This is a little off-topic, but last week, I was asked what profession I thought a colleague’s teenager should begin preparing for in order to be successful. My friend was looking for a technology or two in information management. However, I found myself going off in a variety of directions, even though I am not so afflicted as to have teenagers yet. I’ll try to recreate, and reduce, my diatribe here…

1. What the teenager brings natural talent and interest to. This must be overriding guidance for any of the subsequent directions. There’s nothing wrong with pushing and refining towards a direction that is interesting, but success is personal. Creating the best tailored life for oneself, balancing numerous personal factors, must take precedent. For example, if one is willing to and desiring travel, a direction would be crafted quite differently from someone who is going to prefer a predictable and repeatable type of day. For those who want to go for those skills that should maximize earnings and demand, these are my opinions around that narrow focus.

2. What cannot be outsourced. This is another of those non-specific guiding principles that should not be ignored. America is a system integrator. You can be a top talent in the world in anything and you will still be highly marketable. However, for professions that can be outsourced, that search for quality (top talent) versus quantity (cheap) will wane and your differentiation will need to be even higher to command top compensation. By the way, I not only mean outsourced, as in to India, but also to internet automation.

3. Learn to speak Chinese. While our population continues its inevitable, yet slow-moving journey towards universal language over the next several millenniums and it is not all clear what that language will be like, what is clear is that the career years of today’s teenager will weigh important the ability to speak Chinese. Trade and diplomacy with the Chinese will be invaluable skills for companies and government.

4. Become a Patent Lawyer. What are we going to do with all this accumulated intellectual property crossing national boundaries? Fight over it, of course. And it’s the patent lawyer getting in the ring for the fight… over and over again.

5. Become a mechanical engineer. Of all the engineering disciplines, mechanical engineering stands out to me due to the impending need to redesign to replace energy usage, take advantage of localization of mechanical systems and drive further automation, which is showing signs of being an even higher priority.

6. Any technology that involves the replenishment of resources. For whatever you believe about peak oil (and soil, water and air), there’s no doubt that energy makes the world go and slowing down what energy does for us (or how many of ‘us’ there are) does not seem to be an option. For those who can make energy more efficient, through current popular or interesting sources – or something new – the world will reward that tremendously.

7. Food Science - helping the harvesting of our food to scale to population growth. While some localization efforts are already taking shape in our grocer’s selection due to the fear of higher costs of oil, shifting our dietary mix to more scalable possibilities will be rewarded.

8. RFID Technology. How many more things need to be tagged? Look around. Even if the tag serves no purpose after leaving the store, it helps get it efficiently to the store. This technology is nascent relative to where it will be as the tags get smaller and cheaper.

9. Personal services that cannot be outsourced. This includes the doctor that has to see you personally, but not the one who reads test results. On different scales, keeping in mind item 1 above, speech pathology and even hair styling are other examples of personal services that it will take some time to outsource. However, there’s always the chance that the Flowbee will reemerge with customized features and modern technology for a second go-around, saving men the monthly trek to Supercuts.