Blog #8

The success of the knowledge worker
There was a time not long ago when the United States of America lead the industrial age. We were producing the majority of the worlds products and reaping the benefit of our success. My grandfather and grandmother both worked in a Dupont factory. My grandfather started working for Dupont in middle school and retired from the company over 50 years later. Today those kind of factory jobs are in short supply in America and the thought of remaining with one company is something of the past. In todays world nearly every product we use is made in a different country and imported for our consumption. As other countries learned to produce products faster and cheaper than us the American worker had to adapt to the next age. We are currently in a similar transition and if the knowledge worker does not adapt to the coming conceptual age they will not find success.

     The knowledge worker will need to utilize left brain thinking. The left brain allows for big ideas and thinking outside the box. We can look toward examples like Google to gain perspective about being successful in the conceptual age. The most recent edition of WIRED magazine has an entire section dedicated to the most successful and innovative people of our time. Founders of companies like twitter, reddit, YouTube, Facebook and instagram were all featured in the article. These people had big ideas and were able to implement them and now they are the giants of the technology industry. Had these innovators had an analytical outlook their ideas would have never been thought of and we would not be able to enjoy the amazing companies they have introduced. There will always be a use for knowledge workers who are good at analytical thinking but there is now a celling of success for those kinds of people. To improve our selves we must be able to think big and to understand how to solve problems with our ideas. I really enjoyed most of the ideas in this book because I feel like my brain is filled with big ideas that I one day hope to capitalize on. I am glad we are moving into the conceptual age because I think I am more suited for that type of thinking and working.

     American workers have normally dictated the direction the rest of the world takes and to be successful we will have to adapt to the coming times. If we continue with our analytical thinking another country will find a way to be more successful at it and beat us. However it does look like we are still leading the way with all of the successful innovative companies and people we are presenting to the world.