1. THE 3-BUSINESS-CARD LIFE
In 2025, people will build their careers across diverse value streams. They will fashion micro-resumes, seeking endorsements and micro- credentials across multiple networks. They will cultivate a host of ever-changing roles: buying, selling, earning, producing, creating, engaging. Out of these roles, people will craft a life that integrates purpose and passion with practical strategies.
The result is perhaps a three-business-card life, where the answer to “What do you do?” is never just one thing and almost always involves creative use of multiple platforms.

2. WHAT‘S DRIVING THIS FORECAST
Structural unemployment in the global workforce
Rise of the freelance economy on the backbone of microwork platforms and algorithmic organizations
Collaborative platforms that make it easy to shift between consumer and producer roles
Corporate platforms that employ a growing precariat

3. DEMAND BUFFERS Image source: https://whatiseven.com/
The risks inherent in a world of microwork and collaborative economy platforms give rise to platforms that help people balance the 3- business card life
SIGNAL: Even is a mobile app that helps microworkers and freelance workers “even out” their income streams
SO WHAT: Employment security shifts from traditional institutions like full-time employers, labor unions, and unemployment insurance to new platforms for mitigating micro-risks
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4. INVESTMENT IN INDIVIDUALS
New loan platforms allow individuals to invest in individuals with compelling stories if not great credit scores
SIGNAL: Pave is a platform that brokers loans between Backers and Talent, designed to fund people early in their careers
SO WHAT: Money from individual investors gets funneled into creative, talented, and committed entrepreneurs outside the traditional world of venture capitalism and traditional banks
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5. META SERVICES Image source: https://www.joinbreeze.com/
New platforms exploit new niches in the collaborative economy to reorganize the way people meet basic needs
SIGNAL: Founded in 2014 by former employees of Uber, Homejoy, Twitter, and Google, Breeze leases cars to job-seekers for on-demand work as well as personal use
SO WHAT: Collaborative work engenders new pathways and platforms for consumption, linking personal consumption more tightly into earning strategies
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6. COOPERATIVE PLATFORM OWNERSHIP
Community-owned platforms use emerging BitCoin-like strategies to turn collaborative platforms into true sharing platforms
SIGNAL: La’Zooz is a Lyft-like, community owned transporation platform that uses a “fair share” reward algorithm for developers, users, and backers
SO WHAT: New architectures and ownership structures make turn workers into community members with multiple roles
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7. THE NEXT FIVE YEARS
The collaborative economy levels up as new services build on foundational platforms to fill emerging needs
A new ecosystem of micro-entrepreneurs, micro-credentials, and micro-payments reorganizes the flows of value that underpin daily life
New accounting structures help individuals navigate this new ecosystem of micro value flows
New financial instruments crowdfund individuals with time- limited equity investments in return for a portion of future earnings

8. TEN-YEAR SCENARIO
By 2025, the simple, unified narratives of career and family life that organized the 20th century are frayed beyond repair. Fragmentation is a way of life as people pursue multiple, individualized paths to everything from learning to putting food on the table. Day-to-day and over time, people juggle work-for- pay with work-for-what-they-love and work-for-the- communities-they-occupy. These 3-business-card lives are both risky and rewarding but some people experience more risk while others experience more reward. Still, the systems for balancing risk with reward are being rapidly built out—platform by platform and algorithm by algorithm—as it is clear that returning to the stability of large institutions is neither in the public nor private interest.