A baby boomer, a Gen-Xer and a Millennial walk into an incubator.
Sounds like a joke,right? Nope, in fact it was the scene unfolding at a recent B2B Startup Weekend event hosted by 9MileLabs in Seattle where all three age groups ended up on the same team. The goal: Listen to one minute product pitches, pick one, join a team, develop a minimum viable product concept, validate it with potential customers, build a business case and present it to a panel of judges including entrepreneurs and VCs on Sunday afternoon. Whew!!
Now it’s starting to sound as though there could be some humor involved.
Why? I was there and I was the Gen-Xer. And I’ll be frank: Millennials make me nervous for a lot of reasons, many of which are outlined in this Marketwatch article. The bottom line is that we’re being upstaged by the kids we baby-sat and our salaries are starting to look like baby-sitting money. So, hey Millennials, yes you, I’m trying to figure you out.
Want to Connect? Got Content? Get talking
A recent Forbes article shines a reassuring light on the effort to market to Millennials: It’s not business as usual. Millennials don’t want to be talked at. They want to engage, to be engaged, and they want rich, original content.
For a Gen-Xer like me who has a journalism background, this sends a pleasing tingle up my spine. It’s my “I-told-you-so” moment. Here’s why. I’ve always been perplexed when corporations feel they need to bludgeon their audience with their brand. Instead of pelting us with logos and branding, let’s embark on a “conversation.” It’s been a long time coming and I’m finding myself grateful to Facebook. Intended or not, the power of 1.3 billion active users will ensure the shift will happen through a revised newsfeed algorithm: According to a recent article in Social Media Today: “This change further underlines the need for brands to move from a broadcast focus to making themselves part of the conversation.”
Strength In Diversity
Anyway, back at the incubator. A collaboration is underway and the process has gone a long way toward defanging the Millennials working by my side. A remarkable age-span, from senior in college to pre-retirement, has infused a powerful mix of varied experiences and perspectives in a complex project. Yet it’s gotten us over the finish line—from “I have no idea if this is a good idea”— to a compelling pitch. I’ve always been a proponent of strength in diversity, cross-culture, cross sector and now, more then ever, cross-generational.
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