The rise of the solopreneur: Reinvention is the key to career longevity
But first, let’s talk about career identity. Are you “in finance” or “in HR” or “in marketing?” We often get stuck in a mindset that what we trained for, or ended up in, defines us. Our work becomes our working identity. This would be all well and good if there was job security in it. However, this is far from the case these days.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM KozhikodeIIMK Chief Product Officer ProgrammeVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Chief Technology OfficerVisitIIM LucknowIIML Chief Executive Officer ProgrammeVisitFrom waves of corporate layoffs to geopolitical instability to “quiet cutting” — when an employer doesn’t fire you but reassigns you to a job you may not like — it all points to a realization that reinvention may be the order of the day when it comes to managing your career.
Enter the “solopreneur,” which literally means solo entrepreneur. I view them more broadly, though, as “freelance or part time,” and really anyone for whom dropping in and out of a fixed place on a fixed schedule matters less.
Perhaps this explains the 500 million skills LinkedIn members are adding to their profiles across the world from Australia, Brazil, India, UK and US, equating to a 56% year-on-year increase. At the launch of a new edition of her classic book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career Herminia Ibarra, a professor at London Business School, asked two hundred of us in the audience to put up our hands if either we or someone we knew had transitioned careers, or was thinking about it. About 80% of us did so.
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