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We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.

A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.

Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.

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Transcript

Sylvia Hewlett: I think jazz is the right metaphor. It's freedom within form. Our new demographic research coming out in July really shows that what Gen Y wants, and is actually what boomers want too, is actually to stay with an employer/company that they had admire. But to mix and match, to ebb and flow, to have much more of freedom within form, and to have a long view.

One of the biggest yearnings of these two juggernaut generations, and just remember Gen Y 80 million of them in the US, and only 37 million Xs, so this is a huge generation on our doorsteps beginning to climb up the professional ranks. What they want within the context of loyal attachment to an employer and intense periods of work is odyssey. The ability to search and quest for meaning, to maybe work for six weeks in Africa, and then absolutely get down to work back on the ranch again.

I think that we are seeing a sea change in attitudes towards work and a much more fluid and creative take on what a 360 degree, full round work experience should look like.

Obviously companies like Google or Genzyme, some of the smaller innovative talent machines out there, are precisely allowing this.

But there is a tension between loyalty and quest, but it can be totally handled by allowing this jazz-like arrangement and I think that's where we're heading.