Education in the “Great Inflection”

According to author Thomas L. Friedman, passion and curiosity are gaining as much importance as intelligence in today’s job market.  Pursuing a subject of intrigue may be more important than ever for students today.  We live in a hyperconnected world, where connection takes just the click of a button.  Technological advances affect how we work, learn, and live.

A recent op-ed by Friedman in the New York Times, titled “It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q.,” suggests that we are in the midst of a “Great Inflection.”  He observes that in the last decade “The world went from connected to hyperconnected in a way that is impacting every job, industry and school, but was largely disguised by post-9/11 and the Great Recession.” The piece discusses hyper-connectivity in terms of the job market: employees now must go beyond demonstrating knowledge by adding extra value to the job in comparison to other alternatives.  Mainly, these “other alternatives” involve working efficiently and creatively with new technology. According to Friedman, the shift will require individual initiative. “We know that it will be vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime.” What are your thoughts?  What is the impact of P.Q. and C.Q.?  How do we help gifted students pursue P.Q. and C.Q. to complement their I.Q.? For more information on how students are adapting to the age of technology, review the Winter Issue of CTD's Talent Newsletter.