PROVEN STRATEGIC NAVIGATION

Thomas Frey, Senior Futurist at the U.S. think-tank, DaVinci Institute, recently wrote a blog entitled "55 jobs of the future". He pointed out that, as a rule of thumb, 60% of the jobs 10 years from now haven’t been invented yet and went on to describe trends that would create new jobs.

I reviewed this list and was pleasantly surprised to see how some my portfolio of investments align with his vision of the future.

Here are some of Frey’s jobs of the future, with his descriptions and numbering, and how my investments relate to these.

1. Augmented Reality Architects – Much like the paint we put on houses and the flavorings we add to food, the future will seem boring if our reality hasn’t been augmented in some way.

Veritii is building interactive 3D sales tools for selling property. This will enable you to move into your new built property, full decorated and furnished to your tastes on day one. www.veritii.com

3. Seed Capitalists – In the startup business world there is a huge gulf between initial concept and fundable prototypes. This dearth of funding options will require an entirely new profession. Seed capitalists will specialize in high-risk startups. Counter to todays investment-world thinking, if they get more than 100% return on their investments, they will be docked for not taking enough risk.

Indycube Ventures is helping startups bridge that gulf, moving from idea to customer-lead business. The business model is about making sure founders own the majority of the businesses they start.

4. Global System Architects – Our systems are transitioning from national systems into global systems. Architects of these new global systems will play a crucial role in future global politics. More details here.

Inngot is defining the global standard for how to describe and value intellectual property. Already used in the UK, Norway, Canada and South-East Asia, their tools have been used to find £250 million in IP value and are helping shape IP financing policies around the world. www.inngot.com

7. Urban Agriculturalists – Why ship food all the way around the world when it can be grown next door. Next generation produce-growing operations will be located underground, often below the grocery stores where the produce will be sold directly to customers. More details here.

In the mid-19^th century Swansea docks was exporting 60% of the world’s copper. Later it became an oil terminal. Now Thomas Shellfish are producing over 600 tons of rope grown mussels annually within the city centre redevelopment.  http://www.thomasshellfish.co.uk/

8. Business Colony Managers - The average person that turns 30 years old in the U.S. today has worked 11 different jobs. In just 10 years, the average person who turns 30 will have worked 200-300 different projects. Business colonies are an evolving new kind of organizational structure designed around matching talent with pending work projects. The operation will revolve around some combination of resident people based in a physical facility and a non-resident virtual workforce, with some opting to forgo the cost of the physical facility entirely. People who can effectively manage this type of operation will be in high demand. More details here.

Indycube, the Wales community of coworking space, is looking to evolve it’s community-owned model further towards a co-operative aggregator of talent and projects. http://indycube.cymru/

Over the coming years will see a number of industries dismantled requiring a skilled workforce of talented people who can perform this task in the least disruptive way. Most of these industries have been built around aging facilities and infrastructure that will become unnecessary and unsustainable in the future. These will include:

27. Prison System Dismantlers - More details here

31. Education System Dismantlers - More details here and here and here.

Incarceration is a system that breeds failure. With growing prison populations and budget pressures, we need better ways of stopping crime before it happens. Do-IT Solutions is working in offender settings, and in the education sector, to deliver personalized and contextualized guidance for individuals and those working with them. http://doitprofiler.com/

Whilst Frey’s 55 jobs of the future may not prove exactly right, he certainly points towards some emerging trends that I’m only too happy to agree with.