SPEAKER_00: This Week in Careers, jobs for those with kitty cats and tiger blood, and the future of work as we know it.

SPEAKER_03: Welcome to This Week in Careers, where we're trying to save America one job at a time. I'm your host, Lisa Johnson Mandel, author of Career Comeback, Repackage Yourself to Get the Job You Want.

SPEAKER_04: And, at least for the moment, I am the news editor at AOL Jobs.

SPEAKER_03: Forgive me if I sound a bit famished this week, I'm a little on edge because there's a virtual bloodbath going on at AOL as we speak. Yes, a lot of people are losing jobs, and I'm a bit concerned, although my editor tells me that our team is safe. I haven't received a phone call from Arianna Huffington inviting me to brunch yet. So, I'm going to put it out there to you, Arianna. What do you think? You, me, brunch, polo lounge, Sunday? Okay. Moving right along to the job of the week, because I think I might be needing one after that.

SPEAKER_04: At the risk of giving a lot more exposure to somebody who is already way overexposed, I'm going to tell you about Charlie Sheen's position. He has an opening for a social media intern. Now, this is the job description.

SPEAKER_03: This unique internship opportunity will allow a hardworking, self-motivated, creative, resourceful, and social media savvy individual to work closely with Charlie Sheen. Stop right there. That would be enough to get me out of it. In leveraging his social network. The internship will focus on executing a social media strategy that will build on the success Charlie Sheen has attained in setting the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to reach 1 million followers on Twitter. Now, why anyone would particularly want to work with him is beyond me, but if you do, all it takes is filling out a ridiculously easy application.

SPEAKER_04: They ask for basically your name, your email address, and tweet why you are the best candidate for the job.

SPEAKER_03: But you have to do it fast because they're closing the first round of applications on March 11th, and already they have 74,000 applications that have been sent in already.

SPEAKER_04: So, you can find that on, you can find the application on internship.com. That's internship.com. Yes. All right. So, now, the other job is a little more to my liking. The other job that we're featuring is a little more to my liking. Yes, you can call me a little old cat lady, but I think it would be fun to be Purina Cat Chow's Cat Chow Correspondent. What do you think? Yeah, there's the kind of guy that should apply for this job. It's another one of those that you can do from home. It's all about social networking and getting the message of Purina Cat Chow out there. They'll pay you $50,000 for a year's worth of work that you don't have to do full-time, and they'll fly around to various pet events through the year that you can blog about and tweet about and all that. The application for this one is a little more complicated. You need to send in a photo of you and your cat and answer some questions about your social networking habits, how many Facebook friends you have, and how many followers you have on Twitter, etc., etc.

SPEAKER_03: Now, there are some open casting calls for this, and they're going to be in San Francisco and Minneapolis, and you can get details, times, and the rest of that on catchow.com.

SPEAKER_04: Yes, visit catchow.com for more details, and I might see you there. So, moving right along to everybody's favorite segment, the week career move of the week. Okay, you're going to like this one.

SPEAKER_03: Now, anyone can get hiccups. I mean, it happens to the best of us, even newscasters, like two seconds before they're supposed to go on. It happened to this particular newscaster in Australia, and she was on a broadcast. It was three in the morning, so she didn't think anybody would hear about it.

SPEAKER_08: And I have to play you a little bit of this, because it's so funny. I'm warning you, don't be drinking anything, because you surely do a spit take. It's hysterical. I'm just going to have to do it.

SPEAKER_10: Big breath. Off I go, and I just kept going. I nearly lost it at the end, but I managed to maintain it, and my phone was off. I had a big laugh, yeah.

SPEAKER_13: Well, we were marvelling, Dennis, at just her determination and tenacity to finish the job, and I reckon that deserves some sort of an award.

SPEAKER_16: Yes.

SPEAKER_13: And, you know, I'd give you my award up there, Kate, but... It's got your name on it. It's got my name on it, so I can't do that.

SPEAKER_22: Good morning, I'm Kate Wilson.

SPEAKER_24: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has urged his supporters not to believe the lies he says are being told about what's happening in their country. He's again blamed al-Qaeda for the violence which has spread across Libya and threatens his regime. Gaddafi was speaking in front of supporters at a ceremony to mark 34 years of his country's people power style of government.

SPEAKER_03: Now, the Week Career Move of the Week award does not go to her, because I think she did a great job for soldiering on. It goes to her colleagues. It happened at 3 a.m. Hardly anybody was listening, and no one would have known about her little faux pas, except for the morning team heard about it, got a hold of it, and played it ad nauseum all the next morning. So, all over Australia, poor Kate Wilson is known as the hiccuping newscaster.

