Metaskills Five Talents for the Robotic Age

The Industrial Age has taught us how to break problems into parts, but not how to build parts into solutions. We're baffled when we're confronted with complex challenges like recession, political gridlock, climate change, childhood obesity, pollution, and failing schools. We see them as separate ills, each requiring a separate remedyif we can imagine a remedy at all. Why are so many jobs disappearing? Why are a few people getting rich while the rest of us struggle? How can we pay for the costs of healthcare? Why can't our trusted institutions behave ethically? What's the cause of governmental gridlock? How can we afford to educate our children? How do we stop damaging the ecosystem? Why do we create ugliness? Author Marty Neumeier suggests that these problems are merely symptoms of a much larger problemour inability to deal with interconnected, non-linear, and amorphous challenges. It's not that our problems are too difficult, he argues, but that our skills are too basic. Success in the post-industrial era demands that we move our thinking from the static, the linear, and the step-by-step to the dynamic, the holistic, and the all-at-once. In this sweeping vision for personal mastery in a post-industrial era, Neumeier presents five metaskills feeling, seeing, dreaming, making, and learningthat can help you reach your true potential. They'll keep you two or three steps ahead of the machines, the algorithms, and the outsourcing forces of the "robot curve". They'll also bring you greater creativity, higher purpose, and a deeper sense of fulfillment. Metaskillsis more than a manifesto. It's a compass for visionary leaders, policymakers, educators, and planners. It's a creative framework for designers, engineers, scientists, and artists. It's a picture of the future that allows people from a wide range of disciplines, industries, and professions to envision new ways to create value together. Perhaps more important, it's a long-overdue examination of what it means to be human in the 21st century.

 

Marty Neumeier is a designer, writer, and business adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of creativity to industry. His recent series of “whiteboard” books includes The Designful Company, about the role of design in corporate innovation; Zag, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time” for its insights into radical differentiation; and The Brand Gap, considered by many the foundational text for modern brand-building.

In the 1990s Neumeier was editor and publisher of Critique magazine, the first journal about design thinking. He has also worked closely with innovative companies such as Apple, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft to help advance their brands and cultures. Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency in Silicon Valley, and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of innovation, brand, and design. Between trips, he and his wife spend their time in California and southwest France.