Kenichi Ohmae Just Blew My World View with an "M"

The M-shape Society

However, in the emergence of the 'M-shape society', the middle class in a society gradually disappears. With the advance and consequence of globalization (for good or bad), the middle class is gradually assimilated into either side. The bulk of society is no longer the middle classes. The name is derived when you chart the class distribution a distinct M-shape is formed to denote the two extremes, with the middle class gradually shrinking and disappearing. Very few people in this middle class may be able to climb up the ladder and be able to be part of the upper class, while most from the middle class will gradually sink to the lower-income group.

Those who measured their intelligence purely on scholastic aptitudes would focus on developing an aptitude of memorizing and scoring for exams, neglecting other innate abilities they may have.... Because it takes years to acquire a disciplined mind or a mastery of any skill, those born between 1980 and the early 21st century may have lost the window of opportunity to develop talents best suited for their lives....A child without an education from 20th century schooling but who spent their childhood being self-directed, thinking, exploring and creating may end up with a huge advantage over a child who sees work not as creation but as hardship and who has been conditioned to see learning as memorization to score for a piece of degree.

While crony-ism and "the old boy's network" still exists, a new, more powerful form of networking is quickly forming, the Wisdom of Crowds made up of individuals, not unlike the individuals making up Wikipedia, who will form the face of 21st Century Revolution. These networks place a high premium on meritocracy, integrity, self-directedness, creativity and transparency. They will share and teach those like themselves, within their networks and virtual and face to face communities with or without money as their motivation.... This and other knowledge of forces transforming the way we understood the idea of money and society in the 20th century may determine how the will and directedness of the demographics shaping the M-society of today will lay the launchpad buy the advantages to catapult the next generation further higher on the ascending curve.