While I was traveling last week, I had an epiphany: there is a common theme to pretty much everything I have been writing about here on Continuations! The theme is the transition from the Industrial Age towards what I will call the Age of Abundance. I believe we are in a period of massive transformation that is on par with the move from agricultural to industrial society (or before that from hunter gatherers to farmers).
So rather than just continue with my regular somewhat haphazard blogging, I will try to cover the points from an outline (in addition to the random posts spurred by events). Here is a rough cut of that outline.
1. What will characterize the Age of Abundance? There will be many surprises, but here are some ideas
Abundance of goods (duh)
Flat and fluid organization structures
Shared global responsibilities
Reputation economy
2. Are there any signs that this could actually be happening? There has been plenty of talk in the past about “post industrial society” and (I realize given the title of this post) a “new age” without much to it in the end. So why now?
Growth in productivity
Changes in allocation of time
Slowing down of birth rates
Stretching of wealth distribution
Rise of “false prophets”
3. What can we do as individuals? If this transition is really under way how should we change what we are doing?
Stand up against ignorance (second enlightenment?)
Embrace experiences over stuff
Listen to our children
Connect with people around the world
4. What can governments do?
Replace heavy bureaucracy with light-weight governance
Embrace transparency
Promote young people to real responsibility
5. What can companies do?
Empower the individual
Ignore nation state boundaries
Focus on deep value
6. What could go wrong?
Lots of distribution fights
Kill off the open networks
Long tail threats
Can’t figure out the governance
That’s my current outline. It sounds a bit abstract at the moment, but I am pretty sure that I can illustrate much of it with examples of what is already happening (and hopefully a fair bit of that from the Union Square Ventures portfolio). I am not planning to follow the outline in order, just to cover the points that are on here.
Would love feedback on the topic itself, the points in the outline and anything else that comes to mind!
