Trends in Generational Renewal.

It started in Australia. With an almost Gen-X Kevin Rudd, and a decidedly Gen-X Julia Gillard, as deputy.

One year later, it was Obama, in the USA, another Gen-Xer. And significantly self-made. Not another white man, son-of-privilege type.

Now came New Zealand, with self-made money-man, John Key. Like Obama, 47.

Politics still continues to alternate between left-and-right. With New Zealand Left making America’s Obama Left look positively Right-wing. (In terms of the Left, we will always have the French!)

So it’s not ideas they share. Left, Left, Right respectively.

It’s age, outlook & a similar worldview that comes with that.

What’s next?

Well the trend of generational renewal, puts UK decisively in the Cameron camp. And that’s a Conservative, old-school Right.

The 2thinknow View is the trends support a Cameron victory in the UK, despite a further consolidation to Brown during a trend of national crisis.

Soon, Gen X will hold most key political leadership positions.

Baby Boomers: the Failed Generation.

Significantly the divisive failure of the Baby Boomer politicians has led to their ousting.

It is up to Gen Y & X leaders to lead, unify & achieve what the idealogues of the Baby Boomer generation failed to do.

From the Gen Y & X viewpoint, Baby Boomers failed to achieve their goals without massive collateral damage.

Their radical social agenda destroyed Gen X-Y’s basic education & schooling. Drug use is now a scourge on society. There is worsened environmental degradation.

And the Boomers transferred the burden of paying for it all to their children.

What is really like sandpaper on an open wound is that after destroying the education system for all but the wealthiest, that the Baby Boomers complain that Gen X & Y can’t speak, don’t pay attention, and are simply not good enough.

In the conference I spoke at on Thursday, a few Baby Boomers were having a good old whinge about Gen Y students. Are they YOUR kids? Did YOU raise them? Well…

There is so much hostility by Baby Boomers to Gen X & Y, now at least there is a chance to be judged on results, not on sanctimonious whingeing.

So Gen X, we got here. What’s Next?

Technology should improve lives on a personal level, or on a professional level. In the current time, technological advanced solutions are often used to simple human problems, best solved by practical, mechanical or human ’soft’ solutions.

One symptom of this is increasing engagement with screens in front of you, and reduced engagement with people. This is symptomatic of the younger Creative Generation.

If you are managing, working with or teaching this younger Creative Generation, it can seem they are difficult to reach.

Continuous Partial Attention

The article that piqued my attention this last week, regarding this, was the LA Times article that reported a number of Silicon Valley tech firms had dropped laptops, blackberry’s, phones and all manner of gadgets from meetings.

“All of our meetings got a lot more productive,” Wilkens said.

It’s not exactly attention deficit. Linda Stone, a software executive who worked for Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., calls it “continuous partial attention.” It stems from an intense desire to connect and be connected all of the time, or, in her words, to be “a live node on the network.”

LA Times, 31st March 2008

Generation Z & Y people I meet, and many of my own Generation X, do constitute the Creative Generation. But their attention is a multi-tasking, unfocused, continual partial attention. An attention drawn to a screen.

The Creative Generation is a term invented by 2thinknow in 2007, that we have noted has been taken up via various schools in creative programs. One such program is here – Creative Generation Queensland.

Symptoms of Creative Generation

Creative Generation is represented by generations increased lateral and creative approaches to complex problems or issues. Conversely, often this valuable creativity is reflected in a lack of focus.

Gadgets with wireless tend to mean that people can interact with others who are not in the room, or the matter in front of them.

This generation also think in terms of lateral ideas and connections, networks and nodes. Aristotlean structures of modernism is not them, it is more a web than a grid.

I am one of this Creative Generation, a transition member being only 33, but with training and skills in what is considered process and process design. Grid and Web, if you like.

However, for a majority of this Creative Generation, their lateral creativity is symptomatic of a lack of process.

Like many ‘older’ leaders of this Creative Generation, I will form the leadership group and set directions for younger members of the Creative Generation, a bridge between an aging society and a society in transition.

What the Creative Generation means…

This means we will need to devise new ways to work, and examine older ways to work in order to deal with this emerging lack of process.

We will also need to revive forgotten methods of learning. We will need to redress learning priorities.