SPEAKER_07: Okay, just have to play a few more seconds of this, because it's just too funny.

SPEAKER_24: The founder of a men's club known as the Brotherhood says he's just an honest former policeman turned businessman. John Moncrief denies anything sinister about the group, despite the ombudsman describing it as secretive with the potential for illegal activity. Police Chief Simon Overland says he's deeply concerned about the group's activities. John Moncrief says he has nothing to hide, and welcomes the ombudsman's investigation.

SPEAKER_32: Oh, poor Kate, bless her heart, at least they miss out. Okay, and the perfect follow-up to that story is our tip of the week. Tip of the week is, have a beer, it's good for the economy.

SPEAKER_03: Who knew? I had this article on AOL, one of the most popular ones I did, was all about the beer industry and how great, what huge contributions they make to the economy, and I just have to share some of these with you. Okay, America's beer industry generates more than 1.8 million American jobs, and those jobs account for 71.2 billion in wages and benefits. Whoa, who knew? Okay, it also contributed 44.7 billion dollars in the form of business, personal, and consumption taxes in 2010, and it contributes 223.8 billion each year to the U.S. economy. You can thank beer for all of that. Now, some of my readers got very upset that I highlighted beer, and the beer industry's response to that is that it spends millions annually developing public safety, education, and prevention campaigns, and to promote federal and local programs that help reduce underage drinking and drunk driving, yay. All this, and the domestic ones, are exclusively made in America. Hey, raise a glass to the beer industry. And right now, I'm going to raise a virtual glass to my guest, Robert Tercik. Welcome, Robert. Hi. It's great to have you here. Thanks. Robert is a media guru and futurist. That's the best way I can describe what he does, because this guy has such a huge background.

SPEAKER_04: Robert, you have, your career is the ideal career. Anybody would die to do what you've done. So, tell us about your career so that people will know what an expert and what a cool guy

SPEAKER_39: we're talking to today.

SPEAKER_40: Well, you say, I've had a lot of good fortune in my career, and the most important part of that is that I've had the opportunity to pursue my passion. Wherever my passion led me, I found a great job. Or sometimes, I created the job. Recently, I was asked to go back to my high school and give a talk to the school. And in so doing, I was preparing my material, and I realized I'd never had a job that existed before I took it. So, every time I've had a career move, it's always been with either a new company, or sometimes an entirely new industry, or a new business in another part of the world. One of my mottos is, you want to learn or earn. In every job, you know, you're getting experience in that job, you're also getting compensated in other ways. Of course, you're getting cash and so forth, bonuses or whatever. But I always look at that learning component as perhaps the most important part, because that's going to lead you to your next opportunity. And so, my career, I've had the opportunity to be a TV director. I've worked on the launch of TV channels and TV networks all over the world.

SPEAKER_41: Name some of them. Sure.

SPEAKER_40: Well, for MTV, I was a creative director, and they sent me all over the world. So, I was based in Asia. I launched MTV in about 20 different countries around the world. And then after that, I came back to the U.S. and I was excited about digital media. At that time, MTV was very focused on being a cable channel. So, I started a game company. I came out to California, started one of the very first game companies. At that time, before the Internet, we were making games that were shipping as software for computers. That company went public in 1994. After that, Sony Pictures hired me to be their head of digital media. This is a brand new field. They'd never had commercial content on the web before. They had promotional content. So, it was my job to figure out how to take all the great content that Sony has in their library and put that on the web. We created some of the first multiplayer Java games. I worked there for a number of years. I really enjoyed it. We did the first interactive television. And that led me to perhaps the most exciting career opportunity, which was the launch of mobile video around the world. And imagine that 10 years ago, the idea of putting video on a cell phone was kind of a crazy, preposterous notion. But I got an opportunity to work with a company called Packet Videos, a very small startup company, and it ended up being a spectacular startup business. We took video all over the world. We launched it in about 40 different countries on the cellular networks there. So, at each time, I was confronted with the opportunity to do something brand new, but there was no template. There was no guideline. There was no rule book. We had to invent it, make it up as we go. The term I like to use is one from Alan Kay, a computer scientist. And he said, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And that's been my motto through my career.

SPEAKER_03: So, you have been amazing at inventing the future or your career, or perhaps foreseeing

SPEAKER_45: what's going to be happening. How do you get that insight?

SPEAKER_46: That's a really good point. You do have to kind of pay attention to what's happening in your industry.

