Innovation Ready?

With over two and one-half billion people now using the Internet, the access to information and the speed of collaboration and professional expertise through instant communication has never been easier.

Many believe that the most successful workers in the future will be those who are able to think and act entrepreneurially. Princeton University professor Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests that a winning strategy for the future of work is to be able to “design your own profession and convince employers that you are exactly what they need.”

Tony Wagner, in his latest book, “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,” writes; “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate —the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”

Our future college graduates may have to invent” a job rather than follow in our footsteps of “finding” a job.