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BLOGGER: JEFF BARAK

Success in the future isn’t just about the technology, according to futurist Dr. Graeme Codrington, from TomorrowToday, in his guest keynote speech at the Amdocs InTouch Business Forum 2011 in Miami – it’s about understanding people better. And this is the way that service providers will be able to fully monetize the opportunity of connecting them.

Comparing Generation Y, (a.k.a. the Millienials), born from around 1985 onwards, to the Baby Boomer generation now entering their 50s and 60s, Codrington argued that service providers need to market their products differently to this younger generation, not because of their age difference, but because of the way they see the world.

Unlike the Baby Boomers, who grew up in a stable world where anything was possible (as highlighted by the Apollo space mission), Generation Y grew up in a highly unstable world, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, growing economic uncertainty and the sense that the world could be a dangerous place.  And having experienced the high divorce rates of their parents’ generation, Generation Y see the needs of their family and friends as more important than the demands of the workplace.

Generation Y have also grown up in an era in which parents are no longer the font of all wisdom. Generation Y are more “tech savvy” than their Baby Boomer parents and they’ve grown up with the feeling that their parents need a lot of help. As Codrington put it, “they’ve been the CTOs of their house.” This technical confidence means that this generation is very discerning about the technology it uses, and they are quick to throw away what they don’t like.

Social media took off with this generation because social media gives them a chance to be part of a group (and not because they have an intrinsic interest in other people’s Facebook statuses concerning what they ate for breakfast).  For service providers, the message of Generation Y is that service providers need to concentrate on enabling their customers to connect with one another and then seek to monetize this power of the group, or “tribe” as Codrington phrased it.

But at the same time as service providers seek to tap this market, they also need to be aware of the fact that the Baby Boomer generation is unlikely to retire quietly into the sunset. “We’re going to see a rash of 70-year-olds opening small businesses,” Codrington predicted, and service providers are going to need to provide them with the easy-to-understand-and-use technology to do so. 

The future, according to the futurist, is looking bright for service providers, as long as they know how to successfully capture the opportunities presented by these two very different generations.