The creative economy: You have to thrive and prosper but first let’s talk about what it is. The Creative Economy doesn’t have to do with being an artist. “The Creative Economy is a world in which individuals find direct ways to create value for customers, rather than being intermediated through a firm,” explains Skinner Layne, founder of Exosphere.
There are a couple of temporary downsides to The Creative Economy. First, you have to understand in the coming years, the traditional job and startup company paradigm is dying.
“It’s not going to just get better,” Skinner says. “It’s not like we’re going to have another crash and then this funding environment will come back. It’s not coming back this time. Three times institutional investors get burned, you’re going to have to wait for a generational change. A whole bunch of them are going to die before insurance companies and pension funds start investing in venture capital again. They literally will have to die.
Moreover, says Skinner, “This particular crash is not going to be like the last one. It’s not going to be sudden. And it has to do with Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s made it impossible for startups to do IPOs. The IPO market is going down. Meaning, fewer public companies with the capital to acquire companies and there are fewer startups going public. The two ways startups exit. Acquire and IPO. Those options are dead.”
The good news, Skinner says, is this: “It means you get to take control over your own life and not be dictated by a boss or an investor. Embracing the unknown, dedicating yourself to learning new skills, and reinventing yourself for the Creative Economy is a more exciting and fulfilling way to spend life than showing up every day to a job you hate, no matter how safe it may feel.”
On the flipside, here’s the second temporary downside: “We aren’t really prepared for this Creative Economy thing. Taking responsibility for our own actions? No. We can’t have that. Please. No.
“Everybody is kind of terrified of taking responsibility for his or her own life because when things don’t go well, you have nobody to blame but yourself. So this is why we all run away from responsibility. As fast as we can. We love to blame everyone else for our own problems.
“Oh, I would be so successful, but the government. Too much regulation, taxes are too high, so it’s the government’s fault that I’m a failure and a loser.
“Well, I can’t just get that promotion because my boss is a real jerk. Insert all the excuses you have in your life for being mediocre. Because by definition the vast majority of people are just mediocre. You know, bell curve… middle… that’s most people.
“You’re mediocre because you choose to be mediocre. You could choose not to be. It means taking serious responsibility for the structure of your own life. So in the Creative Economy, it means you have to have a personal strategy.
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