Do you remember the Phone Booth
Marty Cooper, creator of the cellular phone
It is a lot easier to predict what industries will be in existence and should be thriving in 2020 than it is to guess what people will actually be doing to make a living in these industries. What will the jobs be? What kind of careers can people expect? How should people prepare for future employment? Obviously health, energy, food, water etc. will have continued importance in our lives but the question remains, what skill set will we need in order to excel in the industries of 2020? One thing we can be certain of is that a single skill set will not cut it in 2020.
Within the next ten years, rapid changes will effect just about every industry we can think of and those we can’t think of because they haven’t been invented yet.
Communication and the phone booth for example.
Think about all of the different jobs, careers, and businesses that changed, closed, and/or required skills that were not transferable when Marty Cooper invented the mobile phone in the 1970s. Then consider how quickly the mobile phone was replaced by the “Smartphone”. What skill set are needed for what’s next?
The Smartphone
If you have recently graduated from college regardless of the industry you chose, you can expect to have 3 distinctly different careers in your lifetime requiring skills that may not be transferable from one to another. The industry may remain the same but your expertise will need to be ‘flexible’.
If you are on a multiple career path, we would like to hear from you. What and how did you decide on the career and/or educational choices you’ve made to prepare for the future?
