Need a job? Invent it.

Have you ever wondered what the job market will look like in 10, 20 years time?

Have you ever wondered what the job market will look like in 10, 20 years time? Or maybe you’re wondering what it will look like tomorrow or next week if, like us, you’re still on that quest to find that amazing job, or a winning idea for a start-up.

It’s tough world out there even for people with years of experience. And the concept of a job for life…..are you serious? That doesn’t even exist. So what to do. Ping off yet another online application or email? Show up at another job agency where they promise you they’ll have you on someone’s pay roll by next week?

Or maybe the answer is to take a more creative approach and invent your own job. In this article, Tony Wagner, a Harvard education specialist (and author of the book Creating Innovators) says the future will be about re-inventing, re-engineering and reimagining your job more often than your parents.

This means a total revamp of the current education system.

Innovation - bringing something new or original into the market - he says, has to take centre stage.

He describes his own job as “a ‘translator between two hostile tribes’ - the education world and the business world. The people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs”.

He argues that with highly paid, middle class jobs a thing of the past, education shouldn’t be about making kids college ready, but making them innovation ready. So solving problems creatively or bringing new possibilities to life should be how we’re taught to get ahead in life. In other words schools, colleges, universities need to put an emphasis on critical thinking, communication and collaboration rather than pure academic knowlege.

Does this sound like your school or college experience? It doesn’t have much resonance with mine - I often felt my university lecturers were literally from another century.

And remember those careers libraries (or cupboards) where you were steered towards safe professions and these jobs for life (which of course now don’t exist).

Wagner’s book is a fascinating read. Not only does he profile some pretty creative and dynamic young people but he also anlyses their upbringing, interviews their parents, teachers and mentors in a quest to find some common threads which may have boosted their innovativeness.

So if you’re in the midst of a career change or launching a small business from your bedroom or even on the cusp of entering the working world… remember…..necessity is the mother of invention.

And that certainly rings true in Africa.