Anyway, I was out walking my dog today when suddenly I had this great insight that will solve two or your biggest problems. I knew you’d want to hear all about it.

You’ve got a really nasty unemployment problem. True? You betcha. And you’ve got another even nastier mismatch because the skills needed tomorrow are not always the ones available today. Also true? Check.

But put the two problems together and they disappear! Pay people to teach what they know and love. Let people learn for free. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You’ll have both a massive jobs program and a massive skills program rolled into one. How sweet is that?

Oh, sure, there are a few details to work out. But I thought you’d want to know right away.

Best wishes for 2010. And blessings to all throughout the world.
Gary

In Schumpeter’s creative destruction, the new gets created and the old either adapts or gets destroyed. The pain of destruction is just a price paid for the new opportunities created.

I understand the entrepreneurial appeal of this attitude, but it ignores social costs in the same way that reliance on carbon-based fuels ignores “externalities” like global warming.

It seems important to find a middle ground that encourages innovation and change but with a more robust accounting of social costs.

I’ve no idea how to do this in general. But George Siemens makes the case for finding a middle ground when imagining tomorrow’s universities.

He makes a valuable point.

You can see George’s post and my comment here.