Dominic Basulto is a NYC-based “digital strategist” and the publisher of the blog Endless Innovation. He’s posted a grounded forecast of how the workplace is likely to change in the years ahead. I look forward to living and playing in this world in which “design thinking” lives in the C-suite and women leaders add the Gross Happiness Index to the ways in which we measure success.

From that post:

(1) Organizations will embrace Design Thinking … Design must become more than an aesthetic—it must become an integral part of the overall process of how companies think about products, services and customers. By extension, “design thinking” must now become part of any worker’s toolkit … Design thinking is … a stronger form of creativity and innovation that is focused around achieving specific business goals and objectives. As a result, design thinking will continue to play a key role in any organization’s business strategy as it attempts to differentiate itself vis-a-vis competitors …

(2) Women will play a more important role in re-defining traditional notions of work … In 2009, for the first time ever, women now account for more than 50% of all jobs in America. At the same time, women account for 57% of all bachelor’s degrees and 60% of all master’s degrees, making them the most important part in any company’s talent pipeline. Quite simply, with women now a majority in the U.S. workforce, organizations will need to reassess how well they are responding to the needs of women in the workplace. This ranges from new thinking about customized careers and flexible work arrangements to fundamentally important notions of how to encourage managerial traits such as empathy and compassion …

(3) Small business owners will become the new stars of economic growth … As liquidity slowly makes its way back into the banking system, the first beneficiaries will be small business owners … Small business owners have often been overshadowed as the traditional media focuses on the empire builders (yes, Donald Trump, that’s you) and the titans of industry rather than unheralded small business owners. Heading into 2010, though, this trend appears to be reversing. Monocle, for example, published a Small Business Guide for 2010 that is chock-full of examples of how resilient small business owners around the globe are re-inventing their industries. From equity research companies in Stockholm to interior design firms in Tokyo to graphic designers in Munich, these small businesses are inspiring examples of how creative, nimble and risk-taking ventures can bring real economic change to any industry…

(4) “Happiness” will become a way to measure economic prosperity. In September, (French President) Nicolas Sarkozy. .. announced that his country was seriously considering a “happiness index” that would transform factors like “quality of life” and “vacation time” into a broader measure of overall economic well-being. In short, the traditional way to measure national economic activity—Gross National Product (GNP)—would be supplanted by something called Gross National Happiness (GNH). This, of course, is a fundamentally new way to think about work that surely has economists scrambling to find a way to quantify something so unquantifiable as “happiness.” Other than France, only the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan has had the pluck and audacity to adopt the concept of Gross National Happiness. In 1972, Bhutan adopted GNH as a way to symbolize its dedication to spiritualist, Buddhist ideals rather than purely materialistic, Capitalistic ideals.

In many ways, this thinking about “happiness” is part of an overall paradigm shift in the world of economics that takes us further away from the purely “rational thinking” paradigm. Behavioral economists, led by Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman (who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002), Yale’s Robert Shiller (who famously coined the term “irrational exuberance”) and Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert (who is typically credited as the founder of the “science of happiness”), are helping us understand that purely rational considerations are not all that matter when it comes to making decisions …

(5) Personal branding will become the buzzword of talented workers around the world … Using everything from blogs to YouTube to Twitter, it’s now possible for everyday people to create a personal brand online—and then use it to launch new businesses based around their personal passions … Idealistic notions about lifetime employment with a single company are long gone. The only real job security is to create your own personal brand. With U.S. unemployment pushing above 10% in November, starting a new venture has become a very attractive option to millions of workers. Take the self-employment route and do what you love. Do it well, and you might just Crush It.

(Photo by Otabi kitahachi)

I originally posted this article on I’m New Here Myself, a blog I published between 2009 and 2011.