And we will also need to examine the assumption that technological improvement leads to societal improvement, as years of industrialization have polluted our planet, and new information technology enables increased control methods for creativity.

As the transition from an industrial process and mechanical society to a post-industrial society, we will need to create new working methods, in tune with the zeitgeist of the times.

Keeping some gains, within a new paradigm

A large part of that will be examining real outcomes, and retaining some of the efficiency gains of Taylor-ism and Ford-ism, whilst embracing the new paradigm.

So we will need to give younger employees, and the new entrants to the workforce practical skills and tools to embrace the Creative Society that is the next paradigm of work, arts and culture.

Contact 2thinknow if you would like to know more about skills for a Creative Generation.

Australia needs new ICT policies.

Why we don’t have an ICT Export industry!

According to the AIIA, domestic production of ICT is worth between 4 and 5% of GDP.

ICT exports were once around $7.8 billion per annum, in 2000, according to AIIA.

Now, under Howard, these have declined to $5.4 Billion according to Austrade.

There’s no reason we cannot more than double ICT exports in 5-10 years through government policy.

Canada is a country closes to Australia in size and population.

A single city in Canada, exports along $6.2 Billion Canadian (around 6.4 Billion in todays dollars), according to the Toronto City government.

1 city in Canada exports more IT than Australia!

Surely Australia with a population 450% greater than Toronto can double one city’s exports?!

Canada is also ahead of us in broadband and ICT infrastructure, despite our recent resources boom. Howard does nothing about ICT policy, and doesn’t even like IT.

I believe we can have a $13 Billion per annum ICT Export industry by 2015.

But it will need innovation. It will need ideas from overseas. it will need education.

It’s not that hard with the right leadership.

That is a huge opportunity, and a shelter against any forthcoming recession. A back-up plan to the resource boom. And ICT can be grown through utilization strategies without inflationary pressures on the economy, by government policy that aids global ICT exports.

It would be the start of making us part of an Education Nation, instead of a nation looking to the 1950s, under Howard.

This export of ICT market would position Australia positively overseas as a ‘clever country’ an oft-derided term.

But we can’t take this opportunity by looking inward and more of the same politics of paper-shuffling.

We don’t need the recidivist Howard government deciding ICT policy.

We should form closer partnerships with the USA, Germany and East Europe. In a global world an idea does not always recognize where it is born.

Australian governments should source the best ICT instead of massive roll-outs that damage the industry like the Customs disaster, designed by people who did not understand ICT.

What does the Howard government do? Besides mountains of paper and talk?

The Howard Government: Australian Technology Problem

We should look outwards. Do we?

We should look beyond hardware and ‘box’ thinking. Do we?

We’ve had 12 years of Howard: a supposedly pro-market government? Where’s our broadband? Now?!

The Good news

Australia is a global leader in Mining Software and other niches. Internet technologies have originated here. Software rollouts sometimes start here before going global.

But no thanks to the Howard Government.

Sure the US Free Trade Agreement on the whole is positive for ICT. Exchange of professionals, closer trade ties.

Austrade have done good work, but ICT is down the bottom of their website, 12th link, after many less relevant export industries. It’s symbolic, but…
And where’s the ICT initiatives?

If Rudd gets elected (as I predicted here) we will have decent broadband, according to the pre-election announcements. I have hope.

The Howard Government, is more interested in creating mountains of paper. This is seemingly backed up by our professional body the Australian Computer Society.

The ICT industry needs global innovation, not a bunch of aging professors and baby boomer consultants inflicting outdated curricula teaching outmoded computer ‘programming’ on kids, because that’s all they know.

The future is far more exciting than that.

Technology is so obviously a young person’s field!

If you ask ICT practitioners about what they do in their job, it will bear no resemblance to the actual curricula in most Australian universities.

At an ACS IT Symposium in August 2006 designed to ‘bridge the gap’ the very same professors ridiculed any idea that did not fit their ‘narrow’ view of the world.

I chaired a group of professors and they couldn’t agree amongst themselves on the ‘wording’ let alone any new ideas. Any new ideas were ‘revised out’.
ICT is one industry where age & history is a poor guide, unlike economics.

