The Future of Jobs Is Partnership of Experts

A.R. Rahman and Danny Boyle first joined forces on Slumdog Millionaire, a film that exploded onto the global stage, sweeping up eight Academy Awards and seven BAFTAs. Since then, they’ve collaborated on multiple projects—but not because they were bound by contracts or long-term commitments. They, like many in Hollywood, don’t work for anyone; they work with people.

"They are jobless," Antonio Paraiso remarked in his Porto Business School lecture, explaining that in Hollywood, careers thrive on projects, not permanent employment. Directors, composers, editors—they don’t clock into a company; they dive into creative ventures. They assemble, create, disperse, and reassemble—an ever-shifting mosaic of talent.

This struck me as a radical contrast to the traditional IT industry, where careers feel more like anchored ships, tethered to a single harbor for decades. Employees sit through training, wait on benches, shuffle between projects within the same company, or even face termination when no suitable role exists. But Hollywood turns this model on its head.

# The Hollywood Blueprint: Assemble, Create, Move On

No Hollywood studio hires a director indefinitely. Instead, they bring together a team—a fusion of screenwriters, musicians, cinematographers, and actors—who unite for a single purpose: a project. Some commit exclusively; others juggle multiple ventures. Some earn a salary; others take a cut of the profits. But once the final frame is shot and the credits roll, the production team dissolves.

It’s not the gig economy of Upwork, where freelancers bid for fragmented, low-cost tasks. Hollywood isn’t about isolated efforts—it’s about curated teams mastering the art of collaboration. And this model is spreading far beyond the silver screen.

# Governments Are Taking Notes

India pioneered this approach with its UIDAI, the world's largest biometric identity system. When the Indian government needed to implement it, they didn’t shuffle bureaucrats into place. Instead, they appointed Nandan Nilekani—a visionary entrepreneur—to lead. No one mistook him for a government employee. He structured the initiative, saw it through, and moved on.

They took the same approach with Amit Ranjan, the co-founder of SlideShare, who now spearheads DigiLocker, India's national digital vault. Experts like him, brought in through the National Institute for Smart Government, NISG, offer specialized knowledge without becoming entangled in government payrolls.

Other governments have walked the same road. Estonia, a trailblazer in e-governance, appointed Taavi Kotka, a private-sector tech leader, to architect its groundbreaking e-residency program. The model works. Experts build. Governments benefit. Innovation thrives.

# Startups Are Adopting This Model—And Fast

In the startup world, survival demands agility. Founders don’t have the luxury of sprawling in-house teams; they must do more with less. So they build teams Hollywood-style.

Take Mohit Bansal, a master storyteller. He doesn’t belong to a company; he partners with startups, refining their pitches into compelling, visually stunning narratives.

Even Venture Capital firms—the lifeblood of innovation—operate with a lean core, expanding only when needed. I’ve personally worked on due diligence teams to assess startup architectures. When the project ended, so did our collaboration. No bureaucracy. No redundancies. Just focused execution.

# The Time for Large Companies to Pivot Is Now

Technology is evolving at a blistering pace. Blockchain reshapes finance. Regulations like GDPR redefine data privacy. Opportunities explode, but companies struggle to keep up. The traditional corporate structure—rigid, slow, hierarchical—simply cannot match the speed of change.

Forward-thinking organizations get this. They’ve started replacing pyramids with networks of teams. Corporate Rebels, a group chronicling organizational transformation, describes the shift perfectly in an article titled, Destroy The Hierarchal Pyramid And Build a Powerful Network of Teams:

They have evolved themselves from structures that look like static slow-moving pyramids to something that looks more like a flexible and fast-moving swarm of start-ups. We have witnessed them in all kinds of shapes and sizes, all called slightly different. Spotify talks about squads and tribes. Buurtzorg about self-governing teams. Stanley McCrystal about a team of teams. Finext and Incentro about cells. And FAVI calls them mini-factories.

If companies want to survive, they must stop hiring for positions and start composing teams for projects.

Next billion dollar company may not have any employees. There will be owners, skill composers, and experts, who collaborate on-need basis. This is going to lead to another set of service marketplace, a B2P (business to professionals) service.

# What This Means for Employees

Gone are the days when a fresh engineering graduate landed a job and climbed the corporate ladder step by step. That ladder has collapsed. The climb now requires a different skill set—a different mindset.

Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You and Stand Out, outlines three keys to thriving in this new era:

1. Social proof – Build a reputation that makes people trust you.
2. Content creation – Share your insights so others can assess your expertise.
3. Networks – Connect with the right people who can open doors.

In the Hollywood model, who knows you matters as much as what you know. A strong portfolio becomes your resumé; your network becomes your referral system.

We must evolve beyond narrow specialization. The future belongs to T-shaped professionals—people who go deep in one expertise but also grasp adjacent fields.

As Robert Heinlein famously put it:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts…Specialization is for insects.”

For developers, Peter Merel echoed the sentiment:

A programmer should be able to fix a bug, market an app, lead a team, design architecture, schedule a project, write documentation, support users…Specialization is for recruiters.

Adaptability isn’t optional—it’s survival.

# Governments Must Evolve, Too

Governments are realizing that service delivery shouldn’t mimic vending machines—where citizens insert taxes and wait for services to tumble out. Instead, they must invest in platforms that empower people to navigate life’s complexities independently.

Tim O’Reilly champions this Government-as-a-Platform model, likening traditional governance to vending machines but proposing a marketplace—a digital bazaar where citizens exchange services.

Estonia is leading the charge. Its X-Road platform underpins everything: tax filing, healthcare, business registration, voting. It even pioneered e-residency, allowing global entrepreneurs to operate businesses from anywhere without needing to set foot in Estonia.

As Estonia’s Deputy Secretary for Economic Development, Viljar Lubi, wisely said:

“Innovation happens anyway. If we close ourselves off, the innovation happens somewhere else.”

Governments can either embrace the future or be left behind.

# This Is Gospel to Some, Tragedy to Others

Not everyone will celebrate this transformation. It will disrupt industries, dissolve lifelong employment, and demand reinvention. Some will rise. Others will fade into irrelevance.

It reminds me of an old song:

The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall…

# The Choice Is Ours

The world is shifting to project-based work—whether in films, startups, corporations, or governments. Will we cling to the idea of lifelong employment, or will we embrace a fluid, evolving, opportunity-driven future?

The Hollywood model isn’t a fleeting trend. It’s the new reality. And those who master it will own the future.