The Octopus Economy is Here

Converging trends in the future of work are creating a new kind of multi-faceted worker

Something is changing in the world of work. I am meeting more and more people who have atypical, hard-to-define “jobs”. When I ask what they do for a living, there are pregnant pauses, smiling hesitation, and complicated answers. The answer to this question used to be a simple 1-3 word job title, but now people are struggling to describe what they do, because they might be doing multiple unrelated “jobs” to make ends meet. Running an Airbnb. Freelance work. Coaching. Selling digital goods. Travel vlogging. Social media influencing. Side gigs. Sometimes all at the same time.

We are at the beginning stages of a new era of work. There was the agrarian economy. The industrial economy. The personal computing economy. The internet economy. The mobile economy. The coming AI economy. And now, what I am calling the Octopus economy, named after the fluid, curious, creative creature that has survived for 300 million years by deploying an unusual combination of skills to do up to eight things at a time. Humans have gone from hunting to farming to factories to knowledge work, and now, AI enabled work, and yet through every economic era and environmental change, the octopus has managed to adapt and thrive largely unchanged. Can we learn something from this magnificent creature and apply it to work?

First let’s look at some work trends

• The rise of gig, freelance, fractional, consulting, part time, creator, and contingent work. By nearly every measure the numbers of people doing these types of work is increasing.

• The erosion of trust in corporations. The days of working for one or two companies your entire career are gone. It also used to be that layoffs were only the result of companies struggling so badly they had to let people go. But now we’re seeing Fortune 100 corporations, that have plenty of cash on hand, who could absolutely afford to keep employees, laying people off.

• Job hopping as the norm. It used to be that jumping from job to job was frowned upon, as recruiters questioned the employee’s commitment to their employer. But with every successive generation, the number of jobs one is expected to hold over a career is growing.

• The burden of school debt and questioning the value of college. I’m seeing more and more people advising young people to consider skipping college, because there is no longer a guarantee of a good job upon graduating, you’ll be loaded with massive debt, and you can learn everything you need to know on Youtube.

• The growing uncertainty of AI taking jobs. Despite the fact that the introduction of new technologies typically results in net job gain, some people think this time will be different, and it’s creating a growing sense of uncertainty for both employers and employees.

• Early exposure to money making opportunities. When I was a teenager in the 80’s, if you wanted to make money, you had only a handful of options. Mow lawns, babysit, or work an entry level retail/restaurant job. But today young people are dabbling in “work” at earlier ages and can make money by:

  • Social Media Influencing

  • Selling Digital Goods

  • Selling Crafts on Etsy

  • Affiliate Programs

  • Email Newsletters

  • Copywriting

  • Graphic/Web Design with Canva

  • Reselling used goods on Ebay

  • Dropshipping on Amazon

• Earlier exposure to business skills. Young people are also learning and doing things that used to be the domain of working adults:

  • Setting up a legal business entity

  • Business bank accounts

  • Bookkeeping/accounting

  • Taxes

  • Intellectual property law

  • Payment systems

  • Shipping and fulfillment

• Earlier exposure to enabling technology. This one is no surprise, but kids are more tech savvy than any previous generation. Baby Boomers grew up with radio. Gen X grew up with TV and video games. Millennials grew up with computers. Gen Y grew up with mobile phones. Gen Z will grow up with AI and robots.

• Psychological Discontent with Traditional Work: Young people are more aware of their mental health than any previous generation. As it relates to work, they want more meaning, more control, more freedom, more satisfaction, more flexibility, less stress, less abuse, and more agency over the kinds of work they do, where they do it, and how they do it. If you ask a young person if they’d like to work at the same company for 45 years at a high-stress job in a cubicle 9-5 every day wearing business attire, that sounds like a slow painful death. If you ask them if they’d like to work a variety of jobs from anywhere in the world, on a time schedule they set, with the flexibility to choose what kind of jobs to do, and still get paid, nearly all of them will choose the latter.

If we intersect all of the above, and imagine what a 14 year old kid today will be doing in 10 years, we have the makings of a completely new way of working.

The Octopus Economy and the Octopreneurs Who Will Thrive In It

The octopus has evolved a series of incredibly useful skills and traits that has allowed it to thrive for 300 million years. In the new Octopus economy, humans must now learn to deploy some of these same skills to build a career as an “Octopreneur”:

• Multiple tentacles: People will not have 1 job, they will have multiple jobs within a portfolio career simultaneously, executing possibly hundreds of jobs by the time they retire.

• Multiple brains: Octopuses have brains in their arms as well as their head. People are already “building second brains” or using tools like Notion to retain and process the overload of knowledge and information now available.

• Regenerating tentacles: Fewer jobs will be full time employment. More will be short term/contingent, thus easily be dropped, and new ones regenerated in its place.

• Adaptability: Skills today become obsolete faster than ever. Octopreneurs will be in a perpetual state of autodidactic learning and adaptation to their surroundings.

• Shape shifting: Octopuses are known to alter their shape to match their environment, or even mimic other fish. Octopreneurs will change career identities many times, and hold multiple careers at a time.

• Specialist and Generalist: A specialist at the tentacles and a generalist in the head, the Octopreneur will demonstrate multi-talented, inter-disciplinary ability to simultaneously sense and sense-make, to explore and explain, to collect and connect dots.

• Escape boxing: Octopuses are notorious escape artists, and dislike being caged. Octopreneurs will defy categorization. “What do you do for a living?” will be a complicated question to answer.

• Independence: Octopuses do not live or work in groups. The “atomization of the firm” will continue to break work tasks down into smaller components that will be handled by individual Octopreneurs.

• Problem Solving: Octopuses are among the most highly intelligent animals. They use tools. Solve mazes. Cleverly escape harm. In a world of rapidly shifting complexity, Octopreneurs will need to solve many problems quickly.

• Self Sufficiency: Octopuses do not rely on others to survive. Similarly Octopreneurs will no longer trust or rely on any single company to provide all their occupational and financial needs. Income from multiple sources will mitigate that risk.

• Fluidity: Octopuses can expand their tentacles to great diameter, but also squeeze into any hole their beak can fit into. Both the volume and variety of work will expand and contract as needed.

• Freedom: Octopuses roam freely, often seeming to wander around to satisfy curiosity or just for fun. “Personal freedom” is replacing “Self Actualization” at the top Maslow’s hierarchy. Octopreneurs will work both remotely and globally, freely moving around to explore the world, often just for fun.

The Octopus Economy will bring a significant shift in how, where, when, and with whom work is done. Traditional 9-5 jobs will still be in the mix, but the growing undesirability of that work environment and its demands will give it a shrinking share. The future belongs to the Octopreneur.

Until next time,

Dave