The Brain Drought in Australian ICT

Yet their is a dirth of people in ICT who understand emerging and even established technologies. Silicon Valley is far ahead. So is Toronto! There is a brain drought.

Instead we have policies driven and advised by ICT people out of touch with the market, a hallmark of Howard’s comfort with people in ICT his own age band.

Whether this is university professors who can’t understand modern ICT or baby boomer consultants who are intensely disliked by many of their younger members. Or aging Telstra executives.

It’s not good enough! Australia deserves better and can be a world ICT power!

Most of these organizations are full of people from the time when computers were a box in a room worked by scientists, and the concept of collaboration was having a meeting.

These people do not even efficiently use the technology they make policy decisions on.

Nor are they in touch with how to recruit Generation Y employees.

What we need is to understand technology, and use it

In a virtual world we need people who understand how to employ technologies like Web 2.0, citizen media, social bookmarking, online career management, agile computing, wikis, collaboration and even conversation in a digital age.

People who can foresee the future beyond a myopic backward-looking nostalgia for the past.

Notice I say employ or utilize, not ‘build’. The same people who harness these systems do not have to be the same people who ‘repair’ them. Do the technicians plan which models of car are released, or is that a broader decision taken in consultation, but with leadership?

An a recent Web 2.0 presentation the content was technical, inadequate and a sneering look down your nose at technology which the Americans are already utilizing.

The Americans (of all ages) say how can we utilize this technology?

Even when approached politely this arguing class is notoriously ‘dug-in’ in ICT. They say what can’t be done not how can we use this for the nation?

What Australia Needs under Rudd

It’s time they moved on and gave the younger (30-40) generation a chance at some real leadership. And innovation.

We need to become a global ICT industry, and we need government policy and policy advisers to reflect that.

We need vision, and leadership.

We don’t need ‘out-of-touch’ old professors and politicians who refuse to allow new talent into the echelons of government in ICT policy.

It’s time for generational change and a global world-view on ICT.

The world clock starts now…

Christopher

Need to look like you’re into your job?

Want to look like you care?

Want to disguise the fact you’re lazy?

That a chimpanzee could do your job?

[RATINGS]

The problem…

You’ll need something to show urgency.

To show your deep level of understanding of how very critically important your job is.

How the company could not run without your contribution.

Even if all you do is move numbers around spreadsheets in an office.

In the competitive economy, your job is mission-critical. It’s more than that, it’s glamorous. The company could fail without you…

Better make sure you show it!

You’ll need also of course to show how very much more important you are than your co-workers.

One potential answer

Sure there is words. As was recently overheard:

“Oh, is that all it is? I was back sooner from lunch than I thought.”

Meaning: I work so hard I take shorter lunch breaks without trying.

Believe it or not I hear this sort of rot incessantly. How? I’ve worked at more than 350 organizations… remember?

Unfortunately in the hyper-competitive world, this sort of politicking is needed. To assert one’s dominance over co-workers and ensure you are recognized as a workplace leader.

Politicking in offices is a substitute for doing anything, and worsened by bosses who do not stamp out the practise.

Of course, words are no longer enough… The bar has been raised.

Everyone (in Australia and England at least) is getting better at politics.

The more we remove formal power structures and replace them with informal ones, the more this sort of political rot proliferates.

The New fad: Corridor Running

There’s a new fad sweeping the nation, and soon the world.

Corridor Running.

You can show you are ambitious, that you care, you are determined, and more important than co-workers.

Your job is so important you have to run to the copier or printer. Or run to the meeting. Or run across to your colleagues’ desk.

The less important your job, the more you can run.

Not just jog, but run! Sprint if you can.

For bonus points make a comment as well. Get out of breath. Make a fuss.

It’s the new bar in office politics. Run the corridor. Try it!

Take care – corridor running won’t make you fit!

Christopher (tongue-firmly in cheek)

(No, I am not making this up. I’ve seen it at more than a few workplaces now. People running to the copier. Or the desk. Really. No joke. I couldn’t make this up.)

Cell phones on trains.

Cell phones (or mobiles if you prefer) in restaurants.

Famously, I once heard a man chatting up a woman in a toilet cubicle with the door closed at a cinema. I first thought she was in there with him, then he came out holding a phone.

