Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Blog: Digital Natives in Our Midst

If there's anyone under 30 working in your company, you've got Digital Natives. Marc Prensky coined this term in 2001, in a paper titled, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." His starting point: "today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." Things need to change, and they need to change fast. Since 2001, many of those students have graduated, and they're working for you.

Digital natives grew up immersed in technology, according to Prensky, while digital immigrants adopted the new technology later in life. Why does this matter? "As Digital Immigrants learn to adapt to their environment," Prensky writes, "they always retain, to some degree, their 'accent,' that is, their foot in the past..... Our Digital Immigrant instructors... are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."

It's worse than that. Many teachers either have yet to immigrate or have no intention of doing so. Business is no better off. Today's organizations and management systems are not designed for either the new way of work that information and communications technologies have enabled or the new employees these technologies have helped to create.

This was a core topic at last week's Seattle Innovation Symposium, an intense, invitation-only summit of educators and business technology leaders led by Harvard's Rob Austin (Rob chairs Harvard's exec ed program for CIOs) and the University of Washington's Dick Nolan. (The video from this year's Symposium isn't up yet, but you'll find both video and audio from previous years here.) A panel moderated by Michael Eisenberg of UW's I-School explored the fundamental question of just how different these workers really are, as well as the benefits and challenges those differences represent.

One of the more intriguing issues raised was the fact that Digital Natives view as "co-workers" anyone within their network who can help them solve a problem. While this may be a wonderful way to bring new ideas into the firm, it also exposes proprietary information as workers seek to more fully define the problem space they're working in. "We've never before seen sub-groups working across organizational boundaries to advance the interests of the sub-group at the expense of the corporation," said Wharton Business School Professor Eric Clemons. Few companies are prepared to deal with these issues in any comprehensive way.

It was great to see so much quality thought on this topic from some of our universities' leading thinkers. I'll share more from the Symposium in future posts. In the meantime, for tips on managing these new employees and spanning the gaps between them and the Baby Boomers, check out the collection of articles on managing multiple generations in today's workforce.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Nolan
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • So Long, Silos: Why Multi-Domain MDM Is Better For Your Business
    Say “so long” to silos. This white paper explains why a multi-domain MDM solution is far better than single-domain, single-focused point solutions. You’ll learn what to look for in a multi-domain solution so you don’t outgrow it or are forced to purchase multiple products down the road. You’ll also get tips on how to select a multi-domain solution that can lead to multiple benefits over many years. The age of multi-domain MDM is here. See why you should say “hello” to it!
    Learn more »
  • Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
    In our years of experience working with companies of all types and sizes to design and deploy business intelligence systems, we’ve learned that there are five key things you need to know about your users before you roll out related technologies to them. In this paper, we will discuss these five things, as well as their implications.
    Learn more »
  • Managing Trust - Data protection and compliance for financial services
    If it’s becoming something of a cliché that the financial services industry is one of the world’s most heavily regulated, that’s largely because it’s true. Data retention and archiving, authentication and authorisation, data loss prevention and privacy regulations compete with demands for transparency and accountability, while market imperatives calling for multiple service channels delivered over a broad spread of technologies add to the pressure. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.