[Enterprenuer Talks] Stop trying to solve problems, Start discovering them

It shouldn’t be a mystery where all the salaried jobs have gone, because problem-solving jobs like these – jobs that pay perfectly good wages to human beings, or at least used to – are virtually all being automated away. It’s not a question of whether enough computer power will be available to solve these problems, only of when

There are only two ways to “beat the clock” against the kind of galloping automation already consuming so many jobs. One way is to become very good at dealing with interpersonal issues – people skills. We are all much more interconnected, and our economic activities are more and more interdependent. So resolving the people-to-people issues that plague organizations and groups of cooperating people is a skill that is likely never to go out of style, and it's obviously beyond the capabilities of any conceivable computer.

The other way to beat the clock is not to focus on solving problems but on discovering them. Discovering new problems is something that computers can’t really do, and are unlikely to be able to do in your lifetime. Discovering new problems is otherwise known as “creativity.” And creativity, graduates, is one of the most important keys to generating economic value. By its very definition, creativity involves solving a problem that wasn’t there before.

Maintaining a creative and open-minded outlook and relating well with other people are likely to be extremely important skills in whatever career path you choose, bar none.

   -  Launch a business on your own, even as a free-lancer, and you won’t be able to land a customer until you’ve discovered some problem you can solve better than a computer, and you have enough interpersonal skills to convince someone else that you can.
   -  If you go into sales, your prospect will be able to use computer power to solve the problem of evaluating your product’s capabilities, but you’ll still be able to generate value if you can converse with her in such a way as to discover new problems to solve.
   -  Go into finance, and your computer will solve the problem of making profitable trades based on trends and probabilities, but you can generate value yourself by thinking creatively about financial problems that haven’t yet been solved.
   -  If you go into teaching, computers will take over more and more of the problem of basic instruction, but you’ll still be able to generate value as long as you can come up with new pedagogical perspectives, or you can creatively improve a student’s performance through your personal relationship.