When things shift fundamentally it is more likely than not that the existing organizations don’t adapt quickly enough and therefore die. It is much easier to go with the flow and believe that everything will always be the same, rather than having a vision of what the future is bringing and adapting to that before it sweeps you away. Plus, things that have been around all our lives feel permanent even if they’ve lived very short lives relative to the rest of the world.
The big shift I see happening right now is in education. The costs are not sustainable and the knowledge is no longer limited to the halls of a university library – the knowledge is in the air. The timing is impossible to predict but I have a feeling that universities will lose their relevance in my lifetime. I wouldn’t want to invest in a university right now and I definitely wouldn’t want to work at one.