Ah, spring in Massachusetts. It is snowing again.

Ah, the holidays.

That time of year when DIY-ers want to d.i.e. because they have set the bar too high again. Gifts in a jar, hand-felted laptop cases—carefully crafted artisanal homespun organic and fair trade objects imbued with positive vibrations.

It’s November. It’s raining. And it’s Monday.

It’s a short week with Thanksgiving on Thursday, but for many that means cramming five days of work into three. How to get motivated first thing in the morning?

Coffee (of course)

All photos, including header photo: Asa Mathat for PopTech, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Some mornings it is just too sunny at my desk.

For your Friday surfing pleasure:

In Greek mythology, Mentor was the tutor of Telemachus, son of his friend Odysseus.  At one point in the story, the goddess Athena disguises herself as Mentor and advises Telemachus to go out into the world and discover his father’s fate.

Interns here at Involution Studios are on a kind of odyssey themselves—with only a year or two of college, along with the occasional grad student, they walk into our grand but funky space full of … well, we’re not always sure, but there is usually some level of trepidation. Day 1 might seem oddly quiet with its minimal paperwork, log-ins, and wiki exploration. Day 2 usually brings a real project (or two), maybe something along the lines of an intern’s portfolio plus a client deliverable. A deliverable that might involve sketches and comps and coding (oh, my!)

I don't think there's any question that the creative class jobs that drive our innovation economy — designers, engineers, scientists, architects, entrepreneurs, writers, etc. — are all positions that require constant learning and evolution. In a larger sense, our economy, the companies that survive and thrive, the types of jobs in demand, and the skill sets required to successfully compete for these positions, are changing at a rate faster than we ever could imagine.

The Fast Company article, "This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers of the New (and Chaotic) Frontier of Business", has an interesting take on this phenomenon, framing the current economic environment as a system caught in the throes of creative destruction, brought on by rapid technological innovation and radical business model changes. A related article, "The Four Year Career", examines the imminent demise of the long duration job and the well defined career path.