Photo by Brooke Nipar
Controlled Chaos
In Robert Safian's "Generation Flux," the subtitle reads, "The future of business is pure chaos. Here's how you can survive--and perhaps even thrive." While I think he nails some critically important topics in his article, I disagree that the future is "pure chaos." Instead, I believe it is complex. Complex systems are characterized by interdependence, emergence, self-organization, and acute sensitivity to surrounding conditions. I agree that the future cannot be controlled, nor predicted with certainty. However, complex patterns can be described and assessed, leverage points identified, and intentional attempts to influence implemented, helping Generation Flux pioneers move confidently into an unpredictable future.
Larry Solow
Westampton, New Jersey
Flux: The Ageless Generation
SILENT GENERATION
I have been fluxing for 52 years, ever since leaving the Air Force Academy and landing at Stanford and the incipient civil rights movement. I worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago and then Mayor John Lindsay in New York. Following a stint at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the early '70s, I'm a thriving product designer and inventor with 30 patents and counting. As a teacher of entrepreneurship and design strategies at Parsons the New School for Design, I've been pushing the insights you offer so persuasively. Often to the dismay of family and friends, I've pursued career patterns that are now, as you suggest, smart and emergent. Your piece will be ringing in the ears of my colleagues and students this semester.
Ken Stevens
Brooklyn, New York
GENERATION X
Why haven't I written before? Because although I've enjoyed reading about innovative businesses in your magazine since the first issue, my own penchant for embracing instability (I think of it as freedom) and recalibrating my career--I've been a dotcommer, an editor, a teacher, a bartender, a publisher, a handyman, and other things that, at the age of 44, I can barely recall--has never before led me to feel a sense of kinship with anyone you've profiled. That changed with this story, particularly the quote from Raina Kumra: "So many people tell me, 'I don't know what you do.' I'm a collection of many things. I'm not one thing." Yes! That's me!
Joshua Glenn
Boston
MILLENNIALS
I just graduated from college last May and, for lack of a better plan, moved to Russia to teach. I'm helping 8-year-olds learn to multiply, though my education was in marketing. So I count myself a member of Generation Flux. But one thing that isn't discussed much here is the impact the idea of Generation Flux should have on education. We're told a degree is a must, but why? In my classes, we studied large Fortune 500 companies, but I expect most of us will work for small businesses our entire lives. We talk about working our way up the ladder, but the ladder doesn't just go up anymore--it goes sideways, backward, and upside down. Why did I spend four years specializing in a subject that I may or may not ever use? Would something less traditional have been more beneficial to me, to perhaps help me learn to cope and thrive in this "chaotic" world? Like any other skill, flexibility and adaptability--especially in mind-set--have to be learned.
Liz Levenson
Flagstaff, Arizona
#STREAMOFTHOUGHT
I tried to convince @fastcompany to make the #GenFlux cover just me & @bethcomstock doing salsa but #theyneverlisten
@BARATUNDE
Really pumped that @fastcompany’s latest “future of business” ensemble looks well beyond white males under 30.
@CARO
This article just blew my mind in more ways than one.
@JORDANSAXE
The long career is dead. Throw tools in your backpack. GenFlux = new leaders of business.
@LEITIHSU
Best article I’ve read in years. Does this describe you? I thought I was alone. Not so.
@JAIMESMITHY
Photo by Dan Saelinger
Health Is Calling
This is an excellent glimpse at the possibilities of e-medicine ("Open Your Mouth and Say 'Aah!'"). I'm an RN and can attest to the need for patients to have a readily available, trusted interface as they become overwhelmed with complex health-care financial systems, technological advances, and clinical data. Physicians, nurses, and other health-care professionals must become adept at using and explaining the significance of the information these devices generate as well as being able to respond rapidly with follow-up. The current health-care system is too ensconced in bureaucratic processes to effectively utilize these wonderful opportunities. A whole new day will need to dawn in the staid practice of health-care administration before these applications can make a meaningful impact.
Mark Megginson
Orange County, California
As an RN, I can say that many individuals would benefit from knowing their daily blood-glucose or blood-pressure levels to better manage their health. Millions of people suffer long-term effects of a single acute episode simply due to the fact that they didn't know they had high blood pressure. More people would seek medical attention proactively or talk to their doctor if they had "proof" something was wrong. Instead, many ignore their symptoms.
Trish Enright
Chicago
Smartphones . . . what can't they do?
Jeremy Hepokoski
via Facebook
Photo by Michael Edwards
A New Set Of Wheels
This offered good insight on how Veda Partalo and ad agency Fallon are subtly changing the image of Cadillac (“She Drives a Cadillac?”), which has been on an upward trajectory for years now. They’ve ditched sex appeal and suggestion in favor of tapping into more complex emotions and desires of car buyers—almost exclusively male car buyers, it seems.
Dave Connell
Reston, Virginia
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