SPEAKER_40: You know, Marshall McLuhan is a media theorist from Canada, and he wrote some brilliant books in the 60s and early 70s. And one of the things he said is that most people go forward into the future, but they're looking in the rearview mirror. Their eyes are firmly fixed in the rearview mirror. And I think that's true. And if you look at industries that are getting into trouble now in this time of tremendous change, it's because the people that run them, well, they're almost angry. They want to kind of preserve a business model from the past, and they don't see why they should have to be the ones to make that change. Well, by holding their companies back, of course, what they're doing is creating opportunities for new startup companies to arise. So, my feeling has been when you're working for a big company, if they're not... If they're not leading the forefront, if they're not leading the charge, and if all they're doing is a defense of an old-fashioned business model, then you might be better off starting a new company and going after that opportunity. Now, sometimes some companies will let you try that new business, and they'll let you start that new business. So, it really depends on the kind of company you're working for.

SPEAKER_48: But if you get the signal that they're not focused on the future, it's probably a signal that it's time to go.

SPEAKER_49: Wow. But what about the wisdom of going with what's worked in the past?

SPEAKER_50: Is that just an obsolete concept?

SPEAKER_40: Can you name an industry around the world right now that isn't challenged with tremendous amounts of change? I can't think of one. Everywhere I look, you see tremendous change coming.

SPEAKER_52: And it's everything from, you know, competing with companies all over the world suddenly, right, where everyone's a global player all of a sudden. Everyone's got access to tremendous amounts of information. How do you deal with that tidal wave of information that's coming in? So, things that used to be a competitive advantage in the past, those are gone now. And so, suddenly, you have to look over your shoulder.

SPEAKER_40: The biggest challenge, I think, is as companies move over to the Internet, now you're finding that the people you compete with weren't even your competitors before. And take, for instance, the media business that I know so well.

SPEAKER_52: Today, if you're working at a TV company or a radio company, you're now migrating onto the web, but suddenly your product competes with books and text and web pages and chat and games and so forth. And then all this new social media programming that's happening as well. You look at that and you go, wow, how do they compete in a world like that? The product they have isn't really optimized for that kind of an environment. So, that requires a radical rethink of the business. And really, if I were in charge of such a business today, I would have my best minds working on that, saying, what's our path for the future? And we should have a five-year or ten-year vision of what that would be.

SPEAKER_04: Boy, that really strikes home. I mean, because I look at what's going on with me this very day with AOL, buying the Huffington Post and everything changing, the way journalism, I mean, what I was doing

SPEAKER_54: ten years ago as a magazine editor has absolutely nothing to do with the way media is delivered today.

SPEAKER_52: That's true. Well, look, you've made the change. And so, in some respects, you're an illustration of the move that we're talking about. And I would also say Tim Armstrong is making the right moves.

SPEAKER_40: It's painful, no doubt. Well, it's painful, no doubt about it, right? And I'm sure it's difficult for the management to deal with this as well. But the fact is, these moves have to be made for that company to thrive and to have an opportunity to grow in the future.

SPEAKER_52: And so, they're doing what's necessary to change their business. The companies I'd be more concerned about are those that aren't making the same changes. Look at who they really compete with, particularly the Huffington Post. They compete with old-school print companies, companies that print newspapers and magazines. These companies are very challenged because their entire business model, their cycle of how they produce their product, the way they manufacture and distribute their product, well, this is completely under assault right now. In some respects, like, if you think about it, today, if you give a teenager a newspaper, they look at them, they'll say, Mom, Dad, why am I looking at this? It's yesterday's news because they've already gotten it on AOL or Yahoo or some other online news outlet hours before, sometimes the day before. So, the cycle of print is one that's simply outdated.

SPEAKER_48: And so, the old-school, traditional businesses in the media business are really challenged to rethink how they produce their content and where they put it, when they put it there.

SPEAKER_04: So, that's interesting because, yeah, the media industry is a perfect example of how you have to really be on the cutting edge and be readjusting. What are some other, well, let's talk about some of the jobs that are pretty much obsolete and that you really shouldn't be studying in school right now because...

SPEAKER_40: Sure. I wouldn't be rushing into journalism, personally. I think it's a challenging field.

SPEAKER_64: There's enough competition out there for me.

SPEAKER_40: That's also true. That's also true. You could apply broadly to the communications field, but even, we've heard stories about young people who are studying for law degrees, and by the time they get out of school with all the massive amounts of debt, the money they had to borrow to pay for their law degrees, they're not finding the jobs there as well. Ten years ago, it was unthinkable that you would outsource a white-collar job like legal

SPEAKER_52: work. But, in fact, all those jobs have been outsourced. A huge percent of them have been outsourced.

