Alarming rates of unemployment for many countries, pessimistic predictions regarding the global workforce transformation under the lights of the Artificial Intelligence revolution.

Unemployed people, in tens of millions across the globe, can be seen as an enormous manpower which the ‘economic system’ fails to use: talented people, senior industry professionals, domain experts, enthusiastic graduates, scientists, entrepreneurial youth and many more classes of unemployed people who are trapped in a job-seeking state with limited or no options at all.

Although governments offer services and programs for unemployed people, they fail to deal with the problem at its core: societies need a mentality shift towards innovation, creativeness, and experimentation; The ‘economic system’ must encourage people to use their talents and capabilities, to take controlled risks in order to go after alternative professional opportunities.

The unemployment problem is also a problem of social arrangement and culture. It reflects how people perceive reality and economic activity, and how they decide to use their energy, skills and capabilities in order to shape their future and impact their environment

Unemployed people are typically disconnected and in many cases isolated from the markets. They tend to spend their energy in search of the next ‘good, safe job’ and fear exposure to new business, entrepreneurship or similar ‘risky’ activities. Unemployed people need to shift from a mode of ‘competing with each other for the limited jobs available’ to ‘collaborating with each other to create new opportunities and jobs’.

A collaboration platform driven by unemployed people!

Imagine an online service with a single objective: to ‘unleash the creative power’ of people and inspire them to discover new options and alternative professional paths. A modern online service providing the tools for intelligent, skills & intention-based team formation — by unemployed people, while providing individuals and teams access an extended network of resources and knowledge. This will encourage professional relationships among unemployed people and also empower networking and information flow across the extended business and media network.

This business ecosystem will offer the means of collaboration among unemployed people towards a shared business goal (a new product, service, company). At the same time, it may offer a predefined level of special support by local governments and organizations (funds, programs, resources, etc.) and the connected ecosystem (private funding, business angels, Banks offering special interest loans, VCs, Research, Academia, etc.).

Unemployed people will be able to join this online platform to (a) ‘announce’ their professional interests, intents, goals, skills and capabilities (b) be found by teams or other users with similar/ complementary skill-sets and goals (c) find potential partners, associates and/or team members (d) submit a business idea and set up a working team/ ‘virtual startup’ (e) join clusters and ‘virtual startups’, typically consisting of other unemployed people — users of the platform

For instance, a potential entrepreneur — currently unemployed — has a great business idea and needs experts in certain technical skills; Our entrepreneur gets connected with other unemployed people through the platform and finds other unemployed people with the specific skills of interest and also with complementary intentions (for instance, web-developers with no entrepreneurial goals — just looking for a good professional deal and possibly small-scale participation in a venture).

This self-organizing team of unemployed people can lead to a ‘virtual startup’ which could be incubated under certain programs and processes offered by local governments. The ‘virtual startup’ can access a number of resources, while it can significantly benefit from systematic exposure by the media & business stakeholders connected to the platform.

Assuming interesting business outcomes from this ‘virtual startup’ several scenarios are possible — such as funding, investment, special loan agreements or even initial sales via the exposure through the connected media network. Such an ecosystem with large scale participation can lead to dramatic long-term improvement of workforce, markets, and societies. The platform will promote success stories and business initiatives via the connected ‘media network’ thus attracting more talented people from local or international markets.

Do you see this ecosystem as the driving force for a new mindset? We welcome your thoughts!