Welcome to Main Street. The new Corporate America

It’s timely to think about the Future of Work.

The noise is increasing.

We require variant skills, knowledge, and experience to remain professionally relevant. Creativity I would argue is perhaps the most necessary trait in Industry 4.0.

Jobs, stated the mission of Apple to build beautiful products. As only an artist who studied calligraphy in college could have.

When was the last time you had an artist on your team?

Irrespective of individual character traits it is important to think about the meta-level ecosystem.

It is timely to ask what might the Valley look like in 10 years.

The workforce of the future. The competing forces shaping 2030, a report by PwC speaks of 4 worlds that are upon us.

Of greatest significance, a red world is one where innovation is king and a blue world is where cooperate is king.

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/people-organisation/workforce-of-the-future/workforce-of-the-future-the-competing-forces-shaping-2030-pwc.pdf

When considering innovation in the Valley, we are at a crossroads between these two worlds. In a red world much like that dawned upon the Valley in the early 90’s and 00’s innovation was king. Startups competed for the best ideas to ride ‘prices law’ to the very top. Those stories whilst risky and infrequent live as to the mythology and magic of the Valley as what Apple and Facebook are living proof.

Increasingly larger organizations are acquiring smaller organizations that optimize a system or process, that a big business cannot either solve for themselves or believe is indispensable to have market share in a sector.

Facebook and Instagram.

Google and Youtube.

Apple and Beats Electronics.

So this begs the question has Google and Facebook become the new ‘main street’ companies of the Valley?

Has the Valley become the heart of new corporate America?

You might argue that in order to remain innovative companies must remain nimble and agile away from the strictures of a big business process, frameworks, and methodologies. They do so in order to remain ‘pure’ in their intended vision without giving up the creative license of their company.

Such an idea is perhaps fanciful.

In the game of Monopoly, there can only be one winner. It’s a Darwinistic world, survival of the fittest.

Perhaps this reflects the Valley whereupon at the end, there will only be one of the big guys left on the board.

So increasingly as technology occupies the stratospheres of big business how do they remain innovative?

Whilst government is not classified as a big business a good model for which big business can and should replicate is evident in Australia through InnovationXChange.

InnovationXChange seeks to bring embedded innovation practices into how large organizations can flourish to remain flexible, adaptive and innovative. InnovationXChange sits in-house of the government scaling technological solutions to timely problems that government face in better expending monies for impact and efficacy.

Whilst Silicon Valley is at the heart of innovation, perhaps it is necessary to take stock of where the next groundbreaking innovation might come, as a wave of stagnation begins.

How might the technology businesses on the main street of the Valley remain innovative?

How might the valley remain a balance between yin and yang of both red and blue worlds?

How does the valley remain an equal playground for all?

These questions are best answered not in hindsight but with foresight.