Teenagers are building entire businesses with AI while many of us are still wrestling with our first ChatGPT prompts. The pace of change can feel dizzying, but in an era of zugzwang, FOMO and FOBS, staying relevant isn’t about being the youngest or flashiest. It’s about experience, adaptability, and wisdom.
In this keynote, Nigel Dalton from Thoughtworks will explore why the AI revolution can’t be left to the kids, or the coders alone. Mid-career professionals bring the judgment, resilience and systems thinking needed to lead through complexity. Yet organisations are stuck with a dual challenge: racing toward innovation while dragging along tech debt, broken cultures, and legacy systems. Drawing on insights across product, marketing, HR, technology and leadership, Nigel makes the case for why every generation needs to be part of the AI story.
This is a call to action for individuals and organisations to rethink how we work, learn and lead in a machine-accelerated world. Because yes, teenagers may have AI startups. But midlife has wisdom. So, who wins?
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:32:21
Speaker 2
we might kick off, I can say numbers are still trickling out, but, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for joining this session as part of our Future Skills Fest, which is a week of conversations exploring how we work, learn, and lead in a world of constant change. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land we're joining from today, I'm speaking to you from the beautiful Macedon Ranges on Jaga Wurrung country, and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
00:00:32:23 - 00:01:03:15
Speaker 2
First Nations people are, of course, the original storytellers. Now to set the scene, teenagers are building entire businesses with AI, while many of us are still wrestling with our first ChatGPT prompts, this pace of change can feel dizzying, but staying relevant isn't always about being the youngest or the flashiest. It's about experience, adaptability, and wisdom. And that's why I'm so excited to welcome our speaker, Nigel Dalton, who is a social scientist at ThoughtWorks.
00:01:03:17 - 00:01:27:09
Speaker 2
Across his 35 year career, Nigel has been at the heart of the intersection of technology and business, helping organizations navigate disruption, embrace innovation and become truly modern digital businesses. Now, before we dive in a little bit of quick housekeeping, we'd love to get to some of your questions, so please pop them in the zoom Q&A chat.
00:01:27:11 - 00:01:47:05
Speaker 2
And we'll save ten minutes for them at the end of this discussion. Just make sure you address them to all panelists and attendees. So that everyone can follow along, and we'll get to as many as possible. Also, please feel free to share some of the lessons and takeaways that you have from this session. Put them on LinkedIn and make sure you tag RMIT online.
00:01:47:07 - 00:02:03:08
Speaker 2
Because we'll actually be on the lookout for some of the best lessons. And there's a few, free future skills short courses up for grabs in that as well. And so with all of that said and done, please join me in welcoming Nigel and Nigel. Take it away.
00:02:03:10 - 00:02:25:13
Speaker 1
Thanks Jen, What a time to be talking about the future. Absolutely. Just the most interesting moment to be alive. And if I set the scene today before i even get started.,It's like I know it's chaotic out there. I know it's a bit crazy and you worried about what your kids are going to do those kind of things. But trust me, to be alive at such an interesting time in history is a tremendous, tremendous thing.
00:02:25:15 - 00:02:47:21
Speaker 1
Now let me have a go at putting the slides up. So 35 years experience in technology. I still struggle with this. Let's give that a go. I want that to go there. And if you can all see that, that's a wonderful thing. So, yes. Thanks, Jen, for the challenge. Teenagers have AI startups midlifers have wisdom.
00:02:47:21 - 00:03:09:09
Speaker 1
Who's going to win? Who's winning? This is me, Nigel Dalton. I'm a thought worker. It's a global company. We kind of an interdisciplinary consultancy approaching tech issues and, immediately revealed my New Zealand accent by calling them tick issues. But you know what I'm talking about. There'll be subtitles on the video anyway. And my role is very interesting.
00:03:09:09 - 00:03:29:03
Speaker 1
I've been through a long period of history, lived through these times when, you know, that would have been a very cool watch. And now I have one, you know, like with storage and a magic screen. And I was into virtual reality, and I was, you know, lived since the 70s when R2d2 and C3po were what the future of robotics really looked like.
00:03:29:05 - 00:03:34:23
Speaker 2
Nigel, I'm just jumping on to interrupt you. We can actually see your speaking out, but
00:03:35:00 - 00:03:45:19
Speaker 1
Oh, okay. I'm going to stop sharing and go back. It wasn't going to be any any tragedy of that other than the fact you couldn't really see it.
00:03:45:19 - 00:03:47:01
Speaker 1
Okay. How's that?
00:03:47:04 - 00:03:48:06
Speaker 2
That's perfect.
00:03:48:08 - 00:04:09:12
Speaker 1
All right. Very good. And as you can see, I have to write down my favorite Japanese word, because I can I can never remember it. And I guess when you get to 60, you can be accused of being hard to recognize og some, which is, old man who does nothing in the office. And I make it my life's existence to not be that person.
