Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Don Tapscott is Chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network and an adjunct professor of management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is an international bestselling author or coauthor of eleven books, including Wikinomics, ParadigmShift, and The Digital Economy. Link in with the net generation at grownupdigital.com.

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"A MUST READ...if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future."--The New York Times

"A fascinating look at how young people are transforming our culture. The bottom line: An insightful, data-rich analysis with broad implications for managers, marketers, and politicians." -BusinessWeek

"A thoughtful antithesis to entrenched and sometimes alarmist managerial opposition to internet-influenced behaviours."--The Financial Times

"Demonstrates the world-changing power of the Net Generation."--Eric Schmidt Chairman & CEO, Google

"In the past two years, Don Tapscott has overseen a $4.5m study of nearly 8,000 people in 12 countries born between 1978 and 1994. In Grown Up Digital he uses the results to paint a portrait of this generation that is entertaining, optimistic, and convincing."-The Economist

"Grown Up Digital paints a generally encouraging picture . . . an optimistic view of how humans are evolving to engage with technology. Literally evolving: Mr. Tapscott cites scientific research that people who use digital media from a young age have different brain development than those who don't. . . . Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike, can draw lessons about the expectations of young people raised on real-time access to deep layers of information." -The Wall Street Journal

MEET THE NET GENERATION.

“No one has been a more informed commentator on the transformative impact of the digital age than Don Tapscott.”
—Brad Anderson, Chairman & CEO, Best Buy

“Don Tapscott provides an exciting roadmap to surviving and thriving in the Connected Era.”
—Michael S. Dell, Chairman & CEO, Dell

“Don Tapscott nails it. A must read.”
—Richard Florida, author, Who’s Your City? and The Rise of the Creative Class

“For anyone leading a talent-based organization, Grown Up Digital is an essential read.”
—William D. Green, Chairman & CEO, Accenture

“The first guide to the land of the Net Generation thatshould be read both by visitors and residents alike.”
—Nicholas Negroponte, Founder & Chairman, One Laptop Per Child

“In Grown Up Digital, Tapscott uniquely shows how to harvest the big contributions this Net Generation has to offer.”
—Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President & CEO, FedEx

“Don Tapscott is one of the world's leading cyber gurus.”
—Al Gore

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grown up digital

McGraw-Hill

Contents

Chapter One

Chances are you know a young person aged 11–31. You may be a parent, aunt, teacher, or manager. You've seen these young people multitasking five activities at once. You see the way they interact with the various media—say, watching movies on two-inch screens. They use their mobile phones differently. You talk on the phone and check your e-mail; to them, e-mail is old-school. They use the phone to text incessantly, surf the Web, find directions, take pictures and make videos, and collaborate. They seem to be on Facebook every chance they get, including at work. Instant messaging or Skype is always running in the background. And what's with those video games? How can someone play World of Warcraft for five hours straight?

Sure, you're as cyber-sophisticated as the next person—you shop online, use Wikipedia, and do the BlackBerry prayer throughout the day. But young people have a natural affinity for technology that seems uncanny. They instinctively turn first to the Net to communicate, understand, learn, find, and do many things. To sell a car or rent an apartment, you use the classifieds; they go to Craigslist. A good night to see a movie? You look to the newspaper to see what's playing; they go online. You watch the television news; they have RSS feeds to their favorite sources or get their news by stumbling upon it as they travel the Web. Sometimes you enjoy music; their iPods are always playing.

You consume content on the Web, but they seem to be constantly creating or changing online content. You visit YouTube to check out a video you've heard about; they go to YouTube throughout the day to find out what's new. You buy a new gadget and get out the manual. They buy a new gadget and just use it. You talk to other passengers in the car, but your kids in the back are texting each other. They seem to feast on technology and have an aptitude for all things digital that is sometimes mind-boggling.

But it's not just about how they use technology. They seem to behave, and even to be, different. As a manager, you notice that new recruits collaborate very differently than you do. They seem to have new motivations and don't have the same concept of a career that you do. As a marketer, you notice that television advertising is for the most part ineffective with young people, who seem to have mature BS detectors. As a teacher or professor, you are finding that young people seem to lack long attention spans, at least when it comes to listening to your lectures. Indeed, they show signs of learning differently, and the best of them make yesterday's cream of the crop look dull. As a parent, you see your children becoming adults and doing things you never would have dreamed of, like wanting to live at home after graduation. As a politician, you've noticed for some time that they are not interested in the political process, yet you marvel at how Barack Obama was able to engage them and ride their energy to become a presidential candidate.

You're reminded of the old Bob Dylan line "There's something happening here but you don't know what it is."

There is something happening here. The Net Generation has come of age. Growing up digital has had a profound impact on the way this generation thinks, even changing the way their brains are wired. And although this digital immersion presents significant challenges for young people—such as dealing with a vast amount of incoming information or ensuring balance between the digital and physical worlds—their immersion has not hurt them overall. It has been positive. The generation is more tolerant of racial diversity, and is smarter and quicker than their predecessors. These young people are remaking every institution of modern life, from the workplace to the marketplace, from politics to education, and down to the basic structure of the family. Here are some of the ways in which this is occurring.

• As employees and managers, the Net Generation is approaching work collaboratively, collapsing the rigid hierarchy and forcing organizations to rethink how they recruit, compensate, develop, and supervise talent. I believe that the very idea of management is changing, with the exodus from corporations to start-ups just beginning.

• As consumers, they want to be "prosumers"—co-innovating products and services with producers. The concept of a brand is in the process of changing forever because of them.

• In education, they are forcing a change in the model of pedagogy, from a teacher-focused approach based on instruction to a student-focused model based on collaboration.

• Within the family, they have already changed the relationship between parents and children, since they are experts in something really important—the Internet.

• As citizens, the Net Generation is in the early days of transforming how government services are conceived and delivered and how we understand and decide what the basic imperatives of citizenship and democracy should be. For the growing numbers trying to achieve social change, there is a sea of change under way, ranging from civic activities to political engagement. The Net Gen is bringing political action to life more than in any previous generation.

• And in society as a whole, empowered by the global reach of the Internet, their civic activity is becoming a new, more powerful kind of social activism.

The bottom line is this: if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. You will also understand how our institutions and society need to change today.

BOOM, BUST, ECHO

To begin our journey, it's important to understand some earthshaking demographic facts.

The Net Generation is a distinct generation. It is made up of the children of the post–World War II generation, called the baby boomers in the United States. This proverbial baby-boom "echo" generation, in the United States alone, is the biggest generation. Around the world there has been an even greater demographic explosion with 81 million members.

The Baby Boom (1946–64)

Anyone born between 1946 and 1964 is considered a baby boomer, and the boom was heard loudest in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Many families postponed having children until after the war, for obvious reasons. Hundreds of thousands of young men were serving overseas and were not available for fathering. When the war was over, the men came back into the workforce and the pictures of "Rosie the Riveter" that had appeared in Life magazine were replaced with photos of cheery women in their shiny kitchens waiting for hubby to come home from work. I saw this with my own mother. She worked in a steel mill during the war, and right afterward married my dad and had me.

It is 1976. The first member of the post–World War II baby boom is 30 years old. She awakes to news reports on her clock radio about the presidential election and wonders whether she'll vote for Jimmy Carter, or the man who pardoned President Richard Nixon just two years earlier. Turning the dial, she eases into Paul McCartney's new hit, "Silly Love Songs." On her way to work as a teacher (one of the best jobs available to women in the mid-1970s), in her made-in-America car, she notices that she has a special $2 Bicentennial bill in her...