Any company designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st.

David S. Rose
Author, angel investor, Inc. 500 CEO

‘I hate timelines… deadlines… basically I hate all lines… I just want to make all the things… all the time…’

Amanda Palmer's Patreon.com video shows the kimono-clad songwriter using hand-lettered signs to make a request while music from her 2012 album, Theatre is Evil, plays in the background. The album was released following a 31-day Kickstarter campaign that raised $1.2 million, but her new video was announcing a much bolder venture. Patreon's MTP (massive transformational purpose) is ‘to help every creator in the world achieve a sustainable income’. The platform allows creators to secure pledges from members of their tribes and then collects those pledges on an agreed basis (per month, per song, per work of art etc). The request Palmer makes is simple; she's asking for help. She explains that she wants to make things, and that whether she gets 100 pledges or 10,000, she's going to ‘make all the things’. Early in her career, Palmer earned her crust as the Eight Foot Bride, a living statue who offered a flower and a moment of connection to the passers by who put money in the hat at her feet. Today, she continues to innovate, building connection and impact with her audience. Patreon has effectively automated ‘the hat’, allowing her to get enormous leverage.

Most of us have been conditioned to exchange our time for money, with salaries, day rates and ‘charge by the hour’ models. But one implication of the commercial transformation can mean transcending this industrial revolution model and discovering new ways to generate value and income. Fortunately, it's never been easier. Digital technology is rapidly transforming the ways we can get leverage. Social technologies have given all of us the kind of communication power historically reserved for governments and only the largest organizations. We all have the tools – now what are you going to do with them? How are you going to use these opportunities to create value?

Innovation gets celebrated; repetition gets automated

Historically, there are two kinds of processes that can create value: innovation and repetition.

• Innovation: innovation involves creating a new source of value that didn't exist before. Some examples include writing a novel, building a business, inventing a car, composing a symphony, developing a training programme, designing a video game, creating a perfume, carving a sculpture, architecting a building, developing an app, creating a trusted brand, catalyzing a personal or professional transformation.
• Repetition: repetition involves utilizing an existing source of value. Some examples include bookkeeping (repeats mathematical functions), an assembly line (repeats mechanical functions), a fast-food chain (repeats food preparation), a supermarket checkout (repeats scanning and selling items), farming (repeats agricultural functions).

A quick look at the existing economy reveals a simple fact about how value already flows…

Innovation gets celebrated.

Repetition gets automated.

Job functions that involve significant amounts of repetition are being automated and/or outsourced. How many jobs that used to be done by a trained employee are now being done by a computer? Here are just a few examples…

• Bank tellers have been replaced by cash points.
• The postal service has been decimated by email.
• Cars that were once built by hand are assembled by robots on 24 × 7 production lines.
• Supermarket checkout clerks are giving way to self-checkout machines.
• High street shops are closing down as retail spend moves to online suppliers.

The rise of the machines

The forward-thinking economist and mathematician Eric Weinstein suggests that the logical extension of the information revolution is this: everything we do based on human expertise will eventually be replaced by a computer. The leverage point for value is to move away from ‘expertise’ and towards a model based on the cultivation of connection, creativity and insight. Once again…

We have to recognize and harness the power of exponential insight if we want to sense and respond to the challenges of the digital age.

We have to understand the nature of THOUGHT if we are to survive and thrive as individuals, as organizations, as societies and as a species.

Strange as it may seem, we're still in the early days of the information revolution. The impact of exponential technology is going to be unimaginably large. For instance…

• According to Fortune magazine, a billion women will be joining the global economy by 2020 as entrepreneurs or employees, and will dramatically alter the world of business.
• At least three billion additional people (mostly from Africa, India and China) are due to come online by 2020, with high-speed internet and smartphones. Three billion new minds joining the online economy as consumers, competitors and contributors.
• The emergence of autonomous (driverless) cars is going to profoundly change the transportation landscape. While it may be several decades before they're ubiquitous, current predictions suggest that there will be over 50 million autonomous cars on the roads by 2035.
• There are already sensors in billions of objects (cars, TVs, lights) connecting them to the internet. That's predicted to grow to trillions by 2030. With the rise of the ‘internet of everything’, virtually everything is going to be able to talk to everything else, with massive implications for how we live our lives.
• The resulting wearable technology will mean we're able to take more control of our own healthcare, diagnosing illness quickly and accurately. And we're going to be living longer anyway, as we continue to make advances in life extension technology.
• Robots are already being tested in areas where they can go far beyond human limits in terms of precision and accuracy (e.g. eye surgery). The Japanese are also looking to robots as carers and companions to support a large, ageing population.
• Opportunities to leverage community and crowd will only increase, as people become more connected. As virtual technologies continue to improve, the entire planet becomes your talent pool when you're looking to attract the best person for the job.

These powerful drivers are changing the nature of work and how we think about it. So how do you stay relevant in a VUCA world?

Staying relevant in a VUCA world

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) has been producing its annual 10-year forecast for nearly 40 years. The Future Work Skills 2020 report (produced in 2011) looks at the key skills, abilities and competencies that the workforce of 2020 is going to need in response to the trends referred to above. While some are more obvious than others, all of these ‘future-skills’ depend on your ability to draw on your deep drivers; the innate capacities you were born with. Here's the IFTF list:

The power of experimenting

In their book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles and Ted Orland tell the story of a ceramics teacher who divided their class into two groups. The first group were told they would be graded on the quantity of pots they made, while the second group were told they'd be graded on their pots' quality. At the end of term, it emerged that the finest pots were produced by the ‘quantity’ group. Why? Because while the ‘quality’ group were agonizing over how to create the perfect pot, the ‘quantity’ group were experimenting, making countless pots, learning from their mistakes, and improving in the process.

At the time of writing (2016), Amanda Palmer's Patreon channel showed 7964 patrons pledging to pay $35,984 for each ‘thing’ she produces (an average of $4.52 per patron per thing). She inspires a loyalty in her audience that is based on authenticity, transparency and genuine connection.

So how do you create the kind of transformational experiences your audience desires?