The empowerment of youth
A cultural shift seems to be happening all around me right now. One of the empowering of the young. One where the 20somethings of the world are the ones who are changing the games of business, commerce, media and technology.
After spending the evening with a friend and fellow member of the young entrepeneurial community here in old London town, discussing his marketing plan for his next web venture, it struck me how myself and my chum Andy were both products of this cultural enabling that the likes of Zuckerberg and Biz Stone have paved the way for.
Clearly this is no new phenomena, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, the Wright brothers, all at one stage were those visionaries who looked around the world run by the fat cats with even fatter paypackets and saw a chance, despite the crtisism of their elders, to change the world.
For people like Andy and I, we face that age old of problem of youth where from time to time we have to stand in front of colleagues and clients alike and fight our corner to be heard. Thankfully God has blessed me with clients and colleagues that, for the most part, let me do just that, and the tenacity to keep fighting even when they don't.
So it's not something I take lightly, nor am I detracting from the obvious enormous value of experience, wisdom and knowledge that comes from years of work in the field. However, the cut of it is that no school master, text book or lecturer ever prepped us for this. When we get shoved out of education and into the working world, particularly the media world, we are taught that we should be expecting to be treated like dogs and work from the bottom up.
The wonderful and awe inspiring thing however, is that the rise of online collaboaration, crowd sourcing and entrepeneurialism that the Web 2.0 world has brought us is changing that old world order. No longer are we chained to the hierachy, but now have access to the celebrities, board directors and gatekeepers of business in ways that have never been known in the history of modern business.
People constantly ask me what's the future of social media, the next big thing, the new platform or fad? Well here it is folks - the empowerment of youth. Truly a force to be reckoned with.