Providence

Recently I had the honor of being on a panel about the Future of Work for this year’s Academy of Management annual conference. Academic researchers, publishers, and practitioners gathered to talk through the current trends, outlook, and ideas within the future of work space. The following is a short set of observations I shared while on the panel.

In nature, an ecosystem can be a forest, a tundra, a prairie, or even an urban neighborhood. When it comes to innovation, experience shows that a community of interacting organizations and diverse individuals leads to greater collective results. An innovation ecosystem supports the start of new companies and the growth of existing ones. In 2014, Steven Byler and Dan Gertrudes, cofounders of GrowthLab Financial, were both looking for a place to grow a business and the people to grow it with.