Isn’t it interesting how often predictions about the future turn out to be completely wrong?

Take the astonishing explosion of technology. The fear was that technology would kill jobs and put people on the street. The new connected world is doing exactly the opposite!

Don’t get me wrong, it certainly is killing some jobs – mainly low-value admin and ‘grunt-work’ positions. But in a world increasingly driven by DIY entrepreneurs, easy access to technology and the ability to connect is creating a plethora of new opportunities.

All it needs is the mindset to work in a virtual network. And that clearly suits tens of millions of smart young people from every corner of the globe – and more than a few ‘reconditioned’ older ex-office workers!

What used to be called Human Resource departments in big companies have been dramatically slimmed down to become talent management bureaus – handling both the diminishing numbers of people actually employed in truly critical roles, and the thousands, and sometimes millions, of virtual partnerships corporates have formed with contractors.

Work is finally being recognized as an output successfully delivered, rather than a place you go to. Everything from software development and testing to customer service to accounting and administration is either going real-time and becoming an automated customer-driven operation, or is being handled by agile small entrepreneurs plugged into the global communications network.

After all – who wants to sit in an office, dealing with company politics and red tape, when you can be self-employed and manage your own life? Not without risk, of course, but the rewards have spawned an entirely new self-managed and self-driven workforce, more motivated to deliver results than any number of wage slaves!