If you can’t make up your mind what business area you want to occupy, why not become an Originative Intellectual Worker, a phrase coined by H.G. Wells.

It is said that most blogs are read exclusively by other bloggers. At first sight that may not seem very remarkable. After all, there are more than 100 million blogs out there and like generally attracts like. But at a deeper level we’re seeing an irresistible convergence. A convergence of supplier and buyer, of producer and consumer. Communication is becoming conversation, not lecture. Big Media is downsizing into widely-distributed personal media.

Essentially, what we’re now observing is the whittling away of the conventional categories that have sustained literature, journalism and, more recently, broadcasting, for centuries. Top writers do still write and let their agents and publishers manage the rest. But they are becoming a smaller and smaller minority, held in thrall by the big guns of marketing and the “blockbuster” mentality.

Increasingly — down there in the long tail — writers typeset and copycheck their own material themselves, and often publish it on a blog, or through on-demand printers. They are now the largest revenue earners for the new open-market mechanisms, like Amazon and eBay.

At the limit, as the mathematicians say, writers are also photographers, graphic artists, publishers, and the principal marketers of their work. Writers are no longer just writers but, in H.G. Wells’s term, “originative intellectual workers”.

Finding a top-gun agent or publisher is all but impossible these days. On the other hand, the originative intellectual worker (OIW) quickly masters a skill-set allowing proficiency across crafts and technologies. The OIW emerges on both sides of the track, as producer and consumer. In blogging it’s almost impossible to separate the two. With the demise of Excite, the long tail is beginning to wag the beasts of medialand. The world will never be the same again.

Addendum : Here are two extracts which refer to the term “originative intellectual workers”. The first is from H.G.’s autobiography :

“Most individual creatures since life began have been ‘up against it’ all the time, have been driven continually by fear and cravings, have had to respond to the unresting antagonisms of their surroundings, and they have found a sufficient and sustaining interest in the drama of immediate events provided for them by these demands. Essentially, their living was continuous adjustment to happenings. Good hap and ill hap filled it entirely. They hungered and ate and they desired and loved; they were amused and attracted, they pursued or escaped, they were overtaken and they died.

“But with the dawn of human foresight and with the appearance of a great surplus of energy in life such as the last century or so has revealed, there has been a progressive emancipation of the attention from everyday urgencies. What was once the whole of life, has become to an increasing extent, merely the background of life. People can ask now what would have been an extraordinary question five hundred years ago. They can say, ‘Yes, you earn a living, you support a family, you love and hate, but what do you do? . . .’

“In studies and studios and laboratories, administrative bureaus and exploring expeditions, a new world is germinated and develops. It is not a repudiation of the old but a vast extension of it, in a racial synthesis into which individual aims will ultimately be absorbed. We originative intellectual workers are reconditioning human life.”

Here is an extract from Colin Wilson’s Beyond the Outsider:

“H.G. Wells had another explanation for the unsatisfactoriness [many of us feel with our lot in life]. Men like himself, he says — ‘originative intellectual workers’ — find normal human existence boring because they long for a more meaningful kind of existence. ‘We are like early amphibians, so to speak, struggling out of the waters that have hitherto covered our kind, into the air, seeking to breathe in a new fashion and to emancipate ourselves from … necessities. At last it becomes a case of air or nothing. But the new land has not definitely emerged from the waters, and we swim distressfully in an element we wish to abandon.’”

Interesting stuff, and just as relevant today, and applicable, I would say, to the modern world.

A new study by Standard Life suggests that “olderpreneurs” are choosing to set up business on their own rather than seek retirement.

Up to a third of people aged 45 to 65 want to work on when approaching the normal age to take it easy. It’s no coincidence perhaps that this is the “baby boomer” generation.

The more wealthy ones are the most likely to fall into this group.

Policy experts said the research showed that given the right incentives, a new class of “olderpreneurs” could help pull Britain out of recession.

Those approaching retirement age were twice as likely as their parents to choose to continue working, the poll found.

Andrew Haldenby, director of the think tank Reform, said the findings demonstrated a “quiet revolution that is turning traditional ideas of retirement on their head. Policy-makers need to take notice of this fundamental shift in ambition, and instead of telling this generation to slow down and retire, incentivise them to kick start our economy. If all the older people who wanted to set up their own businesses succeeded, the number of UK firms would rise by 50 percent.”

He urged politicians to harness the potential of “the greying end of the population to form a new group of enterprise champions”.

With pension entitlements shrivelling up in the current economic climate, isn’t this the kind of enterprise we need for these hard times?

Good news for small business owners in Britain and Europe. The new Czech presidency is preparing to tear up the notorious red tape mountain of the EU.

Under new plans, small firms would be required to file only one set of reports and accounts, rather than having to submit information to several government agencies.

SMEs would also be able to conduct business operations across borders without having to register subsidiaries in those countries.

Small firms would also be given new rights to ensure their bills are paid on time.

It seems the Czechs are a shot in the arm for European small businesses.

In these dark economic times, if you have lost your job it may be worthwhile to think counter-intuitively.

Make your own work. Paul Graham makes a great case for it.

“Our bodies weren’t designed to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.”

“The root of the problem is that humans weren’t meant to work in such large groups. … Though they’re statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that’s more natural for humans.”

As an inveterate freelance worker most of my life, I totally agree with Graham’s analysis. In between I’ve worked for a mega-corp, BT (British Telecom), and for Government, the UK’s Central Office of Information. In each case I was a whale out of water.

It’s only when I started businesses around my personal template, or became a freelance writer breathing the air of freedom, that I came fully into my own. Most people are probably like this.

Paul Graham — who is a venture capitalist — is right. You can buck the system, and you owe it to yourself to make the attempt.

Incidentally, a recession is a great time to go it alone. Venture capitalists have money burning a hole in their vaults, there’s a surfeit of experts going cheap, and opportunities for anyone with a great idea or a new approach.

Innovation is at a premium during a downturn. Many of the biggest names in corporate America began in a garage during a recession when there was little else to do.

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