The 100-Year Life: Living and working in an age of longevity by Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott

Author:Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-06-01T14:00:00+00:00

Being an Independent Producer

A new stage of economic activity is emerging that involves creating novel forms of entrepreneurship or building new patterns of partnerships and firms. It happens when a person forsakes a conventional career path to start up their own entrepreneurial activities. Just like the explorer stage, this will not be limited to any particular age group. People can and will become independent producers at many different points in their lives. These are job creators rather than job seekers.

Pop-ups and prototypes

Of course there have always been entrepreneurs. The reason we refer to independent producers rather than entrepreneurs is a reflection of the scale and aspiration. Independent producers are not, in the main, aiming at building a lasting company that is intended to grow and prosper and then be sold on. These are more transient structures; some will be pop-ups aimed at grabbing the moment. With pop-ups, the emphasis is all on the activity itself rather than the outcome – the start-up, not the sell-out. There is a playfulness and experiential quality about them that goes right back to our youthfulness discussion earlier. So it is less about building a corporate entity and accumulating financial assets, and more about spending a block of time, at any stage in a working life, engaged in independent self-supporting productive work: making a product, creating a service, building an idea. These periods of independent production played an important role in both Jimmy and Jane’s life, and although this time can be short on tangible assets, it is rich in the development of intangible assets.

For many independent producers, this is a time of fast experimentation as they learn what works and what doesn’t. Otto Scharmer uses the term prototyping to describe this activity.15 His observations suggest that it works best when it’s associated with a heightened sense of mindfulness and rapid cycles of prototyping to learn more and more deeply. Often the independent producer stage begins with prototype activities that are not yet fully blown pilots. For those people already in work, these prototyping activities often take place in parallel with their day work, in a sense giving them permission to move into something much earlier than if they first had to completely figure out what to do. During these cycles of prototyping, intuition comes to the fore and the independent producer has a wider sense of possibilities. These rapid cycles of prototyping generate constant feedback that helps people to evolve their ideas about how they could make a project work.

Learning by producing

The independent producer stage marks a period of building expertise, learning and producing. While earning money to fund this life stage is important and a sign of validation, this will rarely be a stage of significant accumulation of financial assets. It is a time when learning by producing really comes to the fore.

Critically, this is a stage that can provide a platform for failing. Because this is a period of relatively low commitments, it’s a great time to fail without the anxiety of serious consequences.

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