Piscione, a serial entrepreneur, and Drean, an advisor at the Harvard Innovation Labs, talk about the imperative shift from a traditional employment model to a decentralised framework
(left)Josh Drean and Deborah Perry Piscione, Cofounders, Work3 Institute
Deborah Perry Piscione is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and VC. Josh Drean, aside from his role as an advisor at the Harvard Innovation Labs, is a co-founder of DreanMedia. Piscione and Drean together have co-founded the Work3 Institute, an AI and Web3 advisory firm, and are authors of Employment Is Dead: How Disruptive Technologies Are Revolutionizing the Way We Work. In an interview with Forbes India, they discuss how businesses can leverage disruptive technologies to reimagine work, making it more engaging, human, and democratised. Edited excerpts:
Q. What’s the Work3 revolution all about?
The Work3 Revolution is the next evolution of work, where emerging technologies like blockchain, AI, and decentralised platforms reshape how we structure our professional lives. These innovations enable greater flexibility, autonomy, ownership, and purpose in work, aligning with modern workforce needs. At the Work3 Institute, we help organisations integrate these technologies with people-first strategies, empowering digital-first, human-centric leaders to navigate this transformation. Unlike traditional approaches, we focus on using technology to amplify human potential, creating meaningful and engaging work experiences. This reinvention of work goes beyond efficiency and addresses how we can build a workplace that resonates with today’s workforce values and aspirations.
Q. ‘Employment’ and ‘Work’—how would you differentiate between the two?
Historically, when we consider ‘work,’ we think of clocking in and out, commuting to an office, and functioning within the confines of set processes and rules, as defined by a manager. For decades, these standard operating procedures (SOPs) gave shape to the conventional nine-to-five workday, a concept that has defined modern employment for decades.