When I recently wrote a letter offering advice to my grandchildren, I argued that the greatest challenge facing young people isn’t choosing the “right” career. It’s becoming the kind of person who can thrive when careers themselves are fluid. AI will reshape professions, but history proves that the curious, adaptable, and willing to learn will always find opportunity.
Weeks after writing that letter, I was in Bend, Oregon, watching hundreds of college students demonstrate exactly what I meant.
For a decade, the statewide InventOR competition has challenged Oregon college students to identify a real-world problem, build a working prototype, and pitch it to judges from the business and investment communities. My company, Horan MediaTech Advisors, has sponsored and participated in eight of these events. Every year, I leave more optimistic than when I arrived.
The real value isn’t just the commercial potential of the inventions. It’s what students learn by turning an abstract idea into something tangible. These students aren’t waiting to see what the future looks like; they are actively creating it.
The Right Questions for an AI Era
Artificial intelligence has sparked endless debate about disappearing jobs and obsolete degrees. Those are interesting questions, but they are the wrong ones.
In my 50 years in business—as an entrepreneur, executive, investor, and board member—I’ve rarely seen people succeed simply because they had a perfect plan. Success belongs to those who see an opportunity, rally good people, and have the courage to build.
In an AI-driven world, that mindset is the most valuable education of all. The real question we should be asking is: What qualities allow someone to succeed no matter how technology changes?
Watching the InventOR teams offered four clear answers:
- Curiosity: Innovation rarely begins with technology. It begins when someone looks at an inefficient process, an expensive medical device, or an environmental challenge and decides that “good enough” isn’t good enough. Technology only succeeds when it solves a real, felt problem.
- Action: Plenty of people complain; plenty have ideas. Very few get off the couch and build a prototype. Reality is an unforgiving teacher, but a highly effective one. It forces theoretical discussions to yield to practical truths: Does it work? Can it be made? Will anyone buy it?
- Collaboration: The lone inventor is a myth. Today’s breakthroughs require diverse skill sets—engineering, software, marketing, business. Learning to collaborate with people whose expertise differs from your own is a vital modern skill.
- Resilience through Failure: Not every prototype works, and few business models survive first contact with reality. That’s a feature, not a bug. Most successful companies pivot multiple times. Failure, when experienced early and inexpensively, is a masterclass. Students who learn this in college are far better prepared than those who spend years trying to avoid mistakes.
The Ultimate Human Advantage
AI is remarkably efficient at processing information, writing code, and analyzing data. But AI doesn’t care about community problems. It doesn’t get personally invested in making life better, nor can it persuade classmates to join a project, convince a customer to trust an idea, or find the grit to keep going after a setback.
AI excels at inference and extraction; it does not excel at original thought. That remains a profoundly human strength.
The next generation’s competitive advantage won’t come from knowing more than everyone else—AI will make knowledge abundant and cheap. The advantage belongs to those who can identify a problem, organize a team, build a solution, and iterate through trial and error.
Those are qualities no software update can download.
A Shift in Mindset
Parents often ask me what their kids should study. Engineering, computer science, business, and design are all excellent. But the more critical question is: Will they have the opportunity to build something that didn’t exist before?
That “something” doesn’t need to be a billion-dollar startup. It could be a nonprofit, an app, a local service, or a digital channel. The project itself matters less than the confidence gained by bringing an idea to life.
Programs like InventOR teach initiative—something difficult to absorb from a lecture hall. They push students to stop asking, “What job should I prepare for?” and start asking, “What problems are worth solving?”
To my grandchildren, and to this next generation, my advice remains: Don’t wait for the future to happen to you. Go build part of it yourself.