00:04:09:12 - 00:04:33:22
Speaker 1
But, you know, old people are you know, ThoughtWorks has a great respect for the use that we bring to the conversation, and I hope to share some of that with you today. So let's just go. The quote old age and treachery will always overcome youth and exuberance. Well, it has multiple different accreditations to it. Faster. If you're a cyclist, the the great Fausto Coppi
00:04:33:22 - 00:05:05:01
Speaker 1
Copy the Italian champion, as he was aging is reputed to have said it, but I think the most reliable quote comes from a David Mumet and David, what was probably the 20th century's, one of the top definitely prioritable of all time, capturing a society in turmoil from the 60s, 70s, 80s that time. And, when you worked in real estate, as I did at real estate.com value for a long time, you're very familiar with his play Glengarry Glen Ross, which is, from 1983.
00:05:05:03 - 00:05:36:16
Speaker 1
And it's kind of a morality tale of, life and work. And, as an observer of people, I think this is an interesting place to start that not that we're old and treacherous as a necessity, but today we're going to talk a bit about the value of youth and exuberance and how that's playing out for people. And, you know, RMIT online is in both businesses, you know, teaching you, perhaps in your older years or later middle career years, a little bit of good, well, ordered treachery, no bad thing.
00:05:36:18 - 00:06:08:23
Speaker 1
Also famous for Always Be Closing In and Coffee is for closers and various other fun quotes that, I do, I do love. So anyway. Bit off literature there for you to start the day. Keep it high volume. This is what teens are referring to. How a 16 year old launched an AI company. You know, there's Toby Brown was in the UK now in the USA you know, media sensation, I think 16 or 17 years old, wrapped ChatGPT or some other large language model and got 1 million pounds in funding.
00:06:08:23 - 00:06:34:01
Speaker 1
I don't know how we kind of at the end of the line, there's always going to be this 1% that do make it, but the evidence suggests that teenagers do have startups. Here's Josh Jefford from Australia. And there's the quote. There is the magnificent quote that teenagers are building business with AI. So we’re gonna examine the truth of that, the opportunity that lies in that and whether you are really going to miss out.
00:06:34:01 - 00:07:00:03
Speaker 1
And is this going to be such a life and societally, formally and changing the thing? I found this picture on the internet. This is how the bedrooms of, those teenagers who are altering the universe by building ChatGPT based AI. This is how they look. You don't know that. And you all know I was because that's more like the typical teenager's bedroom, which is,
00:07:00:06 - 00:07:36:21
Speaker 1
I don't think it's a great place to launch, AI based startups from necessarily. And this is probably a really key place to start digging into some facts, because we do have some data around who does have businesses in Australia. And the sad thing is, I mean, the first sad things I don't have any 2025 data and you have 2024 data, but if we go to some government data, only about 8% of small businesses in Australia are owned by people under 30, 8%, and the vast majority are owned by people over 50.
00:07:36:21 - 00:08:06:18
Speaker 1
Now, startups, which in the definition of what is a business is not that that maybe 20% i’m struggling for data on that one. There's not been a lot of research done because the startup organizations have got a lot of priorities. And since 2023, a lot's changed in terms of the arrival of ChatGPT and the large language models and the, you know, in the likes of Toby, and co starting up these things and ending up on the front page.
00:08:06:20 - 00:08:30:10
Speaker 1
But it's especially volatile right now. And ultimately I think, you know, kids with ChatGPT or Claude or any of the things that are going to write the prototype of, of a startup or, or a business. And let's be sure there's a difference in our understanding between what is a business where you work. It's growing up. It makes money in a startup where the predominant thing is eating pot noodles.
00:08:30:15 - 00:08:57:15
Speaker 1
And I do love AI’s pot noodles as good as they could get them. Maybe that's a brand I should launch, but really, the I think that the that that we love a story of hardship and obsession, which is the story that we glamorize around young people coding over the weekend and building a business. No, they build code, they build a prototype, and they, you know, leveraged a large language model because they didn't have anything else on the weekend.
00:08:57:17 - 00:09:20:16
Speaker 1
Certainly didn't have a family to feed. Or if, you know, moderately middle class, you you're not eating pot noodles, you're having bread and broccoli and chocolate and good red wine. But I think it's really important to be really sober about whether you're at a stage in life you can afford to eat pot noodles, or you're at a stage in life where you've got a mortgage, children, family.
00:09:20:16 - 00:09:48:14
Speaker 1
You're in the sandwich between an elder generation and the younger or otherwise it's and not to be taken by headlines, those kind of things because it's it's really is quite wild at the moment then I, you know, I'll advertise my own LinkedIn profile a fellow called Georgio Phidias, who's founder of a business called sheldon and had the most brutally honest, insight into the his adventures with a startup called called Sheldon.
00:09:48:14 - 00:10:09:13
Speaker 1
And, you know, the race that is on and the and the drama that AI brings to that race is actually making it harder because a, the industry is it's not a product driven race anymore. It's a headline driven race. If you want capital, it's driven entirely by people just waiting for the next generation of AI to come out.
00:10:09:15 - 00:10:29:14
Speaker 1
And as he said, we weren't losing to competitors. We were losing to the option of businesses to wait So that's a volatile time to be here and kind of goes. And I think we got some in the Debits column around teenagers having AI and building businesses, and we'll continue on that. And how how do they learn AI? How should you learn AI?
