Chapter 10

The Four and You

THE DOMINANCE OF THE FOUR has an outsized effect on the
competitive landscape and the lives of consumers. But what is their
impact on the average career path of the educated individual? I’d
argue no young person today should be ignorant of the Four and how
they’ve reshaped the economy. They’ve made it harder for middle-of-
the-road companies to succeed or for any consumer-facing tech start-
up to compete and survive.
Given that most of us—and statistics support me on this—are
average, what can we learn to help us make the jump from good to
strong, even great? I close the book with some observations on what a
successful career strategy looks like in this brave new world.

Success and the Insecurity Economy

In sum, it’s never been a better time to be exceptional, or a worse time
to be average.
That’s one of the major effects of the disruptive environment
created by the rise of the lottery economy, wherein digital technology
creates a single market in which one leader can capture the
overwhelming majority of gains. A series of discrete ponds, businesses,
and geographies are in the midst of the downpour of globalization,
making a smaller number of really big lakes. The bad news: there are