经济学人下载:自助,我的远大前程

Second, they need a “big-ideas crowd” who can keep them mentally fresh. This echoes the discussion of “managed serendipity” in last year’s business bestseller, “The Power of Pull”, in which John Hagel and John Seely Brown argued that the successful worker of the future will live in clusters of talented, open-minded people and spend a lot of time going to thought-provoking conferences. Third, they need a “regenerative community” to maintain their emotional capital, meaning family and friends in the real world “with whom you laugh, share a meal, tell stories and relax”.

第二，人们需要一个“大想法团”，这样可以保持思想上的新鲜，这和去年畅销商业书籍《拉动的力量》中讨论的“有管理的意外发现”相呼应；在这部畅销书中，约翰.海格尔和约翰.塞利.布朗认为，未来成功的工作人士应该居住在开放和有才华的人之中并且会花大量时间参加启迪思想的聚会。第三，人们需要一个“再生团体”来维护情绪资本，也即现实中“可以一起欢笑、一起吃饭、一起讲故事和放松”的朋友和家庭。

In a world where more people may work from home, there is a danger that they will become isolated. One remedy is the emergence of “collaborative workspaces” or “hubs” in big cities around the world. These are often more than shared offices with hot desks for people who prefer to be with other people even if they are not working for the same employer. The hub operator may also organise courses for professional development—on marketing or taxation, say—and social events.

在一个多数人都在家工作的世界，可能会有人和人相互隔绝的危险，一个可能的解决办法就是全球大城市中“协作工作区或工作中心”的出现，而这些地方也不仅仅是供那些为不同雇主工作、同时情愿和大家待在一块儿的人共享的办公地。这些工作中心的运营者也可以组织一些职业发展的课程（比关于营销或者关于税收）和社会活动。

Moreover, working from home will not be so isolating if home is next door to where potential workmates live. As Richard Florida argues in “The Rise of the Creative Class”, talented knowledge workers are choosing to cluster together in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London and Shanghai so they can interact with each other easily, both formally and serendipitously. This has obvious implications for the price of property and other goods and services in areas where these workers choose to live, work, play, mingle and spend some of their ever-growing wealth.

此外，如果隔壁住着的就是潜在的同事，那么在家工作就不一定是那么与世隔绝了。就像理查德.佛罗里达在《创造阶层的崛起》中说的那样，有才华有知识的工人正在逐渐选择向纽约、洛杉矶、伦敦和上海这些城市聚集，这样他们可以更方便地以正式和非正式的方式互动；这些人将在这生活、工作、娱乐和社交，同时花掉他们不断累积的财富，这对这些区域的房价和物价也会有明显的影响。

Ms Gratton’s main message—that workers will have to take responsibility for their own future—makes good sense. People who work their way up the corporate ladder in the traditional “Organisation Man” way will increasingly be the exception—and that is surely a good thing. “The pleasures of the traditional working role were the certainty of a parent-child relationship. You could leave it in the hands of the corporation to make the big decisions about your working life,” Ms Gratton explains. Now the world is moving towards an “adult-adult” relationship, which will require “each one of us to take a more thoughtful, determined and energetic approach to exercising the choices available to us”.

格拉顿女士传递的主要讯息——工作人士将不得不为他们的未来负责——是非常有意义的。传统在大公司里逐步上爬的“组织人”的工作方式将会越来越少见——而且这也肯定是个好事。格拉顿女士解释到：“传统工作角色的好处在于一种父子关系式的确定性，你可以把个人职业生涯的大问题丢给组织来决定。” 现在的世界正向一个成人式的关系发展，这种关系要求“每个人都用更关注、更坚定和更活跃的方式来做出选择”。