Page 23 - The Interconnected Individual: Seizing Opportunity in the Era of AI, Platforms, Apps, and Global Exchanges

66 THE INTERCONNECTED INDIVIDUAL

They generate the greatest levels of innovation, control and attract
the largest shares of global capital and investment, have huge
concentrations of leading-edge finance, media, entertainment,
and tech industries, and are home to a disproportionate share of
the world’s talent. They are not just the places where the most
ambitious and most talented people want to be—they are where
such people feel they need to be. 7

Interconnected regions that are linked with superstar cities (such as
Denver and Seattle) through the web will continue to thrive as they build
regional wealth through the co-creation of ideas, businesses, and start-ups
based on the adjacent possibilities of new technologies.

You Are Free to Cross Sectors

There is a permeable wall between sectors: government, universities,
corporate, nonprofits, and start-up/entrepreneurial enterprises. Experi-
ence in each sector broadens your outlook and increases your professional
contacts. You can employ different strategies. You could work simultane-
ously in two sectors, such as adjunct university teaching while conducting a
private consulting practice or business. You can work sequentially in a large
multinational corporation or government sector to learn the systems and
then spin-off a start-up or become a vendor to that sector. You may choose
to work in life phases: start in the private sector in your early-stage career
and transition to education or a helping profession in your later-stage career.

Find a Culture That Fits You

There are different business cultures. Go to any company or organiza-
tion and in a very short period of time, you will see the way they manage
and treat each other, and how work gets done. You must develop a sixth
sense, which you only get through lived experience, to know whether
any one place is right for you. Can you identify the people who have

7 R. Florida. 2017. “Why America’s Richest Cities Keep Getting Richer,” The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/richard-florida-winner-take-
all-new-urban-crisis/522630, (accessed April 12, 2017).