Young World Rising E-Book

R. Salkowitz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Microsoft Executive Circle
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 321

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Young World Rising gives you an exclusive glimpse intothe new trend that's transforming global business and changing thedynamics of globalization The global Millennial generation is 4.1 billion strong, and thespread of data networks is empowering them to build radically newkinds of organizations adapted to a flat and crowded world.Young World Rising takes you on a panoramic tour of the newcenters of enterpreneurial innovation on five continents. * Explore the dynamics driving the emergence of the YoungWorld * Demonstrate how wired Young World insurgents are reinventingentrepreneurship * Get an inside look at the most innovative Young Worldbusinesses from India, Africa, Latin America and SoutheastAsia * Identify how your organization can capitalize on the rise ofthe Young World to find new talent, open new markets, identifyinvestment opportunities and more With more than a dozen unique and in-depth case studies,Young World Rising is essential reading for everyorganization coming to grips with the challenges of globalizationand demographic change in the 21st century.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

ABOUT THE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP SERIES

PREFACE

Introduction

A BRIGHT AND CROWDED FUTURE

THREE FORCES RESHAPING THE WORLD

EXPLORING THE RISE OF THE YOUNG WORLD

PROMISE AND PERIL

CHAPTER 1 - THE RISING TIDE

DEMOGRAPHY AND DESTINY

THE RICH OLD WORLD

THE POOR YOUNG WORLD

THE SPREAD OF UBIQUITOUS DATA NETWORKS

YOUTH + TECH: THE EMERGENCE OF THE GLOBAL NET GENERATION

THE TECHNOLOGY AGE GAP IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

YOUTH AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

INNOVATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID

TECHNOLOGY AND INDIGENOUS ENTREPRENEURS

THE INFLECTION POINT

CHAPTER 2 - LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

ALIGNING PROFIT AND PROSPERITY: MICROSOFT UNLIMITED POTENTIAL (UNITED STATES/GLOBAL)

BUILDING A PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP TO EQUIP THE GLOBAL NET GENERATION WITH ...

CONNECTING YOUNG WORLD INNOVATORS TO RESOURCES FOR INCUBATION AND BUSINESS ...

THE SEEDS ARE SPROUTING

CHAPTER 3 - YOUNG WORLD ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ACTION

THE DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES OF YOUNG WORLD ENTREPRENEURSHIP

INCREASING THE SKILLS OF THE KNOWLEDGE WORKFORCE

BUILDING CONNECTIONS

IMPROVING CONDITIONS

REACHING THE GLOBAL MARKET WITH INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

ACHIEVING ESCAPE VELOCITY

CHAPTER 4 - ENGAGING THE YOUNG WORLD

ENGAGING YOUNG WORLD TALENT

COLLABORATING WITH YOUNG WORLD PARTNERS

INVESTING IN YOUNG WORLD OPPORTUNITY

DEVELOPING YOUNG WORLD MARKETS

PLAN FOR UNCERTAINTY

CONCLUSION

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

NOTES

Acknowledgements

INDEX

Copyright © 2010 by Rob Salkowitz. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salkowitz, Rob, 1967-

Young world rising : how youth technology and entrepreneurship are changing the world from the bottom up / Rob Salkowitz. p. cm.—(Microsoft executive leadership series) Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-41780-5 (cloth)

1. Technology and youth—Developing countries. 2. Information technology—Developing countries. 3. Computer networks—Developing countries. 4. Generation Y—Developing countries. I. Title.

T14.5.S223 2010

303.48’3091724—dc22

2010004442

ABOUT THE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP SERIES

The Microsoft Executive Leadership Series is pleased to present independent perspectives from some of today’s leading thinkers on the ways that IT innovations are transforming how organizations operate and how people work. The role of information technology in business, society, and our lives continues to increase, creating new challenges and opportunities for organizations of all types. The titles in this series are aimed at business leaders, policy-makers, and anyone interested in the larger strategic questions that arise from the convergence of people, communication media, business process, and software.

Microsoft is supporting this series to promote richer discussions around technology and business issues. We hope that each title in the series contributes to a greater understanding of the complex uncertainties facing organizations operating in a fast-changing and deeply connected new world of work, and is useful in the internal dialogues that every business conducts as it plans for the future. It remains our privilege and our commitment to be part of those conversations.

PREFACE

This book began with a question.

It was at one of the keynote presentations I was doing around the material in my first book, Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap, which talked about how generational differences could complicate the efforts of organizations to implement “Web 2.0” social computing technologies and engage the cohort of workers who grew up marinated in digital culture. The questioner asked, in accented English, whether the differences and the strategies I talked about would apply in countries where the demographics were “upside down”—that is, where young people vastly outnumbered their elders. I said I wasn’t sure, but I could do some research.

Two years later, here is the product of that research.

