Embracing the new Net generation
Published Saturday December 6th, 2008
U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has tapped into the Net generation using all the tools of the Internet and social media to create an unprecedented level of citizen engagement in an election.
In Canada, some of the more backwards provincial governments have banned their employees from using Facebook.
They are the losers who just don't get it, according to Don Tapscott, author of the newly released Grown up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.
In an interview, Tapscott puts it in politer terms, but it is clear he thinks companies and governments that embrace the changing culture the Net generation is bringing will be the winners.
"It is a generation that has a different brain than their parents and as they come into the workforce, into the marketplace, into colleges and society, they are an unprecedented force to change every institution," he said. "If we listen to them and learn from them we can make a better world."
Tapscott tells the story of asking one high-level government official why government had banned Facebook, the social networking site that has more than 100 million users worldwide.
"He said the premier thought young people were wasting their time on the job. I said, 'If young people are wasting their time on the job is that a technology problem? Isn't it a management problem, a motivation problem, a workflow problem?' " Tapscott said.
"I asked him what was the effect of banning Facebook and he said, 'Everybody went to MySpace.' "
Corporations and governments that choose not to understand the generation will lose customers and employees, according to Tapscott's research, which has included surveying more than 11,000 young people.
"They come into the workforce pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and at their fingertips they have better tools than exist in Canadian corporations and in governments," he said. "Their culture is a culture of collaboration, and what do we do? We stick them in a cubicle and supervise them or worse, we ban their technology.
"By the time they are 27 they are on their third job and increasingly after that, they are thinking, 'I'll be an entrepreneur.' "
Tapscott, chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network, author of several books on the digital age and adjunct professor of management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, recounts another conversation on the futility of trying to cut off a generation used to collaboration and networking.
"I was talking to a young lad who works for a U.S. government agency that banned Facebook and I asked him what the effect of banning Facebook was," Tapscott said. "He said it was the single most demoralizing thing that management has ever done; he said it said to every young person, 'We don't understand you, we don't understand your technology, we don't understand collaboration and we don't trust you and your generation.' "
Companies, organizations and governments that take such a view of the Net generation - those young people from about the age of 11 to 30 who have grown up with the Internet and digital life - will be left behind, according to Tapscott.
"Electronic mail is yesterday's technology for them," he said. "It is good technology for sending a thank-you letter to your friend's parents.
"We are locked into yesterday's technologies. We have this huge generation we can learn so much from."
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