This week I turned 50. When I was younger, fifty seemed old. I’ve grown considerably as a person, but I don't really feel that different to the person I was twenty years ago. My interests have evolved, my perspective has broadened and hopefully I've become a little wiser, and perhaps more patient. Over time you become aware of just how much you don’t know. That everyone is working life out as they go no matter what age they are. Everyone has their own lessons to learn at different stages of life.
What has surprised me most is not how much I've changed, but how much the things I admire have changed. When I was younger, success always seemed to be about more. More achievements, a bigger business, more money and more recognition. We tend to think if something was good, then making it bigger was even better. Growth becomes the measure of success. Scale became the goal. There is nothing wrong with ambition. The world needs ambitious people because ambition builds companies, creates jobs, solves problems and pushes society forward.
But everything today is about scale. The café becomes a franchise. The software company must become a unicorn. The YouTube channel becomes a personal brand. The hobby becomes a side hustle. Every success is expected to become something bigger. Somewhere along the way we have confused growth with progress. We have become so obsessed with optimisation and scale that we risk overlooking something far more valuable. Craftsmanship. Authenticity. Trust. Humanity.
I find myself increasingly admiring people who dedicate themselves to mastering something simply because it is worth mastering. The family bakery that has perfected the same loaf of bread for generations. The cabinet maker whose furniture will outlive him. The restaurant owner who refuses to open a second location because quality matters more than growth. There was a time when we admired these people.
Where have all the craftsmen gone?
More than sixty years ago the German writer Heinrich Böll wrote a short parable that has since been retold around the world. A tourist sees a fisherman relaxing by the water and asks why he isn't catching more fish. The fisherman replies that he has already caught enough for the day. The tourist explains how he could buy more boats, build a fleet, become wealthy and eventually retire somewhere beautiful where he could spend his days fishing and enjoying life. The fisherman simply smiles.
"But I'm already doing that."
It is such a simple story because it asks one of life's most important questions.
How much is enough?
That question stayed with me as my wife Paula, and I travelled through Sicily in May to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Like most visitors, we were captivated by the coastline, the history and the food. But what stayed with me most was something much quieter. Life didn't seem optimised. It simply was.
The baker wasn't trying to build an international bakery chain. The winemaker wasn't talking about dominating global markets. The family restaurant wasn't searching for investors. They simply wanted to make beautiful food, great wine and welcome people into their corner of the world. There was a quiet pride in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. It reminded me that there is a profound difference between becoming bigger and becoming better.
There are examples of this all around us.
Every Italian child grows up familiar with The Last Supper. Prints of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece hang in the dining room of Italian family homes all over the world. Millions of perfect reproductions exist. You can buy one online for less than a hundred dollars. Then you stand in front of the original in Milan. It isn't perfect. The colours have faded. Sections have deteriorated. Five centuries have left their mark despite extraordinary restoration efforts. Ironically, many reproductions are brighter, sharper and closer to what the painting may once have looked like. Yet the original is priceless.
Why?
Not because it is perfect, but because it is authentic. Every faded brushstroke and every imperfection is evidence that Leonardo himself stood before that wall more than five hundred years ago. The imperfections do not diminish its value. They are part of its value.
The same principle explains why collectors pay millions of dollars for a rare trading card, a first edition book or a vintage watch while a flawless replica is worth almost nothing. Investors understand this instinctively. Scarcity creates value. The replica may look identical. It may even function better. But it lacks the one thing that cannot be manufactured. A human story with history and provenance.
I can see the same thing happening to humanity itself as artificial intelligence rapidly makes intelligence abundant. It will write better than most people. Analyse faster than us. Create images, music and software that will often be indistinguishable from or even better than human work. For most of history, knowledge has been scarce. Increasingly, it will become almost free. As intelligence becomes abundant, humanity becomes scarce. As perfection becomes cheap, imperfection becomes valuable.
I believe that is where the value of the future will lie. In people who are authentic. In the founder who genuinely cares about their employees. In the artist whose brushstrokes reveal the hand that painted the canvas. In the musician whose voice cracks during a live performance. In the conversation that wanders without an agenda. In the local café where the owner still knows your name. These things are valuable because of their imperfections.
That is the main lesson I have taken from turning fifty. I haven't become less ambitious. I still admire great companies and remarkable founders. I still believe in building things that matter. But I have become just as fascinated by those who know when enough is enough. People who choose craftsmanship over scale, depth over breadth and authenticity over optimisation. The premium of the future will shift to trust, craftsmanship and genuine human connection.
For much of the past century we have pursued efficiency, perfection and endless growth. But I don’t think the future will necessarily belong to those who are the biggest, the fastest or even the smartest. What will matter is whether something is real. Whether it has a story. If it bears the fingerprints of the person who created it. Those whose relationships are built on trust rather than algorithms. Who understand that craftsmanship matters. The greatest irony of the AI age may be that the closer machines come to becoming like us, the more valuable it will be to remain unmistakably human.