Meet Skinner Layne, who has both founded and raised capital for startups, consulted NASDAQ-traded companies on technology, structured cross-border investments and now claims that… startups are dead!

Why? Skinner believes that the Creative Economy is already disrupting large corporations, and the Venture Capital model of startup investing relies on startups aspiring to become large corporations, or to be absorbed by them. But as this entire food chain breaks down, entrepreneurs are going to soon find even themselves disrupted.

According to Skinner, the way to survive this massive change in the fundamental nature of the global economy starts with a fundamental understanding of yourself, the willingness to constantly reinvent yourself, the ability to build and maintain a vast global network, and deep Self Reliance.

Before we hear Skinner from the stage of LOGIN Startup Fair, we asked him what defines the Creative Economy he’s building his current startup around and what skills are important in the Creative Economy.

How would you define creative economy and what are the main differences from a traditional one?

Well, it's important to understand that there's no such thing as a "traditional economy," but rather than humankind has progressed from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agrarian economy to an industrial economy to the information economy to now the creative economy. Each of these transitions has been characterized by the automation of critical tasks and the re-specialization of labour into new tasks. So where the industrial economy started using machines to make things, and to produce food, the information economy started using machines to make other machines. As that transition is being completed with Artificial Intelligence, where machines now program other machines to make machines, we are now at the cusp of a circumstance where all forms of repetitive labour are going to be done by machines, meaning that humans will have to constantly create new things that never existed in order to provide themselves a living.

Who will be the most successful in the times of creative economy?

The most successful people will be those who are adaptable, paying close attention to emerging opportunities and subtle changes in customer demand and preference and who can quickly learn new skills, are willing to try new things and constantly be experimenting on themselves and absorbing new ideas. Thus, the only skill that really matters in the creative economy is learning how to learn.

Who faces the biggest challenges whilst transitioning to a creative economy?

Industrial-style organizations are probably most endangered by this transition, which includes most companies of all sizes, and the individuals who work for them and are accustomed to stability. The stability of a job and a monthly salary that characterized the industrial economy and the information economy will no longer be available to most people in the creative economy, and people who continue to consume the way they did in the industrial economy will struggle with the demands of rapid adjustment required by the creative economy.

Can the entire economy be 'creative'?

Certainly it is unlikely that most people will adapt to this, and that presents clear developmental concerns for governments, but the answer to this is reforming our educational systems so that children are raised with the culture and expectations of the creative economy instead of the industrial-information economy, which is the current paradigm. This shift will necessarily have to take place over one or two generations, and current workers are not likely to all be able to make this transition. But it was effectively the same set of circumstances in past transitions, and over a couple of generations, the old paradigms were forgotten anyway, so the appropriate thing to understand is that it's a transition, not a sudden transformation and it will be led by the young.

Want to learn more about the massive transformation we’re all currently a part of? Meet Skinner at the LOGIN Startup Fair conference! Don’t forget it’s completely free for the general audience to attend!

LOGIN Startup Fair is a part of the EC initiative of Single Marker Forum. LOGIN Startup Fair conference is powered by DNB bank.