Throughout history, industrial revolutions have reshaped the way we work.
The Third Industrial Revolution led to manufacturing giants shrinking into smaller, more automated firms.
Today, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is doing something similar to the corporate world.
AI and automation make having large teams working in finance, marketing, sales, and even IT unnecessary.
Multinationals can now drastically reduce headcounts while maintaining — or even increasing — profitability.
As these corporates shed employees, and as they become leaner organizations, the side-effect is a flattening of influence— a world where corporate dominance weakens as companies downsize and decentralization takes hold.
Because a big part of what made them powerful in the first place was their scale — massive workforces, global supply chains, and vast operational capacities.
Now, as displaced workers start their own ventures, these new companies don’t need to chase growth in the same way.
With leaner teams, AI-driven operations, and minimal overhead, they can remain small yet competitive — offering niche products, personalized services, or hyper-localized solutions that multinationals can’t match.
Instead of a few large corporations controlling markets, we may see the rise of many small, highly efficient businesses that remain intentionally small — because they no longer need to scale to survive.
The global shift is already underway. But are emerging markets preparing for it?
How Emerging Markets Are Framing the Future of Work
While the corporate world in developed markets is shrinking and decentralizing, the narrative around the future of work in emerging economies like Kenya still feels trapped in an older model.
Here, the future of work is often framed around entry-level digital jobs — task-based work like online freelancing, data annotation, transcription, and basic coding.
It’s a narrative built around inclusion through access, which makes sense:
it offers youth a foot in the door of the global digital economy.
Governments and development organizations often push this angle because it promises mass employment (or at least mass income opportunities) without the need for massive industrial infrastructure — still seen by many as the traditional reference point for economic growth.
But this feels limited.
It risks positioning emerging economies as “task economies” — providers of fragmented, low-value labor rather than hubs of innovation, leadership, and scalable value creation.
And if global companies are already shedding traditional jobs and automating knowledge work, will these task-based roles even exist in the long run?
Are we preparing a generation for a future that won’t last?
A More Ambitious Future of Work
If multinationals are shrinking and small, smart businesses are thriving, then emerging markets have a unique opportunity:
to leapfrog directly into entrepreneurship-driven, decentralized digital economies.
Instead of preparing youth to perform entry-level digital tasks, why not prepare them to own and operate small, tech-empowered businesses — businesses that are lean, resilient, and deeply rooted in local needs?
Rather than seeing technology — and especially AI — as the end game, we should treat it as an enabler.
Not as a destination for jobs, but as a tool that equips regular entrepreneurs to scale their businesses in nimble and productive ways.
If we could support as few as 200 entrepreneurs to each create 50 skilled jobs, that’s already 10,000 youth who wouldn’t have to disappear into entry-level gig work.
That’s the real multiplier we should be building for — not more microtasks, but more meaningful opportunities, anchored locally, with regular entrepreneurs.
This would align emerging markets with the broader shifts happening globally:
- Decentralization of economic power — fewer monopolistic giants, more independent businesses.
- Cultural shift from employment to ownership — fostering autonomy and innovation rather than dependency.
- Leveraging technology for high-value creation — moving beyond microtasks into scalable business models.
It’s a different kind of ambition — and a much more durable one.
Final Thoughts
As the traditional markers of corporate success — growth, headcount, market share — become less relevant, a cultural pivot toward sustainability, quality of life, creative autonomy, and ownership seems inevitable.
The future of work shouldn’t just be about access to jobs.
It should be about building the systems, businesses, and ecosystems that create durable, scalable jobs — jobs that anchor purchasing power in local economies and strengthen long-term resilience.
This isn’t a far-off fantasy.
It’s a golden opportunity.
The question is not whether the opportunity exists.
It’s about who will have that vision — and the courage — to invest in ecosystems that empower founders to build it right here, in Kenya.