Why we are doubling down on the future of work.
TL;DR
- While technology advancements continue to expand exponentially, the way we learn, treat ourselves, and interact with the world has become stagnant.
- The future will favor adaptable, profitable, and resilient businesses.
- The globally distributed startup studio model is designed to help build this future.
What if, despite the largest global pandemic we have ever seen, and America going through the mother of all social collapses, we were also seeing the greatest opportunity in modern history to build a better future?
The following is an introduction as to why we are doubling down on the “future of work” as our north star at Jack Spades, and why we believe that the studio model is a resilient way to build businesses that will help people navigate this uncertain future.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
We have entered into what some call the fourth industrial revolution, where the convergence of the cyber and physical experience will become our reality, and the importance of adaptation, learning to learn, and creating new value as a human will become essential. This was already upon us, and many experts were beginning to dedicate their lives to how this would affect every aspect of humanity; political, social, environmental, geopolitical, work, and ethics.
The World Economic Forum places the value of digital transformation to the Fourth Industrial Revolution at $100 trillion over the next decade.
Since the current pandemic has turned “the future” of work, as we perceive it, into “the present” somewhat quicker than expected, it has become essential to our team at Jack Spades to leverage our own capabilities to build companies that can help improve our interactions with both work and life.
The sad reality is that it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. There will be more casualties. Every generation has a revolution and tends to believe that things will change. But maybe, just maybe, enough injustice and harm and outrage have happened, while at the same time we finally have the tools, intelligence, and global connectivity to do something about it.
Previous generations never had the access to information, nor the tools at our disposal, to create change like we have today. There is enough evidence to show that it is possible to use this period to create more rewarding jobs, build better learning systems, and develop new pathways (source: Cable, Dan, and Freek Vermeulen, “Making work meaningful: A leader’s guide).
Everything has prepared us for this moment.
In many ways, Jack Spades came out of nowhere, and in other ways, we have been training for this moment our entire lives. Every previous company we have built, and every experiment we have conducted, helped prepare us for this opportunity.
If we are being honest, most of us had inklings that this type of paradigm shift was coming. Well, now it is here. This is a truly incomparable moment, and honestly, it is hard to put into words because none of us have experienced anything like this. But I look at our team, and I realize that individually and collectively we have spent the past decade training for this.
I know that some of you probably feel the same. If you do, I hope that you have evaluated your core abilities, and how they align with what the world needs, and that you have already taken a step forward into the unknown. At Jack Spades, we are jumping in headfirst with those that are ready. For those who are not, we will help pave the way.
Talent has never been more abundant and the opportunity to help never more clear. And while technology advancements continue to expand exponentially, the way we learn, treat ourselves, and interact with the world has become stagnant. Our work processes, training procedures, and management approaches are still at least two decades outdated, which have led us to the lowest levels of productivity — in the traditional sense — since the 1970s.
Most economists can not figure out how to measure GDP as productivity continues to decrease. Humans are no longer equipped with the right knowledge and self-development tools to handle the changing world.
Additional technological advancements will not fix this social collapse. We need to accept the fact that if we do not learn how to let go, learn fast, and embrace adaptation into everything we do, that we will be left behind.
The future of work is the future of life.
It is worth stating that our definition of the “future of work” is broad because it includes anything that makes work easier and better. It is also broad because it must account for more than just the current landscape of expected tech tools that get bucketed with the “future of work” (i.e. — communication tools, virtual offices, virtual assistants, fractional talent, data collaboration, project management, no code, HRM, hiring, networking events, and more). The way humans make this transition into the fourth industrial revolution needs to be reimagined as well.
In the not so distant future, we foresee that the majority of current jobs will eventually be unbundled and outsourced to the lowest bidder, automated, or augmented (replaced) by artificial intelligence.
Nearly 40% of US jobs are in categories that will most likely shrink between now and 2030. One study by McKinsey suggests that middle-income jobs could decline by more than 3.5% over the next decade (in relation to total national employment). While on the other side, the total number of the highest-wage jobs will grow by 3.8%.
Forging new career pathways to help people move up and finding sources of future middle-wage jobs will be essential to sustaining the US middle class. As an example, the quantity of admin and office support jobs will decrease by at least 10% over the next decade. In that same time frame, healthcare, STEM occupations, creatives and arts management, and business services will increase by 30% to 60%.
The resistance to change and the unknown is so embedded in us, that the majority of workers will most likely not want to be re-trained, and “start-over.” With the right model and process to develop new products and services, this transition can happen in higher quality and less risky way than we might imagine. And knowing this, our mission should be to nudge as many people as possible into entrepreneurial directions and the creative economy.
The Startup Studio
…which brings us to startup studios — also known as venture studios, venture builders, or startup factories — who find their success by bringing together the best possible entrepreneurs and building startups around them from day one. They provide the essential resources (engineering, sales, marketing, design, legal, etc.) through their in-house team and talent collective, thus increasing the founding entrepreneur’s likelihood of success. The studio runs each new startup through a disciplined stage-gate process to stress test every part of the business before it goes to market, significantly improving the quality and reducing the risk.
Rarely does a traditional startup have the knowledge, resources, and fortitude to apply this type of process to their business. We believe that this is the era where the studio model helps to pave a better future.
The typical studio team will launch multiple companies every year, which are consistent with their studio’s thesis and area of expertise.
Since a studio’s founding team are entrepreneurs and builders, they themselves build the startups, rather than investing in outside companies. Unlike accelerators or incubators, studios inject more time and capital into each company, and own significantly more equity.
Once a new startup has found product-market-fit, it spins out of the studio and becomes its own company. The studio, while still keeping equity in each startup and supporting them where needed, will then turn its attention to the next group of problems to solve and founders to build with.
At Jack Spades, we have brought together our 16 years (since 2004) of building companies, with 6 exits between our founding team. For 10 years, we’ve fostered a globally distributed talent network of over 120 researchers, designers, builders, and thinkers from around the world, and we have 5 years of direct studio expertise. All of this positions us beautifully to build adaptable, profitable, and resilient businesses to help the future of work.
Will you join us?
We are not alone in our belief that this confluence of monumental social collapse, combined with the unlocking of human potential, is THE pivotal moment to take action and chart a better path forward. That moment is today.
And as we build technologies and processes to advance “progress”, we continually fail to significantly advance our abilities to be good humans. But we have the knowledge, resources, and tools to change that. In order to accelerate that change, it is essential to leverage technology as a tool instead of a crutch and double down on our ability to learn and adapt.
In the coming months, as we gear towards this new path, we will continue to write, host virtual roundtables, provide innovation workshops, and put in the work to make this our collective reality.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Cheers,
