The Rise of Generation C: Implications for Innovation Acceleration
Posted on March 2, 2011 by Jeffrey Tobias in Collaboration, Culture of innovation, InnovationExcellent report by Booze&co. on what they call Generation C: People born after 1990, digital natives, highly connected, living online, using social networking as second nature, being able to consume vast amounts of information, and living in what Booze calls a “personal cloud”. The premise is that by 2020 an entire generation will have grown up in a primarily digital word, with technology as we know it today just part of their life, rather than an add-on. Booze says the C in Generation C stands for Connect, Communicate and Change.
You can read the full article here.
What are the implications for innovation acceleration if this is the case? If you endorse the premise – as I strongly do – that innovation is powered by collaboration and connectedness – that innovation acceleration happens just by the fact that people are connected in an ecosystem, then we are in for a meteoric rise is the innovation capability of Generation C. Do you agree?
And if this is the case, what structures, if any, do we need to put in place to capture and harness this creativity? Can the corporation as we know it cultivate and environment where all of this innovation potential is harnessed and exploited?
The answer is – not today. Next year? or 2020?
Scott Ward says:
Post Author May 2, 2011 at 11:11 amThis study is brilliant. We’re already seeing the emergence of Digital Entrepreneurs as is disucssed in the report and in the book “4-hour work week”.
There’s no doubt that connectivity fuels innovation so the organisations that can connect with their audience the most effectively (not just their employees) will dominate the landscape going forward. Organisations have to start positioning to cater for these people now or run the risk of becoming irrelevant.