I attended Showcase Ontario a week or two ago. It's always good to hook up with customers to learn how they are using WordPerfect Office but this event had even more to attract me.
Don Tapscott (a former dean of my business school and more recently of Wikinomics fame) presented at the show. He introduced his ideas that spring from population trends in North America. As you can see from his chart below, the US experienced a Boom, Bust and Echo that all of us would be familiar with (same sort of data in Canada apparently too).
What this meant was that in like 10 years, most of the people in the workforce will be echo types (what Tapscott calls the Net generation). His hypothesis is that because of who they are and their numbers, that they will fundamentally change how we work, live and play. I tend to agree and have caught myself thinking what the following can mean in terms of experiences and expectations. Considering, that these echoers experiences would include:
- Not knowing what a phone booth is for (if you are not superman)
- Not ever having used a rotary dial
- Never going to the library to look something up
I see it in my kids all the time - my daughter doesn't get CDs or even download music. She youtubes it while she is on the PC.
When you think of all of the ramifications it still boggles the mind (mine at least) in terms of what could change. And I am always interested in the financial (ie. stock) ramifications of all of these things, having learned the hard way that timing is tough, but that long term trends always deliver if you can be patient.
What do you think are some of the big things we need to think about due to these trends? What other big ones should people be looking out for (China or India growth anyone?)?
Cheers,
Jay