00:10:29:14 - 00:10:55:09
Speaker 1
Well, you've got to be super careful where you go online and, you know, you're in the right place here. I'll be biased and say, there's a lot of money in the AI industry and a ton of it is being made in not such high quality education. So that's what you need to find people you trust. And, you know, this is the face of fear here is that, oh, you're all going to die if you don't master this.
00:10:55:09 - 00:11:27:18
Speaker 1
And, you know, do your homework. Because not all online education is equal. The, the the whole the the whole bro oligarchy, the bro oligarchy that is surrounded. This is massive, you know, and very put up, provocative. So to get cut through there, having to produce advertising campaigns like this and it often is ahead of its time and that's an it is like is anything to instill great fear in, you know, that I'm going to lose my job to an AI.
00:11:27:18 - 00:12:03:08
Speaker 1
And that that's really the goal is through fear to stimulate you into action, spending money with one of those, broligarchs and that, like, it's not just people who are in and doing the actual work in the middle of their career. Otherwise, it might also be there's my favorite AI because I've sat in enough executive teams where in all honesty, people have standard questions and standard insights and wisdoms that we could have just fed this PowerPoint deck into the CEO team or the executive team AI, and got the same answer out as Tim's of the wisdom.
00:12:03:08 - 00:12:28:01
Speaker 1
And he's someone's done it sweetly, have done a makes me laugh and it's brilliant. But I do love a good a good word to kind of crystallize where we're at. And here's here's some of my favorites of this year is zugzwang, FOMO and Forbs. And it's about, you know, zugzwang. We'll start with it's a chess position. It's a chess term that you would use.
00:12:28:03 - 00:12:52:11
Speaker 1
There's some great stuff written around this on archive.org, particularly around security. And it's the German word that means you playing chess and you feeling this compulsion to move, not the least of which because it's there's a clock ticking for your move. But you know that every move you take will probably worsen your position on the board. I don't know if you've played cards or chess or any any game like that.
00:12:52:11 - 00:13:12:22
Speaker 1
You kind of know, oh, online game. And, you know, this moment, if I move, I'm going to die. I'm going to get shot by that ant over there or whatever it is. And this is very much a good description of where we feel ourselves today. If thinking about our careers, thinking about our works, like, oh my goodness, if I do that, it'll be the wrong thing.
00:13:12:22 - 00:13:32:18
Speaker 1
If I do that, if I if I just stand still, I'll be right. But then you can't stand still. And so that's why you're feeling the dissonance in your head is zugzwang, FOMO, simple fear of missing out. So many people go, oh, if I don't start now, it'll be, it'll be. I'd be too late. And the other one FOBS fear of being suckered.
00:13:32:20 - 00:13:57:00
Speaker 1
That's actually worse. And these three things are going round and round in your head. Like, you know, they talk about the three wolves inside your head. These are just the three words inside your head. And it's likely to lead you to doing nothing, which is probably the worst case scenario. So now I'm here as a 61 year old to tell you all about the fact I've been here before.
00:13:57:02 - 00:14:18:08
Speaker 1
So those of us who are old enough to remember a thing called the world wide Web being introduced to the world in 98, 99 and the year 2000. Well, here we go again. So let's let's have a review of what that means for us. I've lived through several decades of this. Technology will absolutely change the world of work.
00:14:18:10 - 00:14:53:08
Speaker 1
We will need half the number of salespeople, half the number of engineers, and half the number of everything and you know what? maybe one of those devices, maybe this magical device has been one that has created some extra productivity in the workplace, but I don't know that any of them lived up to this threat. So this is why now, when I hear from all of the AI kind of top ten who are driving the conditions of the current environment, they're driving the Standard and pools 500 index, there's huge amounts of the value have come from the ten companies in video.
00:14:53:08 - 00:15:15:03
Speaker 1
Microsoft, OpenAI, etc. I'm not convinced you going to have to work harder to make me believe, after living through all of these, that we've got a real revolution on our hands. And if I go back and I have a collection of wired magazines, which I collected when I moved to America in 2000, and I love to go back through them and see the hype that was there.
00:15:15:05 - 00:15:42:00
Speaker 1
And those of you who were there might remember that those of you on the call were three years old at the time. Got no idea that the exact same emotional crisis so many people are feeling today in their careers was there at the time. That's I love this ad for Sun Microsystems for that Dot, which on the 50th anniversary of, jaws, I think is a wonderful ad to be reflecting on the dot in .com
00:15:42:00 - 00:16:09:08
Speaker 1
It was going to come and it was the shark. It was the 30ft shock that was going to come and eat us all. If you didn't have a website, you're going to be killed. It was just. And so people then rushed to create the bizarist of websites, and one of my favorite posts in recent times is this fellow here who, that has created an website with all the tooling and all the constraints of 1999.
00:16:09:10 - 00:16:32:08
Speaker 1
So people were so desperate to get the web which insert AI there was so desperate they would do this quality of stuff, because that was all that was really possible with the technology at the time. It's a wonderful story and I will share the link later on, but that's kind of with there in terms of AI today. That's the thing.
