In this moment, excerpted from his keynote, Christopher Lochhead, Best-Selling Author, Category Pirates, explored how major societal and technological shifts don’t just change industries — they create entirely new categories of work and redefine the nature of employment itself.
Key Takeaways
Category Shifts Create Entirely New Jobs: Lochhead highlighted research showing that roughly 74% of white-collar jobs today did not exist in 1940. Each major technological era introduces new categories of work while rendering others obsolete, reshaping the economic landscape rather than simply upgrading existing roles.
The Pace of Job Creation and Destruction Is Accelerating: Historically, job evolution unfolded over generations. Today, category cycles are compressing dramatically as AI, automation, and digital platforms accelerate how quickly new professions emerge — and how rapidly legacy roles disappear.
AI Marks the Next Category-Level Transformation: According to Lochhead, the current AI wave represents a societal shift comparable to previous industrial revolutions. The central challenge is not job loss alone, but adaptation: organizations and individuals must learn to recognize and design for entirely new categories of work as they form.
