This is a guest post by Jarie Bolander, Author of Frustration Free Technical Management and a moderator at Answers.OnStartUps. Make sure you check out more from this bright entrepreneur.

What matters has evolved. No longer can you rely on being a life long corporate worker or a cog in the industrial complex. The world has moved on. Now, your creativity and gumption creates value – not the access to capital or the means of production. Sure, there will always be big corporations that will dominate a market sector but even these corporations face total annihilation unless they embrace the new reality – creativity and uniqueness matters.

Linchpins

Seth Godin wrote a spectacular book about that spells out the demise of the corporate politic. Linchpins: Are You Indispensable chronicles the evolution of what Richard Florida refers to as the Creative Class. This class of people creates the innovations, breakthroughs and art that inspires others. Linchpins are those people that a corporation cannot live without yet the bureaucratic nature of organizations crushes their ability to get stuff done. The true Linchpin is part artists, part pragmatist, part politician and part rebel. As Seth Godin puts it:

“The linchpin is an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create and make things happen. Every worthwhile institution has indispensable people who make difference like these”

The Evolution of Work

Traditionally, people worked to survive. Not until the industrial revolution did the commoditization and automation of work make it possible to generate mass quantities of like looking, tasting and feeling products. These factories built the consumption economy, which in turn, built more factories. During this process, the sense of craftsmanship and worker uniqueness was crushed. Being unique, at least in a factory culture, meant defects. Defects meant scrap and scrap meant lost profits. The motivation to standardize products drove the industrial complex to standardize workers which meant that every worker was the same. They were taught the same skills, followed the same instructions and were rewarded for doing what they were told. This culture reinforced itself due to the barriers of capital and government regulations that essentially created a monopoly of corporate power. Citizens were conditioned to work hard, pay their taxes and consume. Business was easy. Make a standard product, mass advertise and reap the profits. The formula worked for a long time until one day, the viable economic quantity of one showed up.

The Democratizing of Production

The relentless drive for cheaper and more standard products produced a baseline level of infrastructure that makes creation affordable to the masses. Access to capital is no longer required to produce. The sea change that made this all possible was the Internet. Now, the means of creative expression, production and mass marketing are just a click away. No longer is there a barrier for creative expression that just might turn into the next viral phenomena. The Linchpin knows this and when given the freedom to create, will create products the masses demand. That’s why it’s critical to be a Linchpin – all the new opportunities will be in leveraging the viable economic quantity of one.

The Viable Economic Quantity of One

To recap, a Linchpin is a person that creates uniqueness and art that others appreciate and reward. Delivering this art is as simple as clicking to post or downloading and image. This is the viable economic quantity of one – the means to tailor your creation to a single person because it’s as cheap as creating it for the masses. Once liberated, the Linchpin creates art that inspires since the downside of failure is minuscule.

The Soloist

Seth Godin chronicled the rise of the creative class by explaining the pathology of the industrial complex. I Hate People complements this chronology by laying out the framework for how a Soloist (a corporate Linchpin) can thrive in the bureaucratic, conforming, creativity crushing, conformist corporations that dominate the world due to the commoditization of labor. Soloist’s are not just Linchpins – they somehow, someway, make the corporate cogs work for them. As Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon put it:

“[The Soloist is] Bold enough to create the attitude, space and time to stretch your career and expand your life. Ready to take that critical step toward becoming one of those happy souls who deftly works alone or collaborates with just a handful of other talented people … while artfully deflecting all the rest.”

Create or Perish

A Soloist creates because she has to. The love of creation is what drives the Soloist to put up with the corporate drones in order to do what is essential to her existence – create unique experiences that buck the commodity trend. That’s why the Soloist and the Linchpin are critical to the success of an economy. Inspired design, art and ideas are what indirectly fuel the corporate machine to continue on but there is a catch – the company that does recognize the symbiotic relationship between Soloists/Linchpins will self-destruct. For some, this is the ideal since that would bring our society back to it’s artisan roots where skilled craftsman were valued for their skill and not just their placement in the machine.

Careful What You Wish For

The same forces that created the industrial complex are hard at work destroying it. The means of production are now in the hands of the Linchpin and the Soloist. This new reality allows for an incredible amount of creative freedom yet that creativity is hell bend on destroying the very structure that helps it. Even though the world has changed, it will never go back to a pure artisan/craftsman state because that would reduce creativity and innovation – something no Linchpin or Soloist wants.

Finding Your Inner Linchpin and Soloist

Most of you who read this have an inner drive to do your own thing. You may even be pursuing something right now. Or you may be giving in to the self-doubt and following the herd to extinction. Don’t follow this path. Embrace your uniqueness, strive to create, thrust aside the cog mentality and reach your potential to be a Linchpin or a Soloist.

Please Comment, Tweet, Stumble, & Digg

Jarie also blogs about innovation, management and entrepreneurship at thedailymba.com. Jarie holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in Technology Management. When not volunteering with SCORE or at his day job, he can be found running or biking through Golden Gate Park or swimming in San Francisco Bay.You can follow him on twitter @thedailymba