Digital Natives and Their Impact on Business

The new generation, digital natives, is one of the biggest challenges for all companies. However, the companies, which learn to make use of the new generation’s potential, will create better results.

Digital Natives See Opportunities – Not Limitations

The new generation is different from the old, digital immigrants, in a number of ways, but especially in working procedure. Digital natives are very social online and take part in various debates. In addition they live in a world with few limitations and where cooperation between countries and time zones is possible.

Digital natives are:

adaptable

ambitious

committed

dedicated

technologically savvy

Digital natives demand:

meaning with their work

clear career path with a possibility to move further up

flexibility and possibility to work whenever, wherever

feedback and acknowledgement

Meet the demands, or loose to your competitors! In the end the companies, who take advantage of the new generation and learn to bridge the two generations will see a positive growth.

If you want to learn more about the new generation’s potential and make these dissimilarities to advantages, you should contact me.

A Biting Dog and Culture

A Biting Dog and Culture

The Danish dog Thor has savaged another dog and by Danish statute Thor risks to be put down.

Now German tourists worry about their safety of their dogs when coming to Denmark.

German and Danish Legislation

But the fact is that German and Danish legislation on dogs are very similar. For example every dog must be marked and registered. If it harms a person or another animal and therefore can be presumed dangerous some measures must be met.

German Legislation	Danish Legislation
The dog must be leashed and/or muzzled	The dog must be leashed and/or muzzled
must be walked only by pers. over 18 yrs	must be walked only by pers. over 18 yrs
can be put down	can be put down

Understand Your Own Culture

Why are German tourists afraid, when the legislations are alike? The answer might be culture. In the culture, to which we belong, we feel safe and this culture is number one. However, if we look at it neutrally, we will sometimes see that the differences are not that big. If the German tourists had looked at the two legislations objectively, they would not have reacted as seen. This is, nonetheless, easier said than done.

The same goes for international negotiations and communication. To succeed in intercultural communication you must learn to see your own culture through more objective glasses.

Would you like to display your life to everyone on the internet?

Would you like total strangers to know what you said at last week’s party, where you want to work, where your children go to school, or which color your living room has?

Our digital track will be there for the rest of our lives. Therefore, it is extremely important to be cautious whether you’re a digital immigrant or a digital native. It is namely not just the things we publish ourselves but also all the things our friends and relatives say about us.

In our digital age with almost everyone having a profile on a social network, this issue is more important than ever. The whole thing starts when turning on the computer.

Are you aware of which information you share with the rest of the world?

How do we keep teaching and learning in the time of technology?

Before the computer existed, learning in school was simple: The teacher asked the questions and the students answered. Memorization was the way to learn and remember.

Today it’s different.

With smartphones and tablets as nearly common property it is necessary to change the conception of the teaching situation. The internet has revolutionized our opportunities of finding information quicker than anything but it is important to be aware of the difference between information and knowledge.

Let’s put it like this: It is easy to find information but how do we acquire it as our personal knowledge?

The question is, how do we use this overload of information in the best possible way so that the students aka. the digital natives learn and remember at the same time?

Turning work into play

We all know the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants at our workplace. Now there is a solution to the problem: Gamification.

Gamification or serious gaming is an innovative channel for increasing engagement, building loyalty, encouraging participation and ultimately driving revenue[1]. This turning work into play distinguishes itself from ordinary work by offering quick response, clear rules and room for mistakes.

With gamification the employees must acquire new skills in order to keep playing. This is done by collaborating with your co-workers in an interactive environment where comments and votes are welcome.

The game is developed specifically for each purpose. E.g. Yahoo! used gamification in order to communicate their ethics and ethical decision-making with the campaign “On the Road with the Code”. In just 30 days 99% of the employees completed the game and there was a lot of positive feedback on the campaign[2].

The question is: Is gamification here to stay or will it be gone tomorrow?

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[1] https://www.melcrum.com/sites/default/files/gamifying_0.pdf

[2] http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/artikler/engagement-og-produktivitet-med-gamification

Facebook? No way!

In today’s digital world we are always online. In everything we do, – at work, school or home, we constantly check our e-mail or log on to social media networks.

But how do our surroundings cope with this “constantly online culture?”

In these very years more and more Digital Natives will capture the labor market and that means a lot of new decisions for the employers.

Should the employers decide when the new employees may go online? Or does this interfere with your privacy?

The “online culture” might offer as many opportunities as problems for the workplace. If used in the right way it may be an advantage in today’s world. What is more important to focus on as an employer, the boundaries or the opportunities?

Stop surfing – start diving!

When the Pirate Party made 8.9 % at the Berlin state election in 2011 it was a complete surprise. The established parties had regarded web politics as an exotic and consequently underestimated its importance for the voters. This is why the pirates emerged on the political stage like a submarine.

The Internet is not a black box that randomly generates phenomena which end up on the offline agenda. The web community is a public sphere where upcoming trends can be traced, discussions can be followed and anyone to take part in it.

Do we want to keep standing at our offline beach, observing the web’s surface in attention for other submarine-phenomena to come up? Can we content ourselves with merely surfing it? Or should we better put our radars on and check out what is happening below the surface? Or even better, dive into it and be part of it. Let’s find out the next submarine and be prepared when it comes up!