00:16:32:10 - 00:16:53:19
Speaker 1
And you got to make that choice. You got to leap. And it's very hard because you're all, you know, you're all discombobulated by this scenario where I get it feels like a game. And there are so many aliens out there trying to shoot you in the Space Invaders game of artificial intelligence and and careers. That is very, very confusing.
00:16:53:19 - 00:17:21:21
Speaker 1
And there's a lot of inventions which are really half baked. And this is the thing to think about. We're in this liminal middle time as all these threats coming at us every moment of the day. We're tempted to make this kind of a thing with our businesses and our opportunities, and that processes accordingly. So this is kind of like the this is a weird halfway house between a horse and a cart and then a car.
00:17:21:21 - 00:17:46:13
Speaker 1
And this is the thinking that occurs. And this is the stage we're in right now. We're not taking the chance to to leverage the hyper personalization capabilities. The technology's not that fantastic anyway. And so this is where we are today. We're anchored in this ridiculous period that in ten years we will all look back and laugh upon. And I really I need you to blame the Labubu
00:17:46:13 - 00:18:14:09
Speaker 1
That that that's really the the kind of the economists conclusion of the moment is that as a society that can create like a generational gap between a group of younger people who've just given up on the capitalist promises. And I think we see this especially in, millennials, and they've maybe got Gen-X parents who they were the last to really buy into this.
00:18:14:11 - 00:18:34:22
Speaker 1
If you work hard and take on the extra assignments, you get career progress and career security, and they're able to buy a house and have a family and then succeed through to retirement. Well, I'm on the other end of that and I just scraped through that game. You know, I'm still a little bit short of the last chapter, but I'm okay with that.
00:18:34:24 - 00:19:07:08
Speaker 1
So the economists I follow, they Labubus and fart coins are the two commodities that a whole generation so disaffected, having seen their parents laid off twice, seeing them working nights and weekends and not getting the promotions. So we now have this giant gap emerging accordingly that we're then going to try and apply AI to. But the existence of the Labubu and, you know, we're talking $2 billion a year worth of sales of these gorgeous little nine inch things.
00:19:07:10 - 00:19:31:23
Speaker 1
That's a real sign that something's not quite right and maybe a bit different. None of us signed up for this on our bingo card in 2025. Like, I wasn't expecting that sort of thing and we weren't expecting. So these three brands, I mean, my beloved orange Sky laundry there in Hawke's Bay in New Zealand, where I live, Porsche and Rolex and Orange Sky, had three, had something in common in 2024.
00:19:32:00 - 00:20:00:09
Speaker 1
It was the biggest year in history that Porsche has had a tough year since then. But how is this possible that again, this dichotomy between rich and poor becoming so enormous? And how do you navigate through the middle of that with your career? So this is why it's all very confusing to try and figure out. Is it these teenagers with, open AI chat bots gonna knock us all out of work accordingly.
00:20:00:11 - 00:20:25:07
Speaker 1
And there's this huge cynicism about what work has become. And if you follow so many commentators, you know, white collar work is just meetings. Now, that was a tremendous, article written in The Atlantic. It's like, oh, man, that actually makes some sense. And we're all turning up to work. And when and if we've got to go into the office, we're all diving into these booths to have zoom conversations with each other because we changed the way of working.
00:20:25:07 - 00:20:53:05
Speaker 1
Work is now known by the young folk as the email factory. And this would be statistic of the year when it comes to AI in our lives, is that 1 in 6 US workers pretends to use AI to please the boss, so they've got Gemini open or Copilot open when they walk around behind them, or they've got tracking software on them and they are larping they, live action role playing.
00:20:53:07 - 00:21:13:17
Speaker 1
And this is interesting. Like, wow, what what human behavior did we incite here from the way we were kind of scaffolding the work and the teams and the structure. And, there’s a little too much larping in Australia for my liking. And, our job is to kind of work up to that in a little bit and fundamentally.
00:21:13:17 - 00:21:39:00
Speaker 1
Our problem comes down to this. We had seven quarters in a row of GDP declining. Now you go no, no, that's not right, Nigel. We've seen GDP. We've got economic growth. We're not in recession. Well, the dilemma is I'm measuring in a different way and I'm going, despite all of those technologies, gross domestic product per hour worked has declined for seven quarters in a row.
00:21:39:00 - 00:22:08:21
Speaker 1
So hold on. This doesn't add up. We've had all these productivity tools, an amazing things, and one person can do the work of two with ChatGPT. How is this possible? And this is the core thing we need to be understanding about. Work. Work and productivity are not related to the individual people in an organization. They're related to teams and teams in a complex, reliable environment where they reliant on other teams.
00:22:08:23 - 00:22:42:24
Speaker 1
AI has yet to prove itself useful in that world. So the those core capabilities around creativity and management and problem solving and critical thinking they are actually still in play, according, you know, software ate the world there was a guy Marken Drayson way back, who was telling us in 2011 that the reason he was investing away from hardware and data centers in Silicon Valley at Andreessen Horowitz to software and software as a service, was he saw that that was going to be the trend.
