The Art of Inventing Future Careers

By Bryan Mattimore and Chris Bishop

Nanopharmacist? Lunar tour guide? Robotic ethics consultant? Augmented reality content designer?

Have you heard of these jobs? If not, you will. These are some of the jobs that you, your children, and your children’s children will be doing. It’s now projected that 85% of the jobs that today's learners will be doing in the next fifteen years have not yet been invented. And according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, most young people entering the workforce today will have 8-10 jobs by the time they are 38.

Factors like continuing globalization, the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual/mixed reality and robotics, as well as the emerging gig economy and contingent worker paradigm, are all intersecting to disrupt traditional job roles. The good news is there are tremendous opportunities for those who are excited about creating their own futures.

How can you predict future careers? Well, as Alan Kay, former Xerox PARC software visionary once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it!”

So, to help high school, college, business school, other advanced-degree students, as well as the currently-employed invent a new career, we have developed a “Future Careers Invention Workshop.” The workshop combines Chris’s deep understanding of evolving trends in technology, culture and business with the creative techniques that Bryan's innovation agency uses to help companies “invent the new”… all in service of empowering people to envision future job possibilities.

One of the career-invention techniques that’s been particularly enlightening – and empowering – for our workshop participants is what we call “Future Career Naming.” It’s based on a word-combination creative technique called semantic intuition that Bryan uses in his new product ideation sessions. Here’s the simple, three-step Future Career Naming process.

Step 1: Create a list of items in the following three categories: “Leading-Edge Technologies,” “Industries,” and “Job Titles/Competencies.”

So, for “Leading-Edge Technologies,” some examples might be:

Robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, reusable rockets, implantable chips, nanomachines, solar energy, wind farms, quantum computing, fusion reactors, wired fabrics

Examples of “Industries” could be:

Healthcare, financial services, travel and transportation, tourism, legal, education, manufacturing, technology, fashion, energy, telecommunications, logistics, communication, marketing, security

And finally, here are some “Job Titles/Competencies”:

Manager, director, strategy consultant, sales director, curator, analyst, customer service rep., hacker, financial advisor, commentator/reporter, designer, repair leader, writer, biologist

Step 2: Pick one item from each of the three columns, and combine them to create a word triad that “names” a new career.

Possible combinations might be:

a) “Implantable Chips, Healthcare, Strategy Consultant” or

b) “Wired Fabrics, Fashion, Designer.”

Step 3: Use these word combinations to imagine a new job, a field of study, or career path.

So, the combination: “Implantable Chips, Healthcare, Strategy Consultant,” might suggest a career as “a strategic business advisor to a company in the healthcare industry on how to exploit new implantable medical technologies to drive innovation and new revenue growth.”

The second combination: “Wired Fabrics, Fashion, Designer” (an actual combination created by one of our MBA workshop participants), could inspire a career path “integrating the emerging field of IoT (Internet of Things) with clothing design.” In fact, both MIT’s Media Lab, and Google Ventures have scientists, engineers, and designers currently working in this new “field.” (Check out the Google X Moonshot called Project Jacquard.)

Once each workshop participant has created a “future job”, we encourage them to develop it further by imagining:

·      What they would be doing every day

·      Who they would be interacting with

·      What the possible career path might be

·      What other skills might be needed to advance

·      How they might acquire the necessary knowledge to improve their value proposition

As the future "IoT-fashion-designer" MBA student told us after a recent workshop: “I was at the point of not knowing what to pursue my degree in. This exercise gave me the wider perspective I needed!”

So, what future career path could you envision? Using this simple exercise could help you or a family member or a friend realize that the possibilities, like the future, are indeed endless.

As we travel the country helping people understand the importance of creative career re-invention, we’ve even discovered a new job title for ourselves: “Career Invention Provocateurs!”

Let us know if you'd like to have us conduct a Future Careers Invention Workshop with your team. And please share your own career reinvention ideas in the comments below!

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Bryan Mattimore is co-founder and Chief Idea Guy at Growth Engine, www.growth-engine.com, an innovation agency based in Norwalk, CT. His most recent book is 21 Days to a Big Idea: Creating Breakthrough Business Concepts.

Chris Bishop is the chief reinvention officer at improvising careers, a future-focused career consulting firm in Wilton, CT. https://improvisingcareers.com/. He was formerly a social media evangelist/futurist at IBM and now writes and speaks about "How to Succeed at Jobs That Don't Exist Yet" based on the seven he has had so far. Before IBM he worked as a touring bass guitarist and studio musician in New York.  

(This article originally appeared in The ART of Magazine - March 2018)