F3 Member: A pressing question for me is: Exactly which, if any, organizations would hire young, ambitious, multi-disciplinary, big picture people? This applies to people like me who want to be paid for their talents and don’t see themselves in traditional organizations, but also don’t want to create their own new organizations from scratch. The underlying question is: are doing Good and getting paid mutually exclusive? Young people typically get slotted into jobs doing mundane tasks with limited responsibility and latitude. How can we leapfrog that career stage and get right to the big picture and responsibility for things that matter?
I agree with you this is a very important issue. Doing good and getting paid certainly shouldn’t be exclusive, but it is true right now they often are at odds.To me that means the system has bad incentives and needs to be realigned.
This is a key problem I think Force For the Future can solve. A key point is that we need to have system that allows young people to take bigger swings if they want to. I think taking big swings at the core of economic and societal advancement.
Most startups fail yet their payoff as an industry is enormous. Juan Enriquez said, “The only part of the economy that generates new output are start-up companies. The fortune 500 have generated net negative jobs over the last 30 years. It’s startup companies that are .2 percent of GDP that have generated 17.8 percent of economic output. That’s where we’ve got to be investing.”
Yet as you said most students aren’t encouraged to take big swings, they get stuck in mundane jobs with little responsibility and I think as a result the size of their thinking long term decreases and complacency ensues.
So what are some solutions?
It needs to be easier for young people to jump into projects with laudable goals and small dynamic teams.
What are the barriers that I think Force For the Future can reduce?
Money, Good People, Support/Advising to stay on track, a wide range of ideas for projects that people can undertake
Money – Get VC’s, Angels, and Foundations to invest a small amount of money in these types of projects – they should be doing this as early as high school. 21st century learning has project based learning at its core and these ambitious projects are the epitome. The benefit of these projects are two pronged: societal/economic benefit if successful, and educational in the event of success or failure.
Good People – Create a network of like-minded peers. Host events, meet regularly to throw around ideas and build friendships. Form more intimate forum/mastermind groups etc.
Support Network – Many prominent professionals are interested in mentoring the next generation, especially if you’ve got young people thinking big and making progress on a daily basis. Get them to consult, promote, advise, run skills workshops. Ideas for
Projects – This should be easy. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. I propose building a platform where peers can pool ideas and experts can be polled about the best way to attack specific problems.
Both starting new organizations from scratch and joining existing initiatives would be equally supported.
To summarize I think the answer is merging the disparate fields of Education, Entrepreneurship (startup culture) and Life Long Learning (learning just in time basis, mentoring, etc)