I wonder what she thought of the loud ‘flush’?

The Market Opportunity for Quiet

Expect a pendulum swing back to quiet and focus.

In the meantime expect a rise in products offering peace & quiet, tranquility and rest.

Expect added devices that give control over a person’s micro-environment ie. The space around them.

Expect ideas like quiet zones and others.

I noticed even the more peaceful European capitals now had noisy cell phone users. Recent surveys have shown Germans too are seeking peace & quiet.

A conversation with French people in Paris in August, turned to the stresses of modern life.

Peace & quiet will be a big opportunity. The value lies in identifying how solutions to that opportunity should be implemented in global and local markets.

The extrapolation into outcomes like new global manners and etiquette, also highlights important social trends.

Open plan offices are a practical example of a countervailing force against peace & quiet, depending on how they are implemented. They will be effected.

But mobiles and cell phones have been the ‘poster-child’ for the broader movement of individualism (look at me I am important), which is also part of numerous nascent countervailing trends.

A further analysis by 2thinknow would unearth numerous market and product opportunities in line with this nascent current to 8 year trend in various global markets.

Don’t mind the noise of a dozen others in a din?

So why is peace & quiet important to innovation?

Peace & Quiet needed for Inspiration

If you want to concentrate you need peace & quiet.

As I write this I am in a library. Been researching. The librarians are gossiping loudly. Nowhere is quiet these days.

Why can’t we get peace?

We underrate the need to concentrate. We need peace.

On trams and trains now public transport users loudly discuss their social lives.

Of course this is worse in some countries.

In my global experience, Australians from Sydney & Melbourne are the loudest, most rude mobile phone talkers in the world.

Cell Phone Abusers on Trains – no innovation here

Before I used to enjoy a quiet trip to read a book or magazine.

Now it is nigh-impossible as men, but more often women, recant their social lives loudly into a device.

Twenty years ago it would have been a sign of madness. Now judging by some of the conversations I overhear, it probably still is!

If you want any proof that mental illness is a new epidemic (as many politicians in Australia privately believe), listen to the mildly psychotic rantings of a few vocal public transport users who share too much.

Quite often I think people do it to show off their social lives, as if to say I am so very busy and therefore very attractive to others / very important.

Oh well, in Australia we like to head over the cliffs with the herd. Anything not to be lonely or ‘out of the herd’.

The new low point in Peace & Quiet

I often head on a plane, and write voluminous amounts of material.

Both on the plane and at the airport before.

The quiet and change of scenery allows me to shift focus & gain new insight.

Now according to numerous articles, but specifically Conde Nast Traveller magazine, in plane cell phone calls may be a reality.

The Europeans are testing the device.

Sure it is up to individual callers, but one of the great defenses of air travel has always been, ‘I can’t talk as I am Boarding the plane’ and the resultant time difference.

On long haul flights this can buy you an almost uninterrupted day.

Now if there’s no excuse for false urgency you can expect that professionals will need to become available during the previously relaxing flying time.

The last quite place is about to be taken away.

Oh well, I guess there is a market opportunity.

But I’d prefer peace & quiet now.

Take care

Christopher

This is the first part of a regular series on how to speak the language of ideas in coming weeks. How to be an Ideas Person.

Ideas and an intellectual education are important no matter how old we are. Both help us make better decisions in terms of positive change in our societies.

How do we personally understand what is positive change and what is not?

We talk incessantly about success, about wanting positive change.

We talk about love, relationships, children, families, kids and a variety of other serious topics.

Also about negatives: why the trains are late, why language is in decline,why schools are poor, why traffic is bad, why the Earth is polluted… or more sanguinely why we look fat in the morning.

But where do our tools to understand our modern world come from?

Where do we get the ideas of what is a positive or negative change?

Modern media and texts

No matter where we live we have a variety of texts and tools to understand the modern world. But too often our society’s ideas come from flawed, incomplete, pedestrian text and opinionated media with all the intellectual power of a 10W lightbulb.

Innovation starts in the Good Ideas of Past

To be grounded in innovation and understanding which changes are likely to be positive, we need to stand on the shoulders of giants.

An Example from the Past

Today I was speaking to an older gentleman, Roger, 89 years old in fact, who is a member of a club I belong to. He reminded me of a different world.

