01
Roles Are Disappearing
AI is taking over activities that yesterday defined entire professions. What remains when a role disappears are skills — judgment, creativity, empathy, ethical action.
NW34.org / New Work 2034
New Times Need New Work.
AI influences not just what we work on — but whether and how we work. What remains when machines take over our roles? Skills. Judgment. Empathy. Ethics. And the question of how we reassemble them.
NW34 is a socioeconomic think tank researching and developing how society can fundamentally reorganize itself when it comes to work and collaboration.
Visual
Abstract visualization of the shift: On the left, a classic org chart with job titles fragmenting and dissolving. On the right, fluid network clusters of human skills emerge — judgment, creativity, empathy, collaboration. Landscape 16:9, sage green and warm sand palette.
The Shift
Work as we know it is being renegotiated.
AI doesn't make us obsolete — but it makes our roles obsolete. What remains are human skills that need to be reassembled. Structures for this are missing. A model for this is missing. A conversation for this is missing.
02
Structures No Longer Fit
Hierarchies, departments, and job descriptions originate from a world where work was predictable. In a world where tasks change faster than org charts, new forms are needed.
03
Potential Remains Unused
Millions of people have the skills, time, and motivation — but no framework to combine them meaningfully. Fragmented capacity is the greatest wasted resource of our economy.
04
Income Becomes More Fragmented
As work distributes across projects, contributions, roles, and systems, income also becomes more varied. Clear models are needed to fairly understand, assess, and reward performance, responsibility, and value contributions.
These aren't trends that are just announcing themselves. They're already underway. Most organizational forms we work with today were built for a different world — and that world no longer exists.
Our Thesis
What if we didn't optimize work, but rethought it?
Not another productivity tool. Not another org chart. But the question: how do people organize themselves when their roles change faster than any company can respond?
Only when all four dimensions work together does a model emerge that is truly different — not a startup, not an agency, not a classic cooperative, but a third form.
Skills Over Roles
People no longer define themselves by job titles, but by what they uniquely do well. Organizations must learn to flexibly combine skills instead of filling positions.
Self-Organization Over Hierarchy
When requirements change faster than decision paths are long, top-down doesn't work anymore. Structures are needed that distribute responsibility and make decisions where knowledge resides.
AI as Organizational Logic
AI is not just a tool that accelerates tasks. Within clearly defined mandates, it can act organizationally on its own — analyzing, routing, consolidating, triggering workflows.
Fair Participation in Results
Those who contribute skills should participate in the value created — regardless of whether someone works full-time, co-founds, or contributes a few hours per week.
Where This Comes From
What started as founder frustration became a bigger question.
It began with a simple observation: good ideas don't fail because of lack of creativity, but because no matching team, no structure, and no fair framework exists. The attempt to solve this led deeper — to the question of why we organize work the way we do at all.
From this emerged a manifesto: 16 modules ranging from societal problem analysis to governance and self-organization, to AI roles and participation logic. Honestly, more of a brain dump than a finished work. That's exactly why we're looking for people to think alongside.
"Good ideas don't fail because of lack of creativity. They fail because the framework is missing — and because no one has built it yet."
Image
A whiteboard sketch: A single point on the left (the idea), a working team and product on the right. In between: emptiness, a dashed line, question marks — the missing infrastructure this manifesto aims to bridge. Mood: reflective, exploratory. Muted colors or black and white.
The Manifesto
16 Modules. Open Thinking. Not a Finished Product.
From societal analysis to cooperative logic and AI governance through to a concrete vision — as an invitation to think further, not as a finished program.
Module 01
Executive Summary
The core thesis: Good ideas should not fail because no perfect team currently exists.
Module 02–03
Problem & Core Idea
Why there is a missing mechanism between idea and company — and what could take its place.
Module 04–05
Model & Timing
What a hybrid venture collective is, why it is realistic right now, and what forces are working in its favor.
Module 06–07
Operational Process & AI Role
How ideas are tested in 5-week sprints and how AI becomes not just a tool, but an organizational actor.
Module 08–09
Value Proposition & Structure
What different target groups gain and how the cooperative plus FlexCo forms a two-tier model.
Module 10–12
Governance & Participation
Circles instead of departments, consent instead of voting, contribution-based compensation instead of hierarchical salary bands.
Module 13–16
Potentials, Risks & Vision
What is possible, what can go wrong, and how the path from the first idea to a societally relevant model looks.
Where We Are
Phase One: Think. Debate. Sharpen.
We are at the beginning. The manifesto exists. The idea is formulated. What's missing now are other perspectives — and then a first real experiment.
Visual
Horizontal timeline with four marked phases: 01 Shaping the Manifesto (active, highlighted in sage green), 02 Starting the First Project, 03 Scale and Learn, 04 Making New Work Possible. First phase marked as "Now". Minimal design, clean typography.
01
Now: Shaping the Manifesto
The manifesto exists as a comprehensive draft — 16 modules ranging from societal problem analysis to governance and AI roles. What's missing: the perspectives of others. We're looking for people who can challenge, expand, and sharpen this thinking.
02
Then: Starting the First Project
The ideas remain theory until they are tested on a real project. In a first 5-week sprint, we want to show that skills can be newly combined, fairly compensated, and organized AI-natively.
03
After That: Scale and Learn
Every project generates knowledge, infrastructure, and experience that makes the next one faster and better. From a first experiment to a model that others can adopt and develop further.
04
In the Future: Making New Work Possible
The goal is a new way of working: more networked, more self-organized, more fairly compensated, and open to distributed contributions. If this succeeds, NW34 will become a practical model for how work can be organized in the AI age.
Who's Missing
New models don't emerge alone. We're looking for co-thinkers.
Not just builders. Not just founders. But people who question the way we organize work — and are willing to help build an alternative.
What co-thinking means: no full-time commitment, no job interview. One to three hours per week — reading, commenting, pushing back, co-creating. Those who are present when the model takes shape also help define what it becomes.
Thinkers & Critics
People who can question and expand organizational, social, or economic models.
Domain Experts
Labor law, cooperative governance, organizational design, social science, governance — knowledge that grounds our thinking.
Builders & Technologists
People who not only understand AI-native ways of working but want to put them into practice and shape them.
Practitioners with Experience
People who have worked in cooperatives, collaborative structures, self-organized teams, or unusual frameworks — and know what works and what doesn't.