SPEAKER_40: And so, I would say one motto, as you look at your career, or as anyone is examining their career, is to say, if your job can be done cheaper someplace else in the world, it will be. And if it can be done by a robot, it will be. And if it can be done on the internet, it will be.

SPEAKER_52: It's a certainty. You have to imagine, just ten years ago, I was working with a company, and I suggested at that time that we consider working with Indian software developers. Oh, no, they said, absolutely not. That would be terrible. We could never work with Indian software developers. Their quality isn't as high as ours. This was a California company. Of course, at that time, Silicon Valley was very much the center of the universe. So, that was a reasonable, traditional way of thinking.

SPEAKER_67: How long ago was this?

SPEAKER_52: This was only ten years ago. Ten years ago. But within three years, outsourcing to India became a real, not just possibility, but a really tremendous change. And a cost driver, right? Because every company has got to manage cost if you're competing on a global scale. The way you have to think about that is, no matter what you do for a living, somebody someplace else in the world who's hungrier and willing to work harder for less pay, is already on the job. And they're competing with you. You might not know it. You might not know who they are or where they are, but you have to believe that they exist out there someplace. So, you have to kind of be looking over your shoulder.

SPEAKER_04: That's really good advice. I understand, too, that the field of engineering has completely changed. Traditional engineers are not going to be getting jobs in the future, but software developers,

SPEAKER_74: on the other hand, totally are.

SPEAKER_40: That's a good point. Yeah, and where things are heading is exciting, I think, because most people right now are fixated

SPEAKER_52: on, because of the economy and because of the nature of the financial mess that we're in right now, they're very focused on trying to preserve whatever they can of what's left. But another way to look at this is it's a sector reallocation of resources, and certain fields are poised for growth. So, I see bright opportunities ahead for us, but they may be in radically different businesses

SPEAKER_40: in radically different fields.

SPEAKER_04: So, this is fine news for kids who are more adaptable, or say, people under 30. This is an advantage that they have. But what about for the older worker? What do you advise the older worker? How can we adjust? Oh, do I include myself in that category? I think I have to. We're both over 30, so sure. Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_52: Let's consider both. Okay, so if you're a seasoned worker with experience, you've got something valuable to bring to bear. You certainly do.

SPEAKER_40: But you do have to get nimble, and you have to really let go of some of the long-cherished assumptions about how the world is supposed to work. This is a tricky time. I used to teach at USC film school, and about 10 years ago, one of the professors there made the observation that our students were coming in, and they were better equipped with digital

SPEAKER_52: technology. They were more conversant with digital technology than the professors, because the professors had learned how to shoot cinema in traditional film, and how to edit in traditional film, and so forth. And so the new digital technology and the new digital skills, well, these kids who were coming to school, they already had those skills, so they were more conversant with it. But that didn't make those professors obsolete, because they knew the art of cinematography, and they knew how to tell a story with pictures. And they knew everything about lighting, and how to direct a scene, and how to manage a set, and how to produce a film. Well, those skills translate directly over into the digital field. So in fact, they had a great deal of knowledge to impart. So I think it's useful to take stock of your skill set and say, what do I have that is still valid and relevant? And surely there is some aspect of your experience that's going to matter in this new economy, in this new digital world that we're moving into.

SPEAKER_48: But then you have to also look at the things that you're attached to that are frankly outmoded and out of date. And those, everyone's going to have to learn to let that stuff go and adapt new skills.

SPEAKER_52: It's hard to learn. It's painful to learn. You're going to be learning one way or the other. You're either going to learn it now in advance in order to get a new job, or you're going to be thrust into the position where you must learn those skills in order to get a job. For young people, it's a little different. Young people today have the opportunity to selectively groom their skill set and what they're learning. Now, sometimes when kids go to college, they get advice from their parents, but it's very much advice from the past. You know, parents are telling you, well, you know, find a good career and stick with it and so forth. I would advise young people in school to develop nimbleness and versatility and study many different disciplines and learn how to learn. This is a key skill set for the future because things are changing so fast. The number one survival skill set and the number one skill for success is the ability to adapt and learn and master new amounts of information, new, perhaps entirely new ways of doing business. And so that's why I'm a big fan of people taking an eclectic approach to college. Try many different disciplines. You may discover that you've got an aptitude or a skill that you didn't even know you had or an interest or a passion that you otherwise never would have found.

SPEAKER_04: Well, our guest last week, too, was talking about how people are taking longer to get through school these days because they're not quite sure what they want to do because there's so many different options and they want to make sure they get into the right one before they leave school and plus leaving school immediately is not such a great idea right now because there aren't so many opportunities.

