You probably have never heard of this Swedish young man, Tim Bergling. He is a DJ and a producer of electronic music. He has been in the top five of the worldwide rankings for the last few years. Avicii, his stage name may ring a bell.
Born in 1989, Tim Bergling solidly belongs to the Millennial Generation, a label that groups people born from the early 80's to the early 2000's.
Millennials learned how to use a computer before they learned how to read. A more defining characteristic for this group is that they grew up using social networks. Sociologists refer to this group as Generation We, Global Generation, Generation Next, and the Net Generation for reasons we'll discuss.
Millennials learned how to use a computer before they learned how to read. A more defining characteristic for this group is that they grew up using social networks. Sociologists refer to this group as Generation We, Global Generation, Generation Next, and the Net Generation for reasons we'll discuss.
Millennials are not very concerned about their privacy, they rather be a vital part of a group of like minded people. They also have a different sense of time and how long things should take. Social interactions are continuous within the group and the expectation is quick feedback from its members.
You could say that their need for speed and their desire to multi task make them shallow grazers of information, easily distracted and with a low attention span. That is probably the case, but on the other hand, they are technically very savvy and can create good quality content quickly. They are not as bound by geographical boundaries, since they feel confortable interacting primarily in this electronic medium. They are very discriminating about joining groups with similar tastes and sensibilities. Millennials band together in these "tribes of the mind" that I mentioned in a previous blog.
This January, Avicii launched the Avicii x You project, an attempt to create the world’s first "crowd sourced" hit song. The project enabled fans to send basslines, effects, melodies, rhythms and vocals to Avicii over the internet. Avicii took on the role of executive producer and created the finished song that was released on late February. This is a Millennial speed timetable for a hit song. One month.
Almost 4,200 artists from 140 countries joined this experiment. In a month, about 13,000 contributions were submitted. Avicii regularly posted updates on the Studio Blog of the Avicii X You website containing, the winners of all the collaborate parts of the final song. He also announced almost every week how the song was going and hosted Skype interview calls with the winning contributors. This approach created a gigantic amount of data, but the network itself was used to rank and sort all the contributions.
Millennials don't hold their creative cards close to their vest. They have a flexible collaborative mindset, that aided by new technology makes physical distances irrelevant. This makes the creative process faster and deeper than ever before. This is "Generation We" at play.
Interestingly enough, Ericsson, the Swedish networking equipment manufacturer was a sponsor of the Avicii X project. Millennials are still young and have yet to become influential in business. I wonder what's next. Will product design, engineering and development networks surface in the near future when the Millennials become more senior in the business world? How is this new mindset going to change our present business processes around innovation?
No comments:
Post a Comment