A Peek at the Introduction

The Starting Point

When Daniel Pink proclaimed the end of the Information Age in 2006, most of us in the Boomer Generation shrugged, slightly embarrassed that we hadn’t caught that wave the first time through. Yes, we knew that technology was changing the world – we used the Internet ourselves for emails, real-time sports news and comparison shopping. Yes, our kids had their noses not to the grindstone, but to LCD displays. And yes, the young people our companies were hiring seemed bizarrely competent and confident, given their lack of maturity. But Boomers have long defined the world – of work, politics, relationships, consumerism, religion, art – in our own terms, by our own reflections.

If we didn’t perceive it, it didn’t exist.

Enter the Millennials – the iGeneration, Generation Y, Gamers, Digital Natives, whatever you want to call all 80 million Americans born roughly between 1975 and 1995 – who process information differently than the rest of us – conceptually, in parallel processes, looking not particularly for answers, but for options. It is a generation with unique skills: Weaned on video games, its members are competitive, competent, collaborative, passionate, persistent and self-possessed. It is a generation with a unique mindset based on its own almost universal experience with technology, an experience not shared by any other generation.