The internet has, for some time, encouraged user creativity. Now, forced to respond to change, people are becoming even more adaptable. Boundaries are blurring between genres, with creative and technological skills increasingly in demand. As a result of mergers and redundancies, staff are retraining in parallel fields. Reduced workforces are performing cross-functional roles. This is likely to raise ingenuity in the future, with hybrid staff drawing on different, related skills to arrive at new solutions – rather like a human mashup.
Organisations need to consider to what extent they're welcoming hybrids to gear up for the future. Rather than just recruiting people who’ve always done the same role, consider “mashing up” your staff and harnessing new combinations of skills, such as TV production and strategy in marketing roles. As the adage goes: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.
The hybridisation trend extends to brands, which are flouting category conventions and pushing into new market spaces. PlayStation’s LittleBigPlanet is a hybrid online game and social network. Levis, P&G, Coca Cola and Starbucks all have their own music labels. Musicians Groove Armada just signed up with drinks firm Bacardi, rather than opting for a normal record label.
