I just returned from the Inc500/5000 conference, a celebration of the fastest growing companies in America. There’s a definite mindset overlap with the TC50 crowd, but it wasn’t clear at first. Most obviously, both are conferences of entrepreneurs. And the startup ventures at TC50 would love to have the insane growth rates which gets companies listed by Inc.
But after a while I was noticing how more people are restructuring the way that they think because of the (formerly geek-only) tools developed to support a mobile lifestyle and global communications in real time. Yes, this is really obvious and not new. But what became obvious for me at the Inc conference is that we are starting to move away from early adopters and possibly even the early majority* of entrepreneurs building businesses on an alternative workforce and/or workschedule. As the once-small business on the Inc list become dominant in their respective fields, their workforces are starting to normalize The New Geography.
Yes, I’m a big big fan of the mobile life. I did my first serious telecommuting gig in 1997, working on a project in California while hanging out and scuba diving in the Phliippines for a few months. (Be glad you don’t generally have to work via dial-up anymore!) My first personal URL and one of my main forum usernames are about going wireless and being mobile. I was an early user of the experimental radio modems, reveling in being able to work without having to go to a specific location or cutting down on my time outdoors. I was a beta tester of online banking. My passport is always at the ready. I have been waiting for this world where flexible schedules, itinerant behavior and global employment is a norm, and I have been wanting it to extend far outside of our circle of tech-mad Bay Area geeks.
I, like many of those who are helping to shape today’s business landscape, believe that enabling people to redefine their schedules and work settings is a key to achieving that balance between what you give to others and what gives back to you. (Note: I stay away from the thinking of “work/life balance,” because, really, it’s all life). I also do adore that businesses are extending service economy and “thought worker” jobs to other regions, some of which are in other countries and some are in non-urban centers of the U.S. Additionally, I find it endlessly cool that you can link up partners who have similar goals and similar modes of thought no matter where they’re physically located.
Having workers who participate in defining how and where they spend their time will help get us away from the culturally accepted practice of feeling that work is a drudgery, itself a key to transforming our culture into one of happy people.
And that is something I’m willing to work for.
