I belong to the generation of digital immigrants. I have grown up in a none-digital world, have been introduced for digital tools, but it is still like a foreign language to me. Now we have the first generation of digital natives – now aged between 12 and 30 – who take the digital technologies for granted and as a mother tongue-language. They are also referred to as the Net Generation, Millennials or Generation Y. They are a new tribe of people with new attitudes, beliefs and ways of working.
Urs Gasser is co-author of Born Digital. He is the principal investigator on the Digital Natives project, an academic collaboration between the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. He has devoted the past few years to studying how people who grew up immersed in digital technologies interact with the world.
The born-digital generation is distinguished by three characteristics, he says:
The first is their relaxed attitude to information disclosure; the second, their aptitude at social networking; and the third, the very different way they process information, as compared with previous generations.
“Digital natives are generally more open about themselves and have fewer reservations about sharing their thoughts and opinions with the world.
“The fear is that this will lead them to share information about their jobs and the organisations they work for, without reflecting on how appropriate it might be to divulge information that might be considered confidential or commercially sensitive.”
Tackling the issue is a matter of education, he argues. Where corporate policies are thoughtfully applied (and observed), that propensity for self-disclosure can be a positive force, building trust between colleagues and opening the door to deeper collaborations.
It also offers organisations a chance to get to know young employees better, to understand what motivates them and the best ways to channel their energies to reap better business results.
But it’s the second and third traits that offer companies the greatest chance to get ahead. “For years, organisations have been investing heavily in knowledge management initiatives to tap into the collective expertise of their workforce, but the results have been mixed.
“Suddenly, the cultural barriers to information sharing are crumbling with the emergence of social networking and the rise of a new workforce that is more than comfortable with working online with their peers to solve a problem.”
This, he says, has huge implications in many aspects of business, such as developing products, identifying market opportunities and generating sales leads.
“Work-life balance is paramount to Millennials. These young people do not work by the clock – rather, they work by the task. Let them know what they need to do and when assignments need to be done. With mobile technology, they’ll be online at night completing projects.”
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Basic Books, 2008
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