00:22:42:24 - 00:23:12:20
Speaker 1
It was very, very kind of prophetic of him to see that, because it definitely did happen, but to operate the world. There's still tons more jobs and productivity is still no better. And look at this. The average American worker takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant That's a wonderful and shocking piece of research. Accordingly, so we've got this is the the kind of that dissonance of do people believe that AI is really capable of taking their jobs?
00:23:12:20 - 00:23:34:06
Speaker 1
Is it going to restructure organizations? What's going to happen? And part of the challenge is that there's a lot of performative mentioning of AI when it comes to laying people off to try and address this problem by making the remaining 90% you didn't lay off do the work of the other ten, It's a relatively simple approach to increasing productivity.
00:23:34:08 - 00:24:03:06
Speaker 1
But no, I, as someone who has as Jen said lived through decades of the introduction of all kinds of technologies, I'm shocked by these numbers. I would have thought we would have doubled productivity. I saw some great research which showed that it takes as long to make a decision to invest a block of money in a product or an idea or a research program in 2025, as it did in 1965.
00:24:03:08 - 00:24:27:23
Speaker 1
My my old dad is 90, he confirmed This is that, you know, he just saw an ever increasing number of committees and processes and bureaucracy and dependencies and the demand I will get some more data to give us more certainty in a world where actually certainty is quite difficult to create, the more complex we become. So this this is the context for that.
00:24:27:23 - 00:24:52:11
Speaker 1
You trying to make a decision in life is I mean, where are you going to invest your time? And is it worth jumping on this bandwagon and ensuring that all the teenagers don't steal our jobs? Well, let's go back to, David Mamet always be closing. It's a famous kind of a exhortation about, you need to close deals, copies for closes.
00:24:52:11 - 00:25:16:03
Speaker 1
You know, there's first prize. Second prize, and and third prizes. You're fired kind of thing. Well, let that aggressive era. I think there's a bit of that performative of management starting to emerge again. But I love this quote, very recent from Kamil Banc on Substack. The hardest part isn't learning new skills. It's abandoning the identity that made you successful.
00:25:16:05 - 00:25:42:17
Speaker 1
And whether you are a person who used to be that one person in an office who could do the pivot table, I divide the world into two. There's people who can do pivot tables and excel, and there's those of us who can't. Well, that's now doable with, copilot or any of even ChatGPT is talking to Microsoft now and then having that identity as being the go to person in an office who was the one you went to.
00:25:42:19 - 00:26:24:22
Speaker 1
And my case, it's it's a friend called Nigel. Or ironically, Nigel can do pivot tables. And so abandoning that identity that you build as the person who can do that and the person who can solve these things is a psychological problem. You know, if there's any psychologists on the call, they'll tell you how complex that is to undo two things that you've created as your own scaffolding in life, you know, and sort of when I left university, which is 1984, so in the workforce in 1995, you can only imagine my horror at that point on my career that I had to learn to type.
00:26:24:24 - 00:26:54:24
Speaker 1
So I'd gone through school. I don't even know. I mean, it's pretty sexist times the 70s. I don't think boys could do typing as a, as an elective. You could do woodwork, but you couldn't do typing. And to discover that this whole new skill was the bottleneck between me and actually working, whether it was on files or word processing or whatever it was going to be, was a huge shock to me.
00:26:55:01 - 00:27:22:03
Speaker 1
I'd typed a few things, like one finger painfully in my last year doing my dissertation, and it was a lot to abandon my identity as someone who, I mean, typing was an absolutely gendered profession back then. They had the typing pool and people had secretaries who did the typing for them, and we had dicta-Phones were the highest of technologies.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:45:02
Speaker 1
So my point is that today typing is prompting. So there's, Mavis Beacon, the famous person who taught me to type way back in the day and taught so many of us to type and survive in the economy of the 1980s and 90s, as computers became core to our tools she needs. So I think her children run that business.
00:27:45:02 - 00:28:03:17
Speaker 1
Now they need to run a prompting equivalent of the same thing. But you're going to have to walk up to this one, I'm afraid, in the same way I did with typing. So here's here's my one diagram to rule them all. It's probably very small on your screen, so I apologize, but this talk alone is normally an hour.
00:28:03:19 - 00:28:32:09
Speaker 1
I want you to, take on this as a possibility for framing the world you're going into now and thinking about your career and thinking about, I've only got 20 years to go. Surely this can go away. Well, it's not because I follow a brilliant theorist called Doctor Sonia Berliner, who built the greatest kind of metaphor, which is that we all used to work in a zoo, and you probably think yeah my offices is a bit of a zoo sometimes.
00:28:32:09 - 00:28:53:06
Speaker 1
But no, she's what she's talking about is a metaphorical, complicated process. So a zoo, you're going to take photographs of wild animals, but the pathways are concreted. There's signposts, timetables. You'll exit through the gift shop and you know it is all very safe. The animals are not out of their cages into breeding and ganging up on you at all.
00:28:53:06 - 00:29:18:03
Speaker 1
It's all incredibly ordered. This is how work used to be in the 90s in the naughts Everyone stayed in their cage and this was great because you didn't feel any kind of looming threat of stuff coming out of the forest and stealing your lunch, or worse. You know, that was a very useful time to be, good at process, good at, just managing stuff.