SPEAKER_40: Sure, but you have to weigh that against the tremendous expense of being in college and so you're racking up more and more debt. I speak to kids who go back to graduate school a lot and ask them to really consider it carefully because you have to look at it like this. By the time you borrow enough money for grad school, let's say it's $50,000 a year,

SPEAKER_52: that could be a two-year or three-year program, you're already $150,000 in debt plus you're going to lose two or three years of your career. So that's advancement you otherwise would not get in your career. So there's an opportunity cost. When you factor that all together, you're looking at something on the order of $200,000 to three or maybe $400,000 of lost opportunity altogether in debt. So you have to have a plan if you're going to go to business school or graduate school that says how you're going to get $500,000 ahead when you come out. And if you can't answer that question, if you don't have such a plan, then it might not be the best idea to stay in school or to go back to school. You might be better off getting real-world experience.

SPEAKER_86: Wow, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_52: It's worth thinking about, right? People don't often weigh those two things because we've been conditioned to believe that more education is always better, more degrees are always better. That's not necessarily true.

SPEAKER_03: And it's not usually, you know, in a lot of companies traditionally or in a lot of fields, you have a master's degree, you automatically make more money. But it's not like that anymore.

SPEAKER_40: That's exactly right. The expectation was always, you know, go get this degree, go get, you know, a law degree, go get a degree as an engineer. And on the other side, there's a high-paying job and it's a job for life. Well, both of those assumptions aren't true anymore. You know, sometime in the 1980s or early 90s, the social contract was broken forever and irrevocably, where companies no longer looked out for their employees' best interest. Now companies,

SPEAKER_52: because of the nature of global competition, have to be kind of ruthless. And, you know, this is the example we were just using a minute ago. Yeah, well, you got to make a tough call if you're running a business. It's brutal, but that's what you've got to do in order to keep the company going. So for employees, the same is also true. There's a misguided loyalty. Sometimes people have the expectation that the company is looking out for their best interest. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it's much smarter for an employee or for someone in a company to find a way to make themselves irreplaceable. And I don't mean that in a Machiavellian or political

SPEAKER_48: sense. I mean that in the most simple way possible. Find something that the company isn't good at and become the best person in the company at doing that. There's tons of opportunity. Like, for instance,

SPEAKER_52: right now, every company has to learn social media. It's not just traditional media companies that have to master this. Any company that markets or talks to customers or talks to business partners has to learn social media. But how many executives in these companies are really very comfortable with

SPEAKER_48: social media? Most of them are not. What do young people spend most of their free time doing? They're using social media. Hey, they grew up with these tools. They know this stuff backwards and forwards. So if I were a young person in a company, I would make sure that I was the guy who knew the most about this particular topic and show some real results. You can't take your eye off the ball.

SPEAKER_52: You've got to do your day job, and you've got to do a great job at that. Otherwise, you're going to look

SPEAKER_48: like you're slacking. You can't do that. You've got to make sure you're delivering on the job you're paid for, but then bring in this extra skill set that the company doesn't have. And lo and behold, as that grows and as more budget is allocated for it or as you create more opportunities there, the company is very likely to make you the person who runs that business and grows it. I've seen

SPEAKER_04: that happen many times. And I've seen them. There are now CE... What is it? CE... Wait. It has to do

SPEAKER_95: with social media. It's the upper... Chief social... Chief social media officer. Yes. My goodness gracious.

SPEAKER_40: CSMO. Yes. My goodness gracious. Thank you. It ought to be a part of marketing and communications because that's really normally where it resides. However, the distinction that's being made there

SPEAKER_52: is it is a unique kind of a medium, and it's a super important one. It encompasses everything from pushing content out and getting messages and information out, but also dealing with the responses. So there's a little element of customer care there as well. Many companies have shifted

SPEAKER_40: their customer care over to social media for that very reason because people like it. It's faster.

SPEAKER_100: They get an immediate response and so forth. And more seasoned workers have to realize that they can't just leave that to the kids, to the younger workers in their company. That's true. They have

SPEAKER_101: to adapt and embrace that as well. That is true. When I have the opportunity to speak to CEO groups

SPEAKER_40: or CXO groups, I always advise them. CXO? That's any CEO, CIO, CMO, right? If you... I always advise them to make sure that they spend a fair amount of time learning these new social software tools and actually use them like customers do, like real people do. Don't just look at them. But if they get stuck, it's also great to ask your teenage kids or your nieces and nephews to show you how to use this stuff because young people adapt to these things so fast and they're very happy to be an expert

SPEAKER_04: and share that with their grown-ups. The other night we were watching American Idol with my husband and it said, you know, to vote for so-and-so, text this. And he said, do you even know how to text

SPEAKER_106: American Idol? I don't know how to text that because, you know, he didn't know how to give, you know, adapt with that address. I wouldn't admit that in a job interview. I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_32: But then again, he's adverse to using even his cell phone because he doesn't like to be that accessible. But that's his issue. Yeah, then that's a good issue. I don't like to talk to people.