Roger recounted how when he studied Arts/Philosophy at Melbourne University they spent a lot of time on the classics.

One Year on Plato in fact.

He also shared with me a poem by Milton from his high school days.

Roger was a spritely 89, and well-versed in the language of ideas.

The Classics, Languages (he used to be fluent German speaker), arts, culture were once important. Why no longer?

Culture relativism in English Speaking countries like Australia is the problem. The idea that all ideas are equal.

The Simpsons as text is as enlightening as Plato? No.

Desperate Housewives is equal to Macbeth? No.

Machiavellis and Sun Tzu’s advice on War would have seen the Iraq War planned far better, or perhaps not attempted at all.

And that advice is centuries old, but must be read as ideas, not literally.

Instead we took Bart Simpsons’ advice in Iraq, and we had a cow, man.

Most of Europe is ahead of America, and cannot understand America’s (and English-speaking countries) fascination with the puerile cr*p we call media.

The Internet Presents: NEW opportunities

Instead we should take our ideas form the great ideas of the past.

Plato, Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Freud, Jung, Smith, Hume, Locke, Mills, Franklin, Aristotle, Homer and we can argue over the list later.

And once you have Internet access it is all laid out before you.
Before we get to that let’s examine why media may assume we are less-interested in learning.

The problem: Why do we play Russian Roulette with Ideas?

This is simply because we as a society are less educated than we used to be.There are many reasons for our our disengagement with idea we could identify in a full analysis. But let’s take one.

Vocational Learning is limiting

We in English-speaking countries are focussed on vocational learning.

How to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor. But also how to be a PE teacher, a nurse, a horticulturalist, a hairdresser.

So we can get a job. And start paying off all the money we owe our big credit card debts, or our university loans.

We hardly have time to learn for knowledge’s sake, and our right-wing governments are often not investing in educating people any more. ‘User-pays’ forces us to choose vocational choices over educational choices.

The days of a long-term vision in the current elected Governments sometimes seem long gone.

One plaudit and round of applause though: Melbourne University have bravely decided to follow the Ivy league system of general degrees followed by specialization.

Learn to learn first, then learn your job.

But not everyone can go back to uni.

If you missed out on this in school and instead read limited media & texts like The Simpsons or He Died With a Felafel in his Hand you deserve better.

How to start though.

Start with the Language of Ideas

We in UK, Australia and USA are in most cities not focused on the language of ideas.

Because we are taught (at least in Australia) all ideas are equal. Everyone can be smart.

A theory observed in the breach.

The fact is is everyone can be smarter. Not equal, but all can improve. Any individual can be more educated and more enlightened.

There is an alternative for all of us.

But Plato is hard.

And therein lies the problem.

But the answer is with the great Ben Franklin, the first published self-made man of the Enlightenment. A man of intellect with no university degree. A printers apprentice.

Ben Franklin once said,that he suspected it was easier to learn Latin, the classical language of ideas, by Learning French, Spanish, Italian and other European langauges first.

The point is start with what you can. And that’s what I’ll be sharing with you now and in coming weeks.

I am learning French at current, but half our class is struggling as they do not know what a verb is.

They have stopped teaching grammar in Australian public schools, you see, in the last decade.

So how do you learn?

Start with what is accessible. 6 things right now:

1) Try a language class.

2) But also watch The West Wing. Listen to the dialogue. Understand it.

3) Read online intelligent sites like this one.

4) Read an intelligent broadsheet instead of the tabloid monster.

5) Buy a dictionary. A thick one. Learn a new random word once a day

6) Visit an art gallery. Try to understand what the artists is saying. Even if you think the work is cr*p try to understand what he /she is saying.

In the next part of the series, in a few days, I will be giving you some more concrete steps. And a program.

And best of all all the material is all on the internet.

It’s not difficult, but instead of accepting the media you can start to be as educated as those in power or those with ivy league degrees.

Even if you are you might find a cultural tour interesting. I hop at least.
We need to talk about the language of ideas.

take care,

Christopher

But someone forgot to tell those 1950s-loving industrialist neo-cons.

The innovation zeitgeist is with the Creative Age.

Let’s look at where that innovation is for a moment.

