Economic impotence

HERE is an idea whose time has come. It's part of a global trend called "crowdsourcing," where companies outsource innovation to people. (Remember: there are only two key activities in business: innovation (creating new products and services) and marketing).

Crowdsourcing seems to be the opposite of network marketing, which could be called "crowd-delivering." Indeed, in network marketing, the sales and marketing is outsourced to people.

Both open-source development (of which crowdsourcing is but one variant) and network marketing are likely to stay, although I'm not sure which one is better.

One thing is for sure: people who want financial independence either will have to be very CREATIVE or very PERSUASIVE.

You have to be creative to make money from crowdsourcing (from which you earn royalties, the exact percentage depending on how much you contribute to product design and success), and you have to be persuasive to succeed in network marketing.

The tragedy, I think, is that most corporate jobs are designed so that you DON'T have to be creative nor persuasive (unless you work as a sales person).

Corporate jobs, of course, are deliberately designed to be this way because if a job required creativity, this would mean the employer would depend on a person's creativity -- which is so hard to predict, let alone manage.

Also, most corporate jobs don't require people to be persuasive. If you were really good at persuasion, that would dramatically increase your mobility in the job market -- hence, you would be able to leave your employer any time and go to another employer.

The bottom line -- perhaps the success secret -- is to realize that the two most important skills in the New Economy (creativity and persuasion) will NEVER be taught by your employer (unless you work in R&D or in the sales department).

Without creativity and persuasion, you remain "economically impotent." That is, unable to survive on your own financially. This situation is good for capitalists, because then it forces you to hang on to the job -- usually until retirement.

Just as erectile dysfunction is a personal issue and rarely acknowledged or even talked about, economic impotence is also never talked about. Yet, it is the reality for millions of people. It is the very reason why only one person out of 20 will ever achieve financial independence. The other 19 people have never learned to overcome economic impotence.

As explained in this posting, economic impotence can only be overcome by acquiring creativity and persuasion skills.

You can pick up persuasive abilities by reading any book on sales.

But to acquire creativity skills, you need only one man: Dr. Edward de Bono.