SPEAKER_109: Okay, well, fine. Then you don't have to learn how to use a telephone. Not when he's out of the

SPEAKER_32: office anyway. But, you know, he owns his own business so he can handle that. But anyway, you have

SPEAKER_04: some, you brought along some great books that you think will really help people with this mindset and that you've used a lot yourself. Let's talk about some of these.

SPEAKER_40: Sure, happy to do it. The first book is called A Whole New Mind and it's by Daniel Pink. And it's a superb book. I recommend it to everybody that's out there. It's a superb book. It's easy to read. It's really fun to read. He talks about eight themes that are going to shape the future. And the cool thing for people who are in the creative industries, who many are challenged

SPEAKER_52: right now, like what's my future going to be? Gee, the media business seems to be cratering right now. It's in the process of some painful reinvention. Well, this book, it will equip you with the

SPEAKER_40: skill set to thrive and survive in the future if you're a creative person.

SPEAKER_114: Excellent. And then we have this one. This is kind of fun.

SPEAKER_40: It is fun. This is a great book. This is one of my favorite quick reads. It's a short book by Richard Branson, everybody's favorite entrepreneur. And the book is called Screw It, Let's Do It. And so it's a real quick read. You can tell he didn't spend a tremendous amount of time writing this book. It's a bunch of very inspiring anecdotes by this guy who is willing to break any glass, any amount of glass that he needs to break in order to get something new done. It's a real fun book and it's a real quick read.

SPEAKER_60: And he's another good example of someone who's always been at the cutting edge and on top of

SPEAKER_40: things. Absolutely. And has tremendous unshakable confidence in himself. In the very early part of that book, he talks about how he was raised and how his parents gave him that. They raised him with a sense of great confidence in himself. Wow. Which if you're an explorer, which he is, and an adventurer as well as an entrepreneur, you can see it. He lives that. He lives that passionately in his life.

SPEAKER_93: Oh, that's so interesting. Okay. And then one more here.

SPEAKER_40: This is a great book. This is Macro Wikinomics. It's a current bestseller. It's by Don Tafska and Anthony Williams. I had the opportunity to meet Don recently. We were both giving speeches at an event in Canada and he kindly gave me a copy of that book, which I love. It's super. I'm not done with it. It's a real dense read. There's a ton of information, but if you want to understand how the economics of collaborative innovation work, this is the best book that's out there. It is the epitome of information. It tells you everything you need to know about this wiki-based economy

SPEAKER_03: that we're in. So that's Macro Wikinomics. Now, what do people mean when they say wiki-based?

SPEAKER_40: Well, the concept of a wiki, the word wiki-wiki is a Hawaiian slang word that means quickly. And the idea is if you want to build something quickly, it's best to do it collaboratively. Don't do it by yourself. Get a whole group to do it. And so, you know, the most famous, obviously, the most famous application of this is Wikipedia. And the old story there is that when Jimmy Wales was starting it, he actually wanted to create an old traditional encyclopedia and hired a bunch of researchers. And they were moving at a snail's pace, as researchers sometimes do. And so he decided to create a wiki on the side where people could collaborate. And that thing grew so much faster that eventually superseded and eventually replaced that more traditional wiki encyclopedia approach.

SPEAKER_52: And so the idea, the general idea there is if you want to get something done, find a way to use collaborative software to get a group to contribute to it. And you don't even necessarily have to pay them because some people are happy to contribute what they know because they're happy to share it or they'll get some social status or they'll try to convince somebody of something or demonstrate a skill that they've got. So there's a lot of psychological motivation there that doesn't necessarily require getting paid. And so the economics of collaborative software are powerful and they are game-changing. And the book Macro Wikinomics, it really sets that forth in a clear way.

SPEAKER_43: Interesting. Now, something that we talked about, you and I just talked about briefly,

SPEAKER_04: was a really great thing to have on your resume. Super experience is working in a foreign country.

