Competing in the New World of Work

1 Radical Adaptability

Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada is probably the worst place on earth for thousands of people to gather during the last week of August. Midday temperatures on the lifeless salt flats hover near 110°F. The nearest electrical connections and running water taps are almost ten miles away. You need goggles and a face mask for protection from the sudden dust storms with their fifty-mile-per-hour winds. And yet, since 1991, Black Rock Desert has drawn as many as eighty thousand people annually to the Burning Man celebration.

By design, Burning Man is a strange and otherworldly place, where many of the outside world’s rules don’t apply. For nine days out of the year, a community springs up in Black Rock Desert as a social ...