It’s not the book I imagined. In fact, if I’d imagined this book from the start, I doubt I would have had the audacity to attempt it. Instead, I was led into this project by trying to explore a more narrow subject: the similarities and differences in the attitudes of the Net Generation in developed and emerging economies, and how these might be shaping the future of work.

Needless to say, the entire subject of information and communication technology (ICT) in emerging technologies is rather complex. Fortunately, I was engaged by one of my corporate clients to undertake research along these lines. I had a large amount of data at my disposal and a corps of experts and analysts to help me interpret it.

That project allowed me to recognize the trend at the center of Young World Rising, one of the most exciting developments in recent economic history: the emergence of a new global ethos of entrepreneurship, seeded by massive investments in capacity-building by governments, non-government organizations (NGOs), and multinationals, fueled by the spread of networks and connectivity, and fired by the burgeoning ambitions of a global generation of young people more than 4 billion strong.

The scale and importance of that story seemed to dwarf any tactical insights I might have discovered about the behaviors of Net Generation workers within existing organizations. Across what I came to call the Young World, the next generation is not waiting for opportunities to arrive or for institutions to keep decades-old promises. They are making their own futures. And, incidentally, they are making all of ours as well.

As I began reaching out to young entrepreneurs all around the world, talking to experts, combing through books, papers and Web sites, I began to perceive some important commonalities in the approaches taken by startups (specifically, software and services companies, who are able to leverage networks and knowledge to create new wealth from very modest capital) across the Young World, regardless of size, scope, or location.

The Millennial generation in the Old World makes its presence felt by transforming existing institutions—the workplace, civil society, the consumer marketplace—with its new norms and approaches. The rising generation in the Young World is marshalling significant resources to create new models to replace the dilapidated and dysfunctional legacies that previously defined their environments. For these young entrepreneurs, it is not just about the success of their own business, but about creating a better model for all business: one that is appropriate for a resource-constrained world and that attempts to compensate for arbitrary boundaries that globalization and networks now render obsolete. Their new organizations have Net Generation values woven into their DNA, and have enormous transformative potential as they spread and grow.

In both the Old and Young Worlds, the challenge for incumbent institutions is to find ways to blend the vast potential of Net Generation approaches with the wisdom and knowledge of mature experience. Finding ways to achieve that blend is what motivated my earlier work on the digital age divide in the Old World knowledge workforce, and it is what drives me to explore the issues of the Net Generation in a global perspective.

During this project, I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of scores of experts and professionals in the fields of economics, international development, international business, technology, and demographics who were kind enough to share some of their insights with me. My goal was to synthesize these very specific fields of expertise into a broader view that would be actionable by business leaders, policymakers, and others whose success depends on understanding larger trends going on in the world as they plan future strategy.

The discussions with the experts were enlightening, but my favorite conversations were with the young entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur myself, having participated in the creation of seven companies since 1994 (when I was 25), including the digital communications firm in Seattle where I remain a principal. The mindset and the experiences of the young innovators I spoke to resonate strongly with me, as does their idealism. It was my privilege to give them voice in this forum.

So this is where a simple question can lead. I didn’t know that it would take me, 14 months later, to a modest home off the busy streets of Bangalore, India to sit and have tea with the youngest member of the World Economic Forum (and his mother), or that I would end up lobbing a boulder into the pond instead of a pebble.

I don’t expect my analysis to meet with universal agreement, or the insights of the entrepreneurs profiled in these pages to be treated as gospel. At best, both are food for thought. Will the Young World rise? Outcomes are never certain, but after hearing these stories, perhaps there is reason to hope.

Rob Salkowitz Seattle, Washington June 2010

INTRODUCTION

Suhas Gopinath knew he was in trouble. He had failed an exam at his high school in Bangalore, and his mother would not be happy. Like middle-class mothers the world over, she believed strongly in education as the means to achieve a good life and a stable job, and leaned hard on her children to excel at school. Surely she would take his poor result on the exam as proof that something was amiss with the extracurricular activity that was taking up more and more of his waking hours.

“You are spending too much time at that Internet café, ” she said to her 15-year-old son. “You must swear on my head that you won’t visit that shop and will focus on your studies!”

“But mother, what about Bill Gates?” replied Suhas.

“What about him?”

“He’s the richest man in the world, a great entrepreneur who built his company from scratch, and he never finished his studies, so why do you force me to?”

Bill Gates, who has spent a considerable portion of his fortune promoting education around the world, would probably not approve of young Suhas’s reasoning, but he might allow himself a certain pride in the achievements of the young man he inspired.

The reason Suhas was failing in his studies is that he was spending his nights building Web sites for businesses in the United States, a skill he taught himself at age 14 when he minded the local cyber café during the owner’s daily lunch break. Seeing the boy’s talent, the owner suggested he register as a freelance developer.

For the first year, it was tough going. Suhas did not have a PC at home and had to work at the Internet shop. A friend in the United States helped him generate sales leads, but companies were reluctant to do business with someone so young and lacking in formal academic credentials.