Some valued abilities in a globalized world.

From Russ Robert's Econtalk podcast interview with Dan Pink, contributing editor at Wired:

1. Design. "The MFA is the new MBA." Well, not quite yet, but maybe someday.

2. Story. Commercials tell entertaining stories to sell products. Narrative can be used as a teaching tool.

3. Symphony. Coordinating different skills and areas of knowledge; having multiple skill sets, and overlapping them.

4. Empathy. Emotional knowledge.

5. Play. A vital component of creativity.

6. Meaning. See the big picture.

These abilities are hard to automate (and outsource). They exist at the intersection of business and art. According to Pink, the most valuable worker can combine literacy and numeracy, creativity and business sense.

These abilities, to me, are a huuuuge part of meaningful work. Nice that they're also the wave of the future economy.

First entry.

"What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, 'Blessed is the man who has found his work'? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great."

--Mark Twain