So I don’t yet get it: what is innovation again?

It is not coolhunting — looking for the next plastic disposable item.

Innovation is ideas leading to positive change.

Positive change in business. And in society.

Right now our big-wigs in the White house and in Detroit are stuck in a big funk.

It’s a funk-up really. Iraq’s not going well.

We don’t need some modernist, oil and chemical-fueled economy for the next 50 years. We are smarter than that.

But we also don’t need to go around running around with starting fires and living in caves. We can solve this problem.

Here’s a starting point: Ideas don’t pollute.

And unlike the Neo-Cons I actually believe mankind is fundamentally creative.

We all hate what the Bush White-House has done

The withered stump of a shrivelled vision held up by the Neo-Conservatives is that mankind is too stupid to be trusted and brute force must be used to secure mankinds future by securing oil supplies.

That’s a vision not even fit for a postage stamp.

I don’t hate Bush himself, I hate the fact that he was foisted on us as a president.

Let me translate the Neo-Con vision:

“We’ll destroy the world, melt the ice-caps, but by-golly we’ll have a lot of plastic cr*p and a great-big car to drive around in. Pass the Pretzels…”

I’d rather be happy and have clean air and not make work the centre of my life.

And is playing office politics, selling more plastic cr*p or food-in-a-can really living?

European leadership – La Dolce Vita

In Europe, people know how to live.

And increasingly in managing the environment we must look to Europe, but also Silicon Valley, Boston, and all those places innovation lives and breathes.

Places where bright ideas get sowed as seeds that grow to trees.

And now we get to the point: the ultimate place.

The Internet. The Borderless Country.The Frontier!

Good things always happen on the Frontier.

Where even if you live in the smallest two-horse town, as long as you get an internet connection you can find like-minds.

Why is all this important? Why do we need innovation?

We as a people can solve problems.

We can be intelligent, and solve global warming, and other issues.

We can create positive social change.

In other words, we can innovate.

So this will be different to the Web 2.0 you’ve seen. We’re here (very soon).

Take care,

Christopher

Melbourne CBD is vastly different to Sydney CBD. (Yes I’m in Sydney once again. City yesterday and Parramatta today.)

Sydney CBD is vastly different to Parramatta.

The culture in the northern & Eastern Suburbs of Sydney are different. Both are affluent eras generally, but the culture is different.

This goes further than cities. Any form of grouping, cities, generational, academic, social, demographic is by nature a generalization.

Grouping theories

To generalise is human nature.

And many times in writing or describing a phenomenon a broad-brush grouping describes a phenomenon.

A majority of Australians wherever they are from tend to love an (alcoholic) drink. However the image of the beer-drinker is over stated, as many prefer wine or vodka.

This statement often is true for a given percentage of a grouping.

Most Australians I know like a drink. Many Americans I know are business-oriented. Most English I know enjoy dry wordplay humour and sarcasm. A sizable number of Czechs from Prague city I know are intellectually focussed.

Why not just deal with each situation as a sum of individual factors?

Simple. Granularity of each grain of data would over-run us. Each decision would become slow and unwieldly. This is arguably what happened to the Bracks government in Victoria. At some point a decision has to be taken, not just a series of opinions gathered.

And at a national or global level a grouping needs to be representative in the aggregate. Decisions may be taken at different levels however: City, State, National or International.

Interest rates are a blunt tool for influencing the aggregate of groups of citizens in our society. Economists still argue over their usage.

So the government have to decide where to place a road. Or where to place a hospital that is going to benefit the majority within a group, or a sub-group; which may be based on interest or geography (eg. a suburb).

Without generalizations that are predominately accurate we cannot make decisions. If we took every factor into account in decision making this would slow down the decision.

Those making macro-decisions rely on macro-statments.

But it is useful to remember that America, Australia and your neighbours are the sum of cities and regions, that may be generalized about to make a decision. But increasingly in our world, geography is no longer the sure boundary of groupings it once was.

How does culture factor in?

Cultural factors can be best explained in groupings often.

Unfortunately culture is often ignored and not factored into business.

Most people think they can transplant a business model from one country to another with a ‘coat of paint’, if that. Or from one target demographic to another.