SPEAKER_52: Oh, yeah, that's true. It's real important. I've spent half my career working overseas. And I'll say this, every time I get an opportunity to work overseas, I generally go for it because I always learn things. You learn so much faster when you're in a new environment. Now, we just spent a minute talking about social software and the social web and how that's starting to permeate all kinds of business. Well, the one thing you learn very quickly if you do social software is you've got to have empathy. You've got to learn how to respond to other people. And I would say that that's actually a pretty scarce skill set in most businesses. It's rarer than it should be. Well, one great way to learn empathy is to thrust yourself into a foreign culture and learn the other person's language. It really teaches you how to think like other people. You put yourself in their shoes. Of course, if you can go to their country and live the way they do and speak to people there and start to develop an understanding of their frame of reference, that's an incredible advance on your skills. And all of us, wherever we grew up in the world, we're given one frame of reference. That's the cultural paradigm that we're born into. And it's pretty easy to make the false assumption that that's how everybody thinks. This is where global conflict comes from. Well, today, if you're working on an international level and what company doesn't compete on an international level, it really helps if you've got other frames of reference. If you've got other things you can draw on, experiences that you've had working overseas, if you can draw on it. It makes you a more versatile executive. It makes you a more empathetic leader. It gives you better understanding of your customer and the needs and challenges that they face and how you might solve them. So I'm a huge fan of international work. I think it's a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_04: I have to agree with you 100%. It's been maybe 20 years since I've lived overseas. But I lived in Spain for about 18 months. And there isn't a day that goes by that I don't refer to something that I learned when I was living overseas. I mean, it's just amazing. Not to mention living here in California, I use my Spanish every day, which I really get a kick out of and love. But just the ability to discern and to anticipate and to empathize, as you talked about, with other people, it's amazing. And I just did an article on this on AOL this week. And some interesting statistics came out about this. 100% of the employers that they surveyed said, yes, I would prefer someone with international experience over someone without. They said that that was definitely a plus. But the sad thing is that of all the people working overseas in foreign countries, that's from any country, just working in a country other than the one they live in, only one in four is female.

SPEAKER_127: Oh, that's an interesting statistic. So one in four women, the other are men. And let's

SPEAKER_40: talk about why that might be the case. You know, in some cultures, who you send to visit a company is a signal of your company's values. And so I think it's a safe, a very safe approach for some businesses to say, well, gosh, in this particular culture, it's a very male oriented culture. So we're going to send a male representative of our company. That's an easier way. It's a frictionless way of doing business. They'll find it very acceptable. What I found, though, is that sometimes you can actually break the mold. And it will set your company apart. So for instance, if a company sends a female representative out to call on customers, even in a very macho country or macho culture, that can actually change the dynamic. It certainly sets your company apart and it will make it stand out in a different way. You've noticed this happening in the State

SPEAKER_52: Department with Madeleine Albright and now, of course, with Hillary Clinton. And it changes the way people perceive you. You're sending a signal out about what you value. The one thing that we can tell you is that around the world now, the contributions of women are starting to become recognized. This is an important global trend. And so if a company wants to be perceived

SPEAKER_40: as being at the forefront of that trend, it might not hurt for them to put more women in positions of power representing their company on the ground in faraway places.

SPEAKER_04: That makes total sense. Something else, one of the other reasons it might be, though, is the women themselves. Because I hate to say it, but we are more... You can say it. I would never go there. Yeah. Being a woman and having been in this position, we are vulnerable. It's a little scarier for a woman to go overseas than it is for a man. When I lived in Spain, I was attacked and brutally beaten twice. Yikes. Two times in 18 months. Where were you? Yeah. Once in the Canary Islands and once out on this bizarre, this small town outside of Valencia. And it was just after America had voted to join NATO. And that was very unpopular in some parts of Spain.

SPEAKER_134: And I happened to be living in one of those parts. Yeah. And they took it out on me and really...

SPEAKER_40: Well, that's no fun. And certainly that wouldn't be great for a man or a woman to experience. There's other issues, too, that are related that don't involve necessarily violence. But in Finland, when I was doing business in Finland, well, it's typical to drink a little vodka and then go sit in a sauna. Not really an environment a woman would be very comfortable in, but that happens. So there's sort of a boys' club thing that can occur. Because you have to sit naked in the sauna, right? Of course. Could a woman wear a bathing suit? I never experienced that, so I don't know. Okay. But other cultures also have even more extreme examples of the kind of the boys' club and the kind of antics that you do when you're in the boys' club. So there's still that barrier, that kind of glass ceiling that used to exist in the United States. And look, it was a many-year progress, right, from the early 1970s when the women's rights movement really started in earnest. I know it existed before that, but they really started making traction and progress in the 70s. But it was decades before we really started to see women in positions of authority, leading businesses, starting businesses, managing on a kind of global scale. And so I think you're

SPEAKER_55: going to start to see that evolution occur in other parts of the world as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see it.