00:29:18:05 - 00:29:41:14
Speaker 1
But now, Sonja points out, it's better to think of yourself as being on a safari, a work safari, a career safari. There are no paths, there's no signposts, no timetables. The animals are all hiding, collaborating. Some of them are eating each other, which is horrific, and they could come from anywhere. And to navigate in the jungle, you need a new mindset.
00:29:41:16 - 00:30:07:09
Speaker 1
And that mindset involves getting comfortable with being lost. It gets involved in being comfortable with going what it feels to be backwards for a time, because that's kind of what learning is about. And, you know, that's that's at the core and has been from the psychology of learning for a long time. It's a little bit about The Undoing and it's a little bit about feeling lost.
00:30:07:11 - 00:30:33:11
Speaker 1
Now the complexity of the jungle is it's not it's not just the jungle. This stuff happening in there. And there's four big things I talk about a lot. And in particular, they are climate crisis. That's adding complexity. The jungle that didn't used to exist and we the crazy, I mean, the simple things about cost of insurance and that's causing wild uncertainty in our lives, aging citizens.
00:30:33:13 - 00:30:58:03
Speaker 1
I'll talk about a little, but that's a massive force. So, I mean, I don't think the great you know, Einstein said the greatest force in history was compound interest. I actually think it's aging because it literally, as, you know, someone who's on that Twilight run now, I can't stop it. And it's really, really noticeable. I love the businesses that have tackled aging as an opportunity.
00:30:58:05 - 00:31:21:15
Speaker 1
And let's face it, nobody really kind of loves dealing with old people. To be fair. Like I'm, you know, I got that 90 year old dad and he's a bit deaf and, you know, he's a bit grumpy and he's asleep in the afternoons. But I'm going to talk to you about why opportunity lies within that disruptive technology, which is probably what you thought we were going to talk about today, purely just AI and all those kind of things, all that that has a role.
00:31:21:18 - 00:31:45:15
Speaker 1
And then you're starting to no doubt conclude that it's not just these things individually, but it's them weaving into each other. So how does disruptive technology start to impact aging citizens? Well, you know, good luck with, going into a bank branch with your 90 year old dad and closing an account. That's actually an incredibly difficult thing to do.
00:31:45:17 - 00:32:17:13
Speaker 1
All has to be done online, doesn't it? Our social services all have to be accessed online, so it's a massive assumption that they have access accordingly. Which brings us to the final kind of force blowing through that jungle, which is declining social equity. So this is just an expression of what you're seeing on the internet, on the television at the moment, where the world's in a tricky state, but the growth of homelessness, the growth of unemployment, the difficulty in getting access to a home, it's so much more expensive today than the Labubu generation.
00:32:17:13 - 00:32:40:08
Speaker 1
I've given up on buying a house. It's not going to happen, you know, and I think it plays out in the headlines. We have an 8 million. We have $8 million in a self-managed super fund. How can we avoid the new super tax? I gotta tell you, there's a generation of young people who didn't take kindly to that post on the internet, and this is why it's hard to navigate now.
00:32:40:10 - 00:33:05:07
Speaker 1
And, you know, you might end up spending all your money on a Labubu accordingly. But I think there's an opportunity amidst all of this chaos, as there always has been in history. So is that punk kid, you know, past teenager. In that case, that's my son. And my dad loved them dearly. Is that is he the one who's going to be figuring out solutions for this generation of the people who have the money in society?
00:33:05:07 - 00:33:28:13
Speaker 1
And look at the population pyramid here, like, this is real incredible. 1965. That's the mental picture Australians have of how our society is structured. A lot of, you know, it is a pyramid. A lot of kids now, old people and, you know, and the all the ones down the bottom are going to become taxpayers funding the life of the old folk.
00:33:28:17 - 00:33:58:03
Speaker 1
There it is in 2024. And so and it's getting worse, getting thinner and thinner. People are forgetting to have children are having only one. And this is probably a the biggest crisis the world faces in terms of changing the world of work, changing what's what's left for Willie Nelson and Keith Richards and our children and grandchildren, and about the planet we've we've built and just services in general.
00:33:58:05 - 00:34:26:08
Speaker 1
So it's in these places, these unlikely places that I believe businesses will be built in time where opportunities for existing people, the people you work for, lies in walking up to those winds and in particular, the winds of social equity and aging. Because in that remaining pyramid lies a huge amount of gold. I talk a lot about the transfer of wealth between the generations in particular.
00:34:26:10 - 00:34:52:20
Speaker 1
So in Australia, the Reserve Bank's numbers are in the 2030s, something like $230 billion billion dollars a year transitioning between those of us who are officially boomers. And as Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead. A very pragmatic economist, and that money is going to go somewhere. What are the next generation going to spend it on?
00:34:52:22 - 00:35:13:17
Speaker 1
Are they going to hoard houses like my generation have? Are they going to invest in social causes? Are they going to live hedonisticly? Are they just going to pay off their mortgage and quit their job? There's a lot of people on this call, probably kind of will face up to that question in time, but this transfer of wealth is going to be quite stunningly fascinating.
