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Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (平装)
by Daniel H. Pink
| Category:
Career planning, Entrepreneurship, Social trends, Non-fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Advocating the megatrend of self-employment, this landmark book is a manifesto for worker independence in the 21st century. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 15 items |
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S. Johnson (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
Great book that provides more insight into our New Economy. We come across many more "Free Agents" today than in the past. Employers expect us to be ones as well. Planning moves, assessing the current work situation, and plotting the next adventure is a necessity whether the economy is strong or weak. Our co-workers, friends, family, and even our bosses say things regarding their work situation that wouldn't be thought of only a short time ago. The worker today needs to keep his and her eyes open, constantly looking for another opportunity, that will enhance their marketability. One needs to keep the Antennas and feelers out. For if the worker doesn't do it, there will likely come a time when the Employer will. Today's New Economy is one of constant change. People where I've worked have been referred to as "Old Timers," and they've only been with the company for three years. Very interesting and relevant book. It can help one asses one's situation. The days of Uncle Joe staying at the same corporation or shop ended in the 1970s. This is a very practical book, especially for the older workforce that isn't particularly well-read to begin with. |
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Janet (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
I've worked as an employee for ten years (5 government, 5 corporate) and have had my own microbusiness for the last seventeen. This book tells it like it is. Now I know why I'm so addicted to personal technology - these are the modern-day equivalents of the tools of production that Marx wrote about. These are the tools of liberation.
I'm an amateur futurist keeping up with big-picture books on social trends since starting with Alvin Toffler's Future Shock in the late sixties to The Third Wave, Free Agent Nation and the Cluetrain Manifesto and many books in between. FAN is a very good book. As a microbusiness owner, it helps me understand myself and my situation better. It gives me LOTS of ideas and inspiration to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in this time of transition and economic challenge.
I started my business 17 years ago after reading a great book called Maverick Career-styles: The Way of the Ronin. The writing was on the wall even then - in the mid-eighties. I was willing to take a chance and strike out on my own after ten years of traditional employment because that book gave me a way of seeing that I might be more secure as a wiley and agile independent professional than I would be as a corporate drone in this new world we are living in. Dan Pink speaks my language! Well-written, entertaining and valuable read.
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Susan Paddock (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
In Baltimore, 700 low-income people have completed a 108- hour course in how to start a small business. The course is offered by a non-profit, Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore. WEB says that 80% of those who started the program have begun their own enterprise, and that after 10 years, 80% of those are still in business. These new business owners are part of a national trend affecting rich and poor alike. They are "free agents", the people who will eventually change all we think we know about work life.
According to the latest census figures, more than half of American companies have less than five employees, and 70% of all businesses in the United States have NO paid employees. Today the 33 million free agents in the US outnumber manufacturing employees and all federal, state, local and county government employees, including teachers and police officers.
These little companies typically re-circulate 60% of revenues into their local economies through wages, using local vendors, and consuming local products and services. In contrast, chain stores only re-circulate 20% locally and warehouse type stores only 6% locally.
Author Daniel Pink calls this growth of the productively unattached "Free Agent Nation", and it may signal a new capitalism that will go far beyond "getting a good job", and "the organization man".
In his essential book Free Agent Nation: How America's New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live (Warner Business Books, 2001), Pink notes that the growth of free agents are enabled by four economic trends. The old social contract in which a company traded lifetime job security for employee loyalty no longer exists. Second, new inexpensive and portable technology means that anyone can buy a computer and own the means of production, no longer being dependent on a corporation to provide what's needed to make a business work. Third, long term prosperity has enabled people to search for meaning in their work, not just a paycheck. Fourth, corporations continue to form and dissolve at faster rates, so most workers will outlive their companies.
The new social contract is more challenging than the old. Pink describes it: "The free agent provides talent (products, services, advice) in exchange for opportunity (money, learning, connections)." Many large corporations now outsource as much as possible to free agents, a good deal on both sides.
Free agents are growing in spite of outdated employment, tax, and zoning laws that restrict small businesses. Free agents pay more taxes than employees because they are both employers and employees, they pay more for health insurance because of laws encouraging corporations to provide coverage, and they find themselves breaking outmoded zoning laws to run home businesses. But while the political landscape doesn't yet support their freedom, they have already changed the cultural and economic landscape. Free agents put up with the downside for freedom and because they actually earn more than their employed counterparts for doing the same work. A recent study of one thousand new millionaires found that two thirds were self-employed.
In many ways, being a free agent is the ultimate step in personal responsibility, ethics and self-actualization. The free agent definition of success is entirely personal and may have little to do with income or prestige. Free agents survive through positive relations with others. If a free agent acts in an unethical manner nothing will soften the landing. Whether they make it or not, there is no one to pity them, and no one else to blame. |
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Margaret Lobenstine (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
I am so thrilled that someone of Pink's reputation and expertise has put the free agent's role in our economy front and center. This is great news for Renaissance Souls: people who prefer variety and combination to concentrating on just one thing. Why? Because, as Pink shows so well, being a free agent is very different from sitting in one cubicle doing one thing as you (theoretically) climb the (now almost falling down) corporate ladder. Free agents have to know their material, of course, but they also have to enjoy applying what they know to a variety of different situations. In addition, free agents need to be comfortable wearing several different hats. Who is going to spread the word about what they have to offer if they don't? Who is going to be sure that the finances are in order if they don't? Even if they hire accountants or P.R. folks, they still are the one, and only one, making the final decisions and being sure what needs doing has actually been done. As a coach specializing in life design for people with too many passions to pick just one (read Renaissance Souls,) I have already been recommending Dr. Barbara Reinhold's book, FREE TO SUCCEED: Designing the Life You Want In the New Free Agent Economy. Now I will add Daniel Pinks new contribution as well. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-28 00:00>
As a traditional corporate employee in a slower moving country this book completely blew my mind. During my frequent travels to the United States I have been catching glimpses of this emerging movement towards free agency, but this book lays it out in full in a way nobody has done before. Not a single aspect of free agency has been overlooked: the economic, the historical, the psychological, the personal, the social, and the political aspects, along with the advantages, disadvantages, and the plight of the free agents less fortunate cousins (temps), everything is here. The book contains a mixture of personal experience, anecdotes from others, and solid statistics that is just right, it's neither impersonally abstract and theoretical, nor too personal and unrepresentative of the whole. A word of advice: this is not a how-to book. There are no second person directives on becoming a free agent (you should do this... you should try that... etc). It's crafted more along the lines of a sociological study, except that the author's enthusiasm for the subject shows through. Even though he doesn't address the reader directly, all along he seems to be saying: what are you waiting for? You can tell that Pink had fun writing this, which makes his case for free agency all the more convincing. It's sad that most of the trends he documents will be confined to the United States for some time to come, but even then I will be measuring my potential for going solo against what this book documents. I have no doubt that the trend towards worker independence will prevail and prove very positive, and that this book will stand along with Future Shock and Megatrends as one of the most influential and prophetic works of the past 50 years. |
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