The traditional 'learn for 22 years, work for 40' model is broken because the half-life of skills is rapidly shrinking. The future of education must be a continuous, lifelong relationship with learning institutions for constant re-skilling.
The strategy of acquiring incumbent companies to accelerate AI adoption is creating a new investment category. Unlike private equity, which optimizes existing assets for efficiency, this new class focuses on fundamentally transforming them into something entirely new.
As AI handles analytical tasks, the most critical human skills are those it cannot replicate: setting aspirational goals, applying nuanced judgment, and demonstrating true orthogonal creativity. This shifts focus from credentials to raw intrinsic talent.
Traditional education focuses on solving well-defined problems, a task increasingly handled by AI. The crucial skill for the next generation is creativity and Socratic dialogue—the ability to ask the right questions and imagine what the future could look like.
AI is breaking the traditional link between headcount and revenue. McKinsey is growing its client-facing workforce by 25% while simultaneously shrinking its non-client-facing staff by 25%, achieving a 10% increase in output from the shrinking group.
Despite massive enterprise spending on AI that fuels hypergrowth for companies like Anthropic, non-tech companies find it difficult to realize tangible value. This creates a conflict where CFOs question the spend while CIOs warn of disruption if they pause.
Resource-constrained startups demonstrate the future of corporate functions by bypassing HR entirely. Founders now use LLMs to write job descriptions and build custom AI agents to screen and stack-rank resumes, automating the entire top of the hiring funnel.
Venture capital is shifting from just funding disruptors to acquiring incumbent businesses, like a nonprofit health system. This provides a real-world environment for their portfolio startups to deploy and scale AI solutions, bypassing traditional enterprise sales cycles.
Leading firms are deploying personalized AI agents at a massive scale. McKinsey already has 25,000 agents for its 40,000 employees and expects to reach parity within the year. The key skill is shifting from doing work to conducting an 'orchestra' of agents.
Relying on corporate training programs is a losing strategy. To stand out in an era where training an employee can take longer than building an AI agent, young people must prove their skills upfront through unsolicited, high-value spec work.