“Where change is happening quickly, who best sees the openings, opportunity, and necessities of change? It’s not always the CEO,” Thomas Friedman tells Fast Company. Friedman, a New York Times columnist and best-selling author , co-wrote a new book, That Used To Be Us , which argues that empowering innovation from every worker must become a priority for employers, the military, schools, and policy makers, if America is to retain (regain?) its superior international standing. From the use of iPhones by bootcamp trainees to shopfloor innovation at DuPont, That Used To Be Us shows that the future of work is already upon us, presenting interviews with global influencers from every corner of society to paint a world blindsided by the need for creative production–and prescriptions on how to learn from those ahead of the curve.

The principle driving forces behind the need for a more inventive worker is “access to more automation, more software, more machines and more people, and more talent of an above average quality,” says Friedman, noting that even “cheap genius,” is a click away.

The implication is that workers who just fulfill their job description are finding themselves left behind in the recession. “If I have to make tough compensation choices between lawyers, a significant factor now for me is their ability to invent,” Nixon Peabody partner Jeff Lesk told Friedman, in his response to a question about which lawyers he was retaining at his law firm.

As if on cue, the New York Times recently reported on the scores of lawyers being replaced by automated legal software that can sort and analyze court documents for a fraction of the cost.

As a result, Lesk’s law office now profits from creative innovations, such as finding legal-friendly ways of combining renewable energy and low-income housing tax credits to finance community real estate projects. The legal solutions have been a big cost-saver for clients, and Nixon Peabody has assigned a new “Chief Innovation Officer” to foster more creative thinking throughout the firm.

Nor is innovation confined to the private sector. “The army’s on to all of this,” says Friedman, “their lives depend on it.” In an eye-opening interview, America’s top armed forces official, the future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey, tells Friedman that the need to innovate is eroding the hallmark of the military: hierarchy. In the past, “we would have said we want men who are physically fit, educated, and disciplined. Now, what we way is that we want someone who wants to belong to a values-based group, who can communicate, who is inquisitive, and who has an instinct to collaborate.”

For instance, army manuals are now being ported to a wiki format, a drastic change from the tradition of an expert-crafted tome of knowledge. The army has also turned soldiers who were once just shooters into intelligence analysts, gathering executable information for the very missions they were sending themselves and compatriots on. The process “created guys who were entrepreneurial and always fighting for more information. They owned the mission much more,” emphasized General Stanley McChrystal.