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michaelhopkins
FM Editor
Member Since:
06 Dec 2005
Posts:82
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25 Apr 2006 6:21 PM |
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FM Sensing Network identifies demographic opportunities/challenges
A good start for any digging into the challenges of fast-coming new demography is a snapshot of the verbatim observations from the FutureMonitor Trends Survey. Not only did respondents in the sensing network grade baby boom-driven demographic shifts as the trend that would have the most impact on business over the next 2 to 5 years. (Boomer demography scored 3.5 out of 4 when each trend was evaluated individually, outpointing even emerging China's 3.3.) It also got the most mentions when respondents were open-endedly asked to name the most critical coming trends.
The demography-related mentions fell into four categories--not all pessimistic.
-- Social policy issues: How will nations allocate resources between old and young? What's the potential for unrest? The word "pensions" came up more than any other.
-- Market opportunities: The "gray" market, one network member labeled it--goods and services targeted at new consumer needs.
-- Non age-related demographic shifts: Changing ethnic makeup of populations; the maturing of "digital natives"; the inadequacy of skills among new workers.
-- People-management challenges: Three distinct phenomena got attention--labor/talent shortages; new attitudes/values concerning commitment to work among both youngest and oldest employees; and the challenge of remaking company structure to accommodate the changing worker needs/expectations.
"The aging population will obviously have an impact on business for many years in the future," wrote one survey respondent, inadvertently summarizing the thoughts of many others. "Advances in medicine will focus on age-related needs. Advances in technology will focus on age-related needs. How a company reorganizes itself will be driven by the need to keep or replace aging boomers. And advertising innovations will follow boomer consumer habits. Regardless of the trend, for the next several years, its formation and acceptance will be driven by aging boomers."
The survey responses leave some very interesting questions unanswered, though.
Q: Is the aging workforce more a threat or an opportunity? An opportunity, that is, for smarter companies to gain seriously differentiating advantage because they figure out before the rest how to "keep knowledge and experience in the organization via innovative work arrangements" (wrote one respondent), and how to "capitalize on changing worker values by rebuilding firms to work in more collaborative, unhierarchical, flexible ways" (wrote another).
Q: How radically will companies have to restructure themselves? How much will they have to reinvent traditional employee/employer relationships in order to get the most from a labor pool with changing needs? Survey respondents were extremely divided on this.
Q: Are the potential effects of the aging population being overstated? Relative to other demographic shifts, that is--such as changing ethnic characteristics of populations. Some observers thought so.
Q: And, frankly, Does anyone even have a clue how hard it will be to manage and rely on post-"retirement" age workers in quantity? A great many survey respondents didn't think so--and they weren't sanguine about what we're about to find out. As one said, "Sure, everybody says how smart it will be to retain all that intellectual capital that we used to watch into the sunset, and isn't it pretty to think so? But that's a bigger revolution than we think--and businesses generally don't take well to revolutions. Maybe, in fact, the only businesses that really make this work will be new ones, building cultures from scratch. In my old business, I'm worried."
Got more questions for the fire? Or, hey, a stab at some answers, even?
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jimpark
Member Since:
16 Dec 2005
Posts:1
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26 Apr 2006 11:41 PM |
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While there is a lot of focus on the baby boomer cohort in any discussion about shifting demographics (and rightfully so given their numbers), I hope that we can also spend some time examining the rising impact of the "millennials" -- individuals born from about 1980 - 2000. According to some reports, they'll be the nation's largest generation by 2010, outnumbering the baby boomers and their immediate successors in Generation X. Understanding what makes millennials tick will be critical whether you are a marketer trying to reach them, an executive trying to manage them, a product developer trying to tap their collective ideas, etc.
A New York Times article back in January described two 20-something girls "cut from a marketers' millennial script" this way: They are not fashioning careers as filmmakers or digital artists, but they are comfortable around digital media. They maintain blogs and create Web sites of their own. They download music and share short videos online. They watch their share of cable and network television, though rarely when it is scheduled, slipping to a neighbor's apartment to enjoy the liberating effects of TiVo.They are avid blog consumers. They read celebrity gossip blogs like Defamer and PopSugar and shopping and travel blogs like Luxist and DailyCandy. And they learn of new sites through the tide of instant messages flowing into the pockets and onto the laptop screens of millions of young adults every minute of the day.
The influence of the millennials will only continue to rise as they gain more purchasing power, enter the workforce in waves, become more involved with advocacy and public policy, etc.
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mkb
Member Since:
05 May 2006
Posts:11
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18 May 2006 3:44 PM |
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Absolutely, I think that our fascination with the boomers "achievements" (see the latest series of Fidelity ads) has taken our eyes off of the prize. IE, the rise of the generation that is to supplant the boomers. This in itself is a unique - and to me troubling - phenom. To an extent, it actually flies in the face of nature. Cold as this is, we are designed to propogate the species. Our methods may be more subtle than say, a bird, but the goal is the same. Survival. Those penguins march for one reason - to pass on their DNA, and make sure it survives. By turning our energies towards a generation that traditionally would be on the wane and away from the fresh blood we are making quite a paradigm shift. We are focusing much or our energy on a group that cannot physically add to the march of the humans, and neglecting the training of our young.
This may turn out to not be a bad thing, but do I wonder about the wisdom of abandoning what has been a fairly succesful model. Thanks to modern medicine and technological innovations in the workforce we can squeeze more effective time into our lives, but at some point every machine quits. If we invest so much time and energy (a la places like this discussion board) into adressing the "boomer problem", how much do we have left to devote to those with a longer runway ahead of them?
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rgredenbaugh
Member Since:
19 May 2006
Posts:2
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26 May 2006 6:01 PM |
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Focusing on the baby boomers is like trying to see the world from the wrong end of the telescope. You are going to miss the enormous changes in business, investing, labor markets, society and politics that are already underway. The carriers of these disruptive changes are not the millenials, but Gen Xers born roughly from 1961 to 1981. My colleague Natalia Davis has written on this and is currently working on a book about this very topic. She says, “Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, speaks about disruptive technologies. I say there is no such thing as disruptive technologies. There are just people who use technology in disruptive ways, and mostly these are Gen Xers. Think Amazon, Ebay, Google, Napster etc.”
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mkb
Member Since:
05 May 2006
Posts:11
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26 May 2006 7:39 PM |
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Not to mention that the X'ers are currently busily at work on the technologies that are going to truly revolutionize our lives. The convergence of bio, software, hardware, et al is going to usher in a change that will make the internet "revolution" look more skirmish.
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