Further though in the Web 2.0 world groups and communities of like minds are increasingly international. So Web 2.0 rewrites geographic-based rules of culture.

Librarians gather in http://library20.ning.com. From all over. US, Germany, India, Slovakia.

Rap and hip hop lovers have their own communities on ning. There are communities dedicated to dog breeds.

These communities are boundary-less to some extent.

Whereas once there was no group if you were the only person in our town who liked Owls (like a friend of mine) in your small town, now there is a global community.

So it is useful to think of grouping as overlapping circles, where an individual belongs to individual groups that to some extent explain the individual.

Some circles are geographic, some are not.

That is the success of web 2.0 and social networking. It’s how Social networkers assess each other, communtiies of interest and shared interest. It can be as simple as ‘I love BlackAdder’ and so does ‘XYZLOLCat’.

We haven’t escaped groups. We can’t. Granular data is still overwhelming.

Humans sort, group and generalise. We self-group. we self-generalize (Emo, Goth, Suit).

The difference is whether such generalisations are always tied to geographic, racial or physical groups as in the past, or virtual groups.

There are 2thinknow models to explain web 2.0 and social networks we are using with clients. If you’d like to know more for a business or government application, then drop me a line.

See you soon. Take care,

Christopher

Well I’d say it has something to do with those “oh so demanding baby boomers” who were their parents.

Truth is:

if you dose a bunch of kids up on sugar, …
chauffeur them around to every single hobby that might interest them, …
tell them that all viewpoints are culturally equivalent, …
teach them to question all authority figures, …
give them what they want with no discipline,…
smoke dope yourself but lecture them on it/tell them it’s all experience, …
outsource their management onto other people because you both work,
and encourage them to express themselves fully,….. well…

… you will probably get a whole group of adults who are:

• easily distracted
• are imaginative and lateral
• are associative learners rather than rote learners
• don’t respect titles, only results
• judge worth on their own terms
• are looking for a tribe
• are extraordinarily creative
• demand attention
• have little patience with process for process sake
• focus on what they want
• continue to want instant solutions
• are natural with technology
• don’t need information in single streams or linear forms
• and, a few really entrepreneurial & mercurial minds who have created more than $300 million each in corporate value before the age of 30.

Which to be honest is what the world will need. It’s also what we have got.

And it is also what is making for creative hub cities all over the world, and extraordinarily creative online communities.

Baby boomers raised a creative generation, who are self-reliant and extraordinarily lateral, not linear.

Most of this is missed on most of the commentators on Generation X & Y.

Creative world will need a Creative Generation.

This part of a positive take on the generations between 16-32. (ie. born since 1975)

All I hear about Gen Y is difficult to work with, yada yada.

I’ve met some pretty difficult baby boomers. I just removed 3 knives from my back last evening all plunged in by middle-age men who feel they are failing in life and have to stick the knife into us 30-somethings who seem to have decided not to climb on a corporate treadmill.

And also, late last year a 30something senior manager with an ego the size of Texas and a brain the size of a small rocky outcrop (and who shall remain nameless), who was a royal pain to work with committed some pretty big skullduggery.

Everyone can be pretty difficult to work with folks.

There are opportunities here.

If you want a hint at the real reason why Generation Y are not fitting in to the employee structure, we may start needing to analyse whether the employee structure is actually the model that best serves individuals.

It certainly is not the most efficient model for creative outcomes in all industries.

The problem of generational fit lies with the type of workplace models being offered, as the Creative Generation in places like San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Melbourne, UK, Sydney, Boston and Eastern Europe imagine whole new working models.

I am writing some published analysis reports on this, but this is the broad thrust of the point. The Creative Generation is redefining work and approaches to business.

If you’d like a speech/workshop or some customized 2thinknow analysis reports on this topic, contact us now.

There are opportunities here. Don’t get stuck in the problems. There are business opportunities.

Lest you think it’s a western fad, I have even encountered similar issues within as farflung a place as Tirana, Albania and elsewhere in Europe as part of the Global Innovation Review — in both Vienna and Paris, for example. German newspapers have similar stories.

So there you go. If you ask the older generation in Tirana, about the current younger generation, the analysis is remarkably the same.

This is a global theme folks. Creative Generation is the distinction.

More than a thought. Take care,

Christopher