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INTRODUCTION

“The future of business will be more startups, fewer giants, and infinite opportunity.”

Chris Anderson

Sometimes we have to be thrown off course in order to find out where we want to go. Sometimes we need a decent push from the outside in order to accept changes which we have long known to be inevitable. And sometimes we just want to try something new, as the old tastes kind of stale and is likely to collapse soon anyway.

During the global economic crisis, we started to realize that many of the values and norms that had given our parents security and reliability had limits to them. We had already sensed that, but now it had become obvious: There was hardly anything that still offered existential security. A job for life? Big company brands? Retirement provisions? Either unreliable or completely obsolete. The supposed predictability of our rhythm of life, the daily way to work, saving money for retirement – suddenly, all of this seemed to be hopelessly outdated, unreliable, and wrong. Things looked pretty bleak. Nevertheless, it was still possible to find good news among the bad. After all, what is it that is waiting to replace the patriarchal system of Rhine capitalism, town houses, and retirement plans? Maybe it is a life that we have already had a taste of in the past but that we haven’t really dared to try yet – a life that offers us freedoms, decision options, and ways of self-actualization we wouldn’t have even thought of a few years ago.

To the magazine Monocle, 2009 was the “rethink year.” Editor-in-chief Andrew Tuck, who publishes voices on this topic from all over the world, told me that people had learned to rely on their abilities: “Many had to face terrible losses, but there were also some beneficial corrections.” Tuck also believes that it has become easier now to reinvent yourself: “I know people who were photographic agents and then retrained as cooks, same as people who were bankers and became farmers, and they do a good job in both fields. I think that’s great. It’s never too late to do what you really love.” During and after the crisis, many people learned what actually makes them happy.

It is said “Do what you love and you won’t work a single day in your life.” What sounded like an overblown romanticism of self-discovery some time ago has all of a sudden become possible. Especially the digital economy makes it easier and, at the same time, even more necessary to find target groups, supporters, and markets for activities and products that we feel passionate about. Life becomes a construction set that provides us with countless possibilities, and we are free to put exactly the parts together that suit us.

These days, people throughout the world are exchanging information about how everyday things in life can be managed better with practical tricks and modern technology. This way, they try to optimize their productivity as the good old 9-to-5 day at the office is increasingly a thing of the past. Thanks to the end of required attendance, we are, for the first time, interested in getting things done faster and more efficiently in order to have leisure time afterwards. In my last book “Morgen komm ich später rein,” I showed how mobile and flexible ways of working allow us to spend less time at the office and to gain time for other things. The resulting question is: What happens next? What do you do with that time? To more and more people, the answer is: educate yourself, expand your skills, and improve yourself.

At the same time, new Internet-based communication technologies and mobile services make it easier to build, motivate, and mobilize groups. This way, every person may become the leader of his own “tribe,” as marketing expert Seth Godin calls it. The current 18- to 25-year-olds are already considered the “creative generation”: They are not only used to consuming, but also take producing for granted. This presents another unprecedented chance for self-actualization to all of us.

Parallel to working environments, business models change as well. “What would Google do?” asks US author Jeff Jarvis and gives an answer that applies to many business sectors: They have to reinvent themselves, disclose many of their former business secrets, and allow their customers and subcontractors to remix their products in an unexpected way. Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief of the smart technology magazine Wired, has identified “Free” as the new trend – the giving away of products and services in order to finally make money in various new ways. One thing is for sure: Currently, many business models are undergoing profound changes, and most companies still don’t know how to react to them. This essentially means two things:

1. It doesn’t matter how stable and big our employers used to be. Their future success and, consequently, our jobs are uncertain.

2. The barriers against the successful market entry of new players are lower than ever. Since no one knows how to proceed, it might as well be us who co-invent the future.

We are thrown back to depend on ourselves in a positive sense. The smallest meaningful unit that we can rely on in the knowledge society is our mind (i.e., us).

