters, and markets for activities and products that we feel passionate about. Life becomes a construction set that provides us with countless possibilities, and we are free to put exactly the parts together that suit us.
These days, people throughout the world are exchanging information about how everyday things in life can be managed better with practical tricks and modern technology. This way, they try to optimize their productivity as the good old 9-to-5 day at the office is increasingly a thing of the past. Thanks to the end of required attendance, we are, for the first time, interested in getting things done faster and more efficiently in order to have leisure time afterwards. In my last book “Morgen komm ich später rein,” I showed how mobile and flexible ways of working allow us to spend less time at the office and to gain time for other things. The resulting question is: What happens next? What do you do with that time? To more and more people, the answer is: educate yourself, expand your skills, and improve yourself.
At the same time, new Internet-based communication technologies and mobile services make it easier to build, motivate, and mobilize groups. This way, every person may become the leader of his own “tribe,” as marketing expert Seth Godin calls it. The current 18- to 25-year-olds are already considered the “creative generation”: They are not only used to consuming, but also take producing for granted. This presents another unprecedented chance for self-actualization to all of us.
Parallel to working environments, business models change as well. “What would Google do?” asks US author Jeff Jarvis and gives an answer that applies to many business sectors: They have to reinvent themselves, disclose many of their former business secrets, and allow their customers and subcontractors to remix their products in an unexpected way. Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief of the smart technology magazine Wired, has identified “Free” as the new trend – the giving away of products and services in order to finally make money in various new ways. One thing is for sure: Currently, many business models are undergoing profound changes, and most companies still don’t know how to react to them. This essentially means two things:
1. It doesn’t matter how stable and big our employers used to be. Their future success and, consequently, our jobs are uncertain.
2. The barriers against the successful market entry of new players are lower than ever. Since no one knows how to proceed, it might as well be us who co-invent the future.
We are thrown back to depend on ourselves in a positive sense. The smallest meaningful unit that we can rely on in the knowledge society is our mind (i.e., us).
In this book, I dwell on ten pivotal developments that, in my opinion, will shape our work life and, thus, the world