How is the passion economy changing the way we look at jobs? | Adam Davidson | Big Think

I think a lot of people don't realize that the world we have lived in for the last hundred years is just a blip in human experience.

That it started to feel just normal that people work in big companies, that people have things called a job and a career path, and that people make more money in their 40s than they did in their 20s. They'd make even more money in their 60s, and that kids make more money than their parents did.

There's this sort of general sense of progress; that's this weird little thing that happened to happen in the 20th century. It really would have been seen as utterly confusing and unlike basic human nature at almost any other time in history.

There was a lot that was wonderful about that blip. It really transformed the world, but far fewer children died in infancy, mothers didn't die giving birth, people lived much longer lives, they had more to eat, and they had more comforts. Things like pain relievers, things like international travel, international communication— all the things that we associate with the modern world came about because of the widget economy.

Because of that blip, we're now shifting away from the widget economy into a new kind of economy. What fueled that growth in the 20th century was the mass production of the same sort of thing, getting better and better, and making the same stuff faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper, and getting it to more places.

That is a form of growth that is revolutionary. It's more growth than ever existed by far at any time in human existence. But it is about sameness; it's about turning people into variations of the same thing.

You have a job; it has a title. You have to suppress who you are to satisfy the needs of that job. Products are not designed to match some particular person's unique interests and passions. Coca-Cola is for everyone everywhere on earth; Ivory soap is for everyone everywhere on earth.

This new economy, the passion economy, comes out of the widget economy, but I see it in most ways as a real advance— a progression from the widget economy, where the secret to growth, the secret to economic opportunity, is not making the same thing billions of times as quickly and cheaply as possible.

It's about creating special things that only some people want, but they want a lot. They want it in a way that nobody wanted the widgets of the widget economy. That is a totally different structure of an economy.

It means probably still having some big organizations, but also a lot more smaller companies— entrepreneurial companies. It means a much more chaotic but I think ultimately probably more satisfying career path.

You're not just, you know, junior ad sales, and then you're ad sales, and then you're senior ad sales, and then you're manager of ad sales. Rather, as you're finding your unique passions and the things that you uniquely provide, your career might kind of bounce around a little bit.

You'll be finding who you are, who your customer is, who your audience is, and it won't be quite as linear. I do think overall for people who understand and embrace the passion economy, it will be better.

You'll make more money in concrete terms, but I think it will be more chaotic, a little more confusing, a little more confounding— at least according to the rules we have. Because the rules we have are ones that were made for the widget economy, and this economy is wildly different.

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