My Name's Alex Hagan, and if you're at this page, chances are it's because I've given you a business card.

Every one of my business cards tells a different story. There's about 100 of them and I chose this card for you because I want to tell you this specific story.

There was a time not too long ago where to be in the entertainment industry, there were a lot of hurdles you had to jump.  Let's say you wanted to be an actor.  You'd need an agent and headshots, to start with.  You'd have to attend auditions and you'd need to find a project that had directors, producers, a script, and plenty of money.  Any project would need to have a distribution channel - typically film, tv, or "straight to VHS / DVD / BluRay".  Whichever distribution channel was chosen, it would require a lot of decision makers along the way.  The economics of the industry were such that there were no small projects.

Today, anyone with a webcam or smartphone can be a creator - the landscape of media is being transformed by both the creator economy and by digital disruption.  Let's take a look at YouTube, for example.  A great example of the democratisation of content production is a YouTube channel called EvanTubeHD.  Evan is 12, and has had a YouTube channel for the past five years.  According to SocialBlade, it's the 249th largest channel on YouTube by subscribers, and has an average of around 1.4 million video views per day, and the channel earns around USD $1.5 million per annum.  Not bad for a 12 year old. Now here's the thing about Evan - nobody "discovered" him before he started producing videos.  He didn't have any formal acting training.  He has no scriptwriter, producer, or director, and doesn't need an expensive studio.  This is the creator economy - platforms are springing up that remove traditional barriers to entry in a whole range of industries.  Yes, this is an entertainment example - but we've also seen similar dynamics in manufacturing, book publishing, and a host of other industries. With technologies like Raspberry Pi, it's easier than ever before to create your own working hardware and robotics.  With 3D Printing, you can produce your own goods customised exactly to your needs and desires - and perhaps even find a market for them on Etsy.  The explosion of innovation that happens through this democratisation of production is transformative.

Creators is one of hundreds of trends that we track to see how The Future of Work is being transformed.  But just between you and I, many of the things that we think about representing the future are, in fact, already here.

Part of the work we do at Kienco is to help organisations identify the drivers and trends that will provide either opportunities, risks, or (more commonly) both of these to their business models.  And then we help them determine how best to navigate the landscape of opportunity.  It's a critical part of Strategic Workforce Planning, but often impacts business models, product strategy, and marketing strategy too.

If you'd like to explore how your organisation can be successful in executing your vision and mission in this landscape of opportunity we call VUCA, if you'd like to be a "Future Maker", and if you'd like your strategies to be robust and agile in the face of a fast-changing landscape, then let's have a chat about how we can work together.

Thanks for reading.

Alex

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