00:35:13:17 - 00:35:36:23
Speaker 1
As we hit, what was a population pyramid is now like a population Christmas tree, another place where opportunity lies. And I think you've probably got the hint that I don't think the teenagers building businesses are going to capture that audience is in the world, and particularly for Australia, around fixing the social equity problem that we all face. So I won't get political about it.
00:35:36:23 - 00:36:00:10
Speaker 1
But, you know, ultimately, I think the only way we're going to get anyone to be in the bottom of that pyramid paying taxes for it, is to let them come in with their families. This is my favorite, business. Again, advertising for the family. That's my son. They're running the community bike hub in west Footscray, where they put together a mixed business model that didn't exist before they came up with getting repaired.
00:36:00:10 - 00:36:21:00
Speaker 1
They're doing high end repairs for people at West Footscray. They're getting donor bikes. They're refitting them. They're giving to these families. That gets them mobile and active, that in a, you know, in a digital sense, is where you need to look for the future. And to get there, you're probably going to have to invest in your own education and your own learning.
00:36:21:06 - 00:36:59:10
Speaker 1
It isn't always be closing. It's always be learning because you'll need to spot these opportunities. You'll need to look up and stare This is my favorite book so, This homework. It's to read Bob Moses book demand side sales. Why is the social scientist recommending you read a sales book is because this book is career defining. Bob invented the concept called Jobs to be Done, and he did that through attention to listening to people and his incredible creative powers and his ability to put and join dots, and the dots he joined here.
00:36:59:10 - 00:37:21:08
Speaker 1
This is one of the case studies. In his book. He talks about banking and a whole range of different services he's been part of is the world of property, which you all know. I worked at real estate.com.au big in my life, huge in my life. And what he did was he went back to the first principles of product development, and he actually went and listened to customers.
00:37:21:08 - 00:37:48:09
Speaker 1
It wasn't a hippo in the jungle. The highest paid person's opinion that he listened to. He actually stood outside one of those houses on a Saturday at Lombardo property, which he'd invested in, and he listened to customers, did research, which actually, this is one of the wonders of AI, AI is damn good for some things. If you can learn to use the tools that transcribe voice to text and you're a marketer, for example, that's such a great use.
00:37:48:09 - 00:38:11:19
Speaker 1
And spotting patterns which LLMs are good at such a great use of AI. Anyway, he had conversations with these people. They were not having trouble finding a place to retire to. That wasn't a problem. Plenty of supply in Midwest America. What they were having trouble with was moving the emotional anchor of, you know what is too much hassle?
00:38:11:19 - 00:38:35:09
Speaker 1
Packing up all the stuff. And, I don't know, our niece is getting married next year. She'll take the the lounge suite, but not until next year. They haven't got their house yet. And that friction is a place to go looking for business opportunities. So he revolutionized Lombardo. He first of all, redesigned the houses so that people could bring their family table with them.
00:38:35:09 - 00:38:56:23
Speaker 1
And second of all, for every 12 houses built a storage shed for people to put the stuff in while they were figuring out what to do with having too much stuff. There's pictures of me solving that same problem with Leslie, and for my dad when he moved into his old people's home, I can tell you it's almost enough to put you off moving.
00:38:57:00 - 00:39:23:09
Speaker 1
And so it's I love that. It's like learning to think product like that is such a cool way of advancing things. And I don't think the LLM’s are going to be the ones that do that. I think people who are comfortable with talking to others, who are able to join dots are going to be the winners. At the end of the day, I don't think that could be coded in the bedroom with ChatGPT.
00:39:23:11 - 00:39:40:21
Speaker 1
So, you know, at the end of the day, I don't mind where you learn from, but you do need to lean into learning. And, you know, right now, let's be honest, it's a bit out there. It's a bit tough. There's not that oh goodness me, I've lost my screen. But anyway, I'm hoping you can still see it.
00:39:40:23 - 00:39:50:02
Speaker 1
My screen sharing is paused and I think I know why. I think I've lost my power. That's very odd.
00:39:50:04 - 00:40:00:21
Speaker 2
We can. I can actually see you, Nigel. I've just jumped back on because we only have a few minutes anyway, and there's more questions coming through. But, this, of course, is still so. There.
00:40:00:23 - 00:40:17:15
Speaker 1
It's still there. I've. I run out of electricity. So I learned a thing in prompts. That's very simple. That's the single thing. Read more ways to learn to think in prompts and think about your learning journey from here. And above all.
00:40:17:17 - 00:40:40:05
Speaker 1
Focus on the inputs, not the outputs. Do some reading. When was the last time your boss asked, what have you been reading at your performance review? Here's a few suggestions from that. You can screencap it or there'll be more to come. But that's that's the end of my story. Kicking off this marvelous week of skills in the festival, I'm going to stop sharing and let's see what we can do.
00:40:40:05 - 00:40:43:08
Speaker 1
I haven't I haven't been able to see the chats. I wasn't sure I was going.
00:40:43:08 - 00:41:04:08
Speaker 2
To thank you, Nigel. That was a terrific, start to the future skills ah, Future Skills Fest and some healthy optimism is definitely needed in the AI age, especially on a Monday. Understandably, there's heaps of questions that have come in around skills and so, keep in mind, we've only got a couple of minutes for questions, but, I mean, you talked about that.
