Stowe Boyd: The Ecology of Work

Stowe Boyd is someone who’s writing I’ve followed for a while. He publishes a fairly active blog as well as a daily newsletter. Both are excellent if you’re interested in reading about the future of work. He was also a recent guest on the Business Innovation Factory podcast.

The episode is a good one. Stowe talks about both the status quo, where roughly 35% of people are truly engaged at their job, and the future, where individuals can hopefully find meaning and purpose in their work.

There were also two metaphors that stuck with me. In talking about open-office designs Stowe says that, “Headphones are the new walls.” They’re much less effective, of course. And when talking about the role of AI he says, “We need to make sure AI isn’t like a bowling ball with no holes in it.” For him the future is teams engaging with AI to accomplish tasks and work more effectively.