Construction foreman —> Smart engineer
Bricks and mortar aren't what they used to be. Construction represents more than $7 trillion of the world's economic output, and it's expected to grow to $12 trillion by 2020, as emerging markets bulge in China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East. And new transportation systems -- from driverless cars to maglev trains -- require infrastructure to be updated and reinvented. In developed countries, creaking urban centers will be retrofitted -- or replaced -- with new, sustainable technologies and materials. And with the development of "smart houses," already in the works from Microsoft, new types of engineers, designers, and construction workers will be needed to seamlessly integrate and install digital technology in our homes.
Visionary: Sebastian Thrun, who led development of the Google self-driving car.
Tour guide —> Space navigator
There's almost nowhere you can't get to by plane or boat these days. And with a flourishing private space race, a ride above Earth's atmosphere soon won't be solely for astronauts (or the ridiculously rich). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration predicts space tourism will be a billion-dollar industry within the next 10 years. Virgin Galactic has more than 500 reservations for suborbital flights, slated to launch as soon as next year. And the space venture company Bigelow Aerospace plans to open a space hotel in 2016. It may sound like something out of an Isaac Asimov novel, but if there's one thing we know about the future of the workforce, it's that wherever professionals and technologists are going, sci-fi writers have already been.
Visionary: Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, poised to be the first suborbital space tourism company.
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