In today’s business world being employed has less to do with finding a job, and everything to do with inventing a job, says Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times article “Need a Job: Invent It.” The article was based on an interview with Tony Wagner, a Harvard education specialist and author of “Creating Innovators: the Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.”
Friedman argues that middle class jobs are disappearing rapidly because every job “requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world.” For this reason, Wagner describes a need for education to focus less on becoming “college ready” and more on becoming “innovation ready.”
In his interview with Friedman, Wagner describes his feelings on the importance of innovation in today’s society.
“Because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know,” Wagner says. “The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge.”
The Lassonde Institute at the University of Utah strives to fill this gap by providing a great environment for the creative, innovative and hands on education described in the article. At the Lassonde Institute students are given the tools and community they need to pave their own path in today’s changing business world.
Read the full article at www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html
