Perspectives
Addressing Unemployment with Social Innovation
Below you can see two shocking statistics about (un)employment, as well as youth.
The world needs to create more than 500 million new jobs by 2020 to provide career opportunities for the currently unemployed; as well as young people who will be joining the workforce.
Young and jobless in numbers: 75 million or 12.6% of young people are unemployed worldwide; 3x more likely to be jobless; 7.5 million are not in education or training; Youth unemployment is highest in North Africa (27.9%) and lowest in East Asia (9%).
Source: ILO 2012
This means that a lot of action and commitment is needed to address this ticking time bomb.… more
What Specifically Do Generalists Do?
Creative Generalists are changing our world of ideas in a very big way.
Almost six years ago I humbly planted a stake in the ground and began this weblog, Creative Generalist. The blog was and continues to be about generalism and generalists, those so-called dabbling dilettantes of knowledge; those curious of everything, but experts at nothing. I myself am a proud Creative Generalist and through my blog I’ve discovered that there are many, many others like me who share the same wide-ranging tendencies and healthy skepticism of unchecked or misguided specialization.
Nothing can substitute for depth of analysis, and there’s proven value in specialization – it’s what education, career paths, scientific research, and technological innovation are built on – but generalism is a secret talent.… more
Leaders as Generalists
Leaders as Generalists
We need generalist leaders. This is especially true in the context of company management.
Leaders are, ideally, generalists that can understand and handle many different parts of a company. Innovation is dependent on an organization’s ability to regularly access and sift through large volumes of available information, determine which is most important and pertinent and then to apply it to unique situations in new ways. This role – essentially one of direction and delegation – is the province of leaders.
The irony of this of course is that companies naturally specialize and the people working at modern day companies are trained to be specialists, managers.… more