SPEAKER_04: I hope so. And I have to say that even though there are risks, maybe more risks for women physically than for men, I have to say that taking those risks helped me tremendously. And they were great growing experiences. And getting up after having been beaten up and going through really gave me confidence in myself. Wow. I can do this. I can get over this. I can get past this and still do a good job. You're not going to keep me down. And that's been a tremendous lesson for me for the rest of my life, I have to say. It's been really great.

SPEAKER_40: Overcoming adversity. There are a lot of stories of entrepreneurs who've had that early in life faced with adversity. They had to kind of summon the courage of the strength from within them and then surmount that challenge. So yeah, sometimes a big setback can actually be one of life's big lessons.

SPEAKER_80: There's nothing wrong with being tested. It actually makes you stronger, I think. Now

SPEAKER_04: we've only got a few minutes left, Robert. This has been so interesting. Just can you give

SPEAKER_143: us just a few tips about what we have to look forward to in the future? Yeah, sure. What can, how can we be better prepared?

SPEAKER_40: Absolutely. Okay, so there's a couple obvious places. I think there's going to be tremendous growth in minerals and in any type of material that's coming out of the earth. I just got back from Australia. It's a booming economy because they've got this tremendous mineral wealth. Obviously the energy sector, where the world is consuming energy at a rapid clip. The Americans consume a tremendous, about 25% of the earth's energy right now. So the world is going to gradually grow to that level of consumption, I believe. And so we'll have unabated desire, unquenchable desire for energy. It's a great field to go into. Health care comprises about 20% of our economy right now. It's clearly set to grow and grow and grow. Now there's room for radical innovation in all of these areas. So by saying that there's tremendous demand in those areas, it doesn't mean that we're not going to change the kind of energy that we use. So there's a great opportunity for alternative energy because most big energy companies can't find the fossil fuels anymore. And so they're looking for alternatives. So there's alternatives there. Health care, if we continue on the track we're on, it's likely that it's going to bankrupt state governments or possibly national governments. So clearly there's pressure to find new ways to deliver health care services more efficiently. That's an opportunity for a technology company. That's an opportunity for somebody to come in and radically reinvent the business. And frankly, a business that would benefit, I think, from a little bit of change. So those are some very obvious drivers. But there's a couple that are less, maybe less obvious. And I'm excited about them as well. Robotics is a field where

SPEAKER_52: there's tremendous advances being made. Now you don't see the stuff in the news every day. But if you do a search on YouTube for robotics, you'll see videos of lifelike robots in Japan. They have this challenge they're faced with with the aging population and not enough young people to care for them. So the Japanese are driven as a national priority to figure out how to deliver care to elderly people with robots. And so that's one area where you see this growth. But also here in the United States, we have the advent of robotic cars, which is kind of amazing. But Google has a fleet of cars that have been driving around the country for Google Maps. And they've driven some 200,000 miles with robotic cars that don't have human drivers. That may be, you know, one aspect of robotics that's growing. I've also, I had surgery a year ago on my leg and there was a robotic surgeon involved. There was remote surgery with a robotic tool involved. So you're starting to see robots permeate all sorts of places in our economy. Now that's going to displace some old skill labor, right? Because those jobs won't be done by humans anymore. But that's why I say if your job can be done in an automated fashion, it certainly will be. So robotics is an area of growth. And then the other area that's worth looking at or worth thinking about hard is the sheer increase in the volume of information. There's this tremendous tidal wave of information. Who hasn't experienced it, right? You look at your inbox and your voicemail and the news and on the web. Just surging amounts of information bombarding us every day. That sounds like a problem, but anytime there's a problem, there's a business opportunity. And so there'll be opportunities in the storage of data, in the retrieval and the search for data. I think search is an area that's ripe for growth. I mean, for 10 years, we've had the exact same paradigm of Google. And that's like apparently the only way anybody can think of how to deliver search results. Come on, there's got to be room for change. A lot of room there for growth, I think. And then also the analysis of information, the ability to filter out information. Is this information valid? Is this information false? Is it useful? Exactly. Now, some of those things can't be done by a robot. They can't be done by a software program. They'll need to be done by human beings, probably augmented with technology because of the sheer volume of the task. So I think there's a great big opportunity in information, this information tidal wave that we're experiencing.

SPEAKER_43: Boy, that is so fascinating. This is going to be one of those shows that people look at time

SPEAKER_04: and time again, because yeah, they're just going to be replaying this over and over again because you pack so much useful information into it, no matter what point you are in your career, you know, how to move forward in this day and age and take it from somebody who has been there, done that and always stayed on the cutting edge. Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03: It's been such a pleasure to have you. Thanks. You've been watching This Week in Careers where we're trying to save America one job at a time. See you next week.