00:41:04:08 - 00:41:19:12
Speaker 2
You've been here before. It's not something we should be necessarily fearful of, but we do know that there's going to be a shift. If you had to pick three skills to make career professionals to focus on, to stay relevant, what do you think they would be?
00:41:19:14 - 00:41:47:07
Speaker 1
So I don't it's a skill that comes from the process of learning and thinking, critical thinking. So the capacity to to evaluate this and that, rationally. And then you can use AI tools in the course of that. But that's solidly missing out there at the moment. And as we go from, we can only cut headcount so far as that wonderful cartoon of the the slave ship back of 2000 years ago, we've reduced the number of rowers,
00:41:47:07 - 00:42:14:09
Speaker 1
I can't understand why we're not going faster. That's pretty much it. And what's going to come down to is, is critical thinking, some kind of structural kind of product mindset versus a traditional bureaucracy and project mindset is going to be valid either way. And, you know, then I've got a very good friend who said the number one skill of the next ten years, particularly if you're in a managerial sense, is emotional regulation.
00:42:14:09 - 00:42:16:17
Speaker 1
I don't think there's a course on that at RMIT Online
00:42:16:23 - 00:42:18:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's a.
00:42:18:14 - 00:42:20:23
Speaker 1
Keeping that up
00:42:21:00 - 00:42:30:10
Speaker 2
Yes. One last question before we, head off and I realize lots have come in through the chat. So we'll try and follow up, with a blog post to address some of that.
00:42:30:13 - 00:42:32:05
Speaker 1
Let's do a blog post with all those
00:42:32:05 - 00:42:45:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, but what about the role of relationships and where do they play in, in that sort of in this change of an AI era, do you think we should be leaning on, networks and contacts to stay relevant as well?
00:42:45:11 - 00:43:10:08
Speaker 1
Oh, it's such a huge skill because you know what a definition of a business is a network. Think of it that way. Teenagers are building businesses in their bedrooms with chat. You know, they're not they're cutting code. They're building prototypes. Businesses require networks. So actually even having a mental model of how you map that and stay active within it, partnerships are absolutely vital to surviving these crazy times.
00:43:10:08 - 00:43:31:12
Speaker 1
We all need to help each other. You know, it all works. We've got some unbelievable partners in people like Amazon Web Services, those kind of people. We're all in this together. And so that's the only way to make progress. So have you got some of those skills. Look outside your ecosystem I think people have really they've shrunk in under the zugzwang.
00:43:31:17 - 00:43:48:10
Speaker 1
And they they've narrowed their focus so much. They just looked outside the walls of what they think their job is to find new opportunities. That's how the innovation will happen. And you need to be able to kind of talk to people, research, read and scroll less on Instagram.
00:43:48:12 - 00:44:07:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, we'll look at, Nigel, thank you again for a wonderful presentation. I can see a million comments in there asking to see the rating slide again. But just to let everyone know, we'll, send this out, a recording after the session. And so thank you. Thanks, Nigel, and thanks to everyone as well, who joined, from home.
00:44:07:11 - 00:44:25:18
Speaker 2
There will be emailing, the recording in the next couple of days and, feel free to share it with anyone as well. Who you think this might, might interest. Make sure you check out the program guide for the rest of the week as well. We've got some really terrific sessions coming up on data and storytelling and marketing and career pivots.
00:44:25:20 - 00:44:33:09
Speaker 2
And we hope to see you at some of those as well. Thanks, everyone, for spending your lunch break with us. And bye for now.
Teenagers are building entire businesses with AI while many of us are still wrestling with our first ChatGPT prompts.
Teenagers are building entire businesses with AI while many of us are still wrestling with our first ChatGPT prompts. The pace of change can feel dizzying, but in an era of zugzwang, FOMO and FOBS, staying relevant isn’t about being the youngest or flashiest. It’s about experience, adaptability, and wisdom.
In this keynote recording, Nigel Dalton from Thoughtworks explores why the AI revolution can’t be left to the kids, or the coders alone. Mid-career professionals bring the judgment, resilience and systems thinking needed to lead through complexity. Yet organisations are stuck with a dual challenge: racing toward innovation while dragging along tech debt, broken cultures, and legacy systems.
Drawing on insights across product, marketing, HR, technology and leadership, Nigel makes the case for why every generation needs to be part of the AI story. This is a call to action for individuals and organisations to rethink how we work, learn and lead in a machine-accelerated world.
Because yes, teenagers may have AI startups.
But midlife has wisdom.
So, who wins?
As global expectations for corporate responsibility rise, businesses are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability.
With the rise of new and wildly popular image generators like Midjourney, Craiyon, and Nightcafe, not to mention platforms like Getty Images and Adobe launching their own tools, graphic designers are understandably feeling the pressure.
The world of work is constantly maturing - and so are the job roles. Professions, even industries, that didn’t exist a decade ago are quickly become highly sought after, leaving professionals scrambling to update their skillset.
In an increasingly digital world, cyber threats are evolving at an unprecedented pace.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.
More information