In this book, I dwell on ten pivotal developments that, in my opinion, will shape our work life and, thus, the world we live in during the years to come:

1) Established biographical routines and basic parameters of our life planning – such as permanent employment, safe pensions, 9-to-5 workdays, or traditional education – increasingly lose their value. More and more of what used to make our parents’ existence predictable has, at best, sentimental value for the generation of less-than-40-year-olds.

2) Many young people have reservations with regard to government-based structures. In the age of globalization, they take security promises with a grain of salt. They place more emphasis on their own initiative and entrepreneurship than on classic careers. Their motto is: If social standards cannot be maintained in the long run anyway, I at least want to be free.

3) Work will become increasingly mobile and flexible. We won’t spend the bulk of our life at the office anymore. This alteration of our work routines is predominantly a result of technological innovations that also lead to the development of alternative occupational areas. As knowledge, skills, and business models become outdated at an ever faster pace, we need to reinvent ourselves permanently. For us, the catchphrase “lifelong learning” is a tough reality.

4) We feel we are on our own. As a consequence, individualism as an aim in life gains more and more importance for many people. Others feel overwhelmed and left behind by the very same development.

5) This change implies a tremendous chance: The possibilities of communication provided by the Internet allow us more than just to find many like-minded people. At the same time, this technology also creates a huge laboratory of learning. The imparting of knowledge increasingly becomes free, global, individual, and socially organized.

6) Simultaneously, this communicative connection to the world allows us for the first time to turn our passions into professions and to make money with what inspires us. In the Internet, we find customers, like-minded people, and business models – yet we also encounter maximum competition. This not only means that we need to put more effort into taking charge of our lives but also that we are actually able to do so for the first time ever.

7) Learning things in order to apply them to practical work afterward isn’t enough anymore. In fact, we have to present ourselves as a brand and to use self-positioning in order to keep up within the global competition for workforce. In this context, making use of the Internet’s ability to connect and recalling our own strengths and passions will help us.

8) According to happiness researchers, we fulfill all requirements to be happy with this autonomous, diversified, yet also demanding way of structuring our work and life.

9) Both personal branding and the increasingly mobile and flexible nature of work allow us to choose places where we are happy and productive. Life and work gain independence from employers and places of residence. We become globally mobile, and this might make us happier.

10) As we increasingly decide for ourselves how, where, and with whom we make money, the search for meaning gains more importance. The trend to combine economical with social engagement grows stronger. We want to do good, be happy, and make money. In the old patriarchal, hierarchical, and inflexible working world, these aims were often mutually exclusive. In the Meconomy, their combination is almost a precondition for success.

All of this raises a number of questions that I shall deal with in this book. The first part “What is different today?” summarizes the changes that characterize the environment of the Meconomy. If and how these changes can make us more satisfied is discussed in the second section “What makes me happy?”. The third chapter, titled “What Could I Become,” tells us what we have to know in order to be successful in the Meconomy and how we acquire that knowledge. The question asked in the fourth section is: “How will I work?” Here, I use numerous examples and studies to explain why we can and must make our passions our professions. That these professions – along with a healthy dose of wanderlust – might lead us to distant places is described in the fifth chapter “Where do I want to live?”, which deals with our new global mobility. Finally, the sixth part elaborates on why the Meconomy does not entail a purely egoistic philosophy but, to the contrary, promotes a new culture of empathy and social engagement. At the same time, the question is raised which role the government with all its institutions might play in this development and which political reforms have become necessary now.

“Meconomy” is definitely a call to action, an optimistic counterpart to apocalyptic scenarios, crisis depressions, and doctrines of passiveness that suggest we “weather the storm” and “wait and see.” It is a tool kit for life – an invitation not to suffer from existence but to actively shape it. It addresses both individuals who want to take charge of their own careers as well as employers who want to find out which changes their companies will be facing regarding the needs of their highly qualified employees. Combining numerous practical examples from daily life with easy-to-understand theoretical support, the book summarizes the current state of a discussion led by academics, entrepreneurs, and practitioners. We live in confusing times. However, I don’t want to complain about that. Rather, I want to explain why things can be different, what we can learn from them, and how we can use recent developments to build a better life for us and our children.