Generation Y 2.0

Did you know, baby boomers seem to be the only ones who love the name of their generation!

It doesn’t change the world and it’s nothing new, but here’s a small article which allows us to illustrate this. For those who missed previous episodes, we have 5 demographic generations right now:

• Generation Y (aged 14 to 30 years)
• Generation X (ages 31 to 45 years)
• Baby Boomers (aged 46 to 65 years)
• The Silent Generation (age 66 to 84 years)
• The Great Generation (age 85 and beyond)

So why is it since the baby boom, generations were given only one letter?

Because authors/sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe published a book entitled Generations, in which they described the Amercian generations since 1584. According to them, there were altogether 4 types of generations that follow in an endless cycle. If their thesis (published in 1991) has not been terribly well followed by historians, it was a Canadian writer, Douglas Coupland, which, in the same year, made a book “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”. It describes the angst of this generation in search of new spiritual values. Read the rest of this entry »

While large companies are beginning to take into account changes in behaviour in their HR practices and marketing, a recent survey suggests that small businesses are not yet ready to adapt their marketing strategies to meet the expectations of younger generations.

The survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the software developer Genesys, asked executives around the world * how they attract and retain young consumers.

It turns out that many companies are still debating the benefits of investing in this age group rather than the baby boomers. 42% of respondents believe it is better to “invest in Y” against 39% preferring to concentrate on other generations while the number of people of generation Y will soon surpass the number of baby boomers and will continue to gain influence.
Read the rest of this entry »

In these times of survival there are going to be a number of skills, capabilities, characteristics or traits that are going to be needed to rely upon. There appear to be a number of ‘soft skills’ that will distinguish those with not only the survival skills but the ability to help carry their organisation and themselves forward. These may include for example: self awareness, ability to communicate and relate, emotional intelligence, ability to evaluate complex problems, passion, entrepreneurial spirit, positive thinking, and curiosity.

Curiosity can be described as the desire to learn or to know an object that arouses interest, an emotion that causes curious behaviour, or just being inquisitive or nosey!

Without curiosity what would we have missed or would have happened to these guys - Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain James Cook, Richard Branson, Akio Morita, Friends Reunited, YouTube, Dyson, the entrepreneurs of Dragon’s Den, Harry Potter or perhaps this guy:

“The important thing is not to stop questionning”, Albert Einstein

For GenY and those with ‘Y behaviours’ this may be part of what distinguishes them, and something that our baby boomers and Gen X need to encourage. But don’t forget that “curiosity is common to human beings at all ages from infancy to old age”, Wikipedia. So this is something we must share across the generations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Time and time again we see comments about age sterotypes, whether they be baby boomers (BB), Generation X, Y’ers or the teen youth of today. As we’ve said before these boundaries are becoming blurred. What we see are behaviours not age groups.

People tend to follow cycles or stages throughout their lives, some more than others; adapting, embracing and making changes as they go.

Generation classifications were discussed with author Robert K Critchley in ‘Ageless Wisdom’ (hrmonthly, Australia, June 2006, Chaminade):

“I think the terms are useful for understanding the differences between people. The most important thing is not to run your life by ‘I’m a Gen X and I must live this way’. Understand that people are thinking differently, because so often the generational myopia is such that we think everyone thinks like we do. There is value in understanding the way different generations think and act - understand but don’t try to typecast.”

Another way of looking at classifying talent was outlined in Generation Gap (hrmonthly, October 2005, Chaminade), considering four different categories for talent rather than those of age:

Read the rest of this entry »

A high dose of the net can enable those under thirty years old to learn quickly but this can lead to difficulties in concentration as we are becoming increasingly aware. However, when an older or even more senior citizen carries out internet searches, it stimulates parts of the brain that regulates decision making and complex reasoning. This is where there can actually be an improvement in intellectual capacity. In fact the lines are blurring between the generations with regard to the ways they adapt to the use of technology.

UCLA recently announced that research on the internet can stimulate the zones of the brain that enables effective decision making and complex reasoning. The process enables an improvement in the memory capacities and overall brain function in those of a more mature age. Balancing that, if our over fifty year olds don’t spend their days surfing the web, large numbers of Generation Y appear to be totally devoting their time to it by comparison; a habit that partially modifies the brain function of these ‘digital natives’. This was underlined in a neuroscientific study by Gary Small. The conclusion: young people who spend more than nine hours per day on the web are more capable of taking rapid decisions and efficiently filtering information.

Creativity and speed, but difficulty in concentration
The under 30′s users proved that they were more creative but on the reverse poor at concentration and in assimilating large amounts of facts. According to Gary Small, the brain is in effect very sensitive to changes in its environment, thus the use of technologies can have a direct impact. “If you repeat the same task regularly, it trains certain circuits of the brain, and ignore others “ as he tells journalists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, another effect of the information age is the tendency to withdraw into a virtual world, whether a digital native or a ‘digital immigrant’.

Read the rest of this entry »