Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) [Hardcover]

R. Salkowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2008 | Series: Microsoft Executive Leadership Series (Book 3)

If you want to engage, motivate, and retain young workers without driving the veteran workers away, Generation Blend can help you. This timely book explores how generational attitudes toward technology affect issues as diverse as recruitment and retention, employee training, management decision-making, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and work/life balance. Looking to solve the puzzle of productivity across the technology age gap? Start with Generation Blend.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Generation Blend

Technology and demographics are on a collision course. Digital Natives, Boomerang Boomers, and Generation X-ecutives are all grappling with the transformative implications of Web 2.0 technologies, and organizations are scrambling for the best ways to unlock the talents of a multigenerational workforce in a connected world. Generation Blend ventures deep into the technology age gap and provides real-world solutions to combine the best that younger and older workers have to offer.

Generation Blend explores how generational attitudes toward technology affect issues as diverse as recruitment and retention, employee training, management decision-making, collab-oration, knowledge sharing, work/life balance, and ordinary workday activities. How can your organization promote the continuity of knowl-edge and culture in the face of the coming demographic transition? What hidden factors put new technology deployments at risk? How can IT departments manage the growing demand for social and collaborative software while maintaining governance and security? What initiatives can you launch to bridge the divide in work styles and tech-savvy that separates veterans and newcomers in the workforce?

In Generation Blend, author Rob Salkowitz builds on the groundbreaking work of Don Tapscott (Wikinomics, Growing Up Digital), William Strauss and Neil Howe (Generations, Millennials Rising), and many others to connect the dots of sociology, technology, and management, and trace a roadmap for decision-makers. Generation Blend is rich with research and includes two original in-depth case studies from organizations that have developed unique approaches to bridging the technology age gap: Microsoft's Board of the Future project, which assembles college-age students from around the world to discuss a wide range of workplace issues, and Older Adults Technology Services, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to intergenerational technology training and reciprocal mentoring programs. Organizations of all types and sizes can profit from their methods.

The retirement of the Baby Boomers, the arrival of the Millennials, and the impact of Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise create unprece-dented complexity for employers and workers in the 2010s and beyond. Organizations looking to solve the puzzle of productivity across the technology age gap should start with Generation Blend.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap

"There is no more important issue facing today's enterprise than the digital age gap. To avoid a generational clash and exploit the power of intergenerational collaboration and knowledge sharing, every organization needs to think differently. Generation Blend spells out clearly what your company needs to do to get it right."
—Don Tapscott, coauthor, Wikinomics and author, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation

"Salkowitz usefully explains how generational attitudes shape workers' responses to technologies in the workplace and offers practical recommendations for how organizations can respond to increase the success of technological innovation. He opens a discussion that will only rise in importance as the rising generation of Millennials enters the workplace in full force in the decade ahead."
—William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations: A History of America's Future and Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

"The dirty little secret of essentially every company is that their most critical asset is their people. Generation Blend is a uniquely powerful tool for grasping the forces that are driving the tumultuous changes afoot in today's workforce, and for managing with and through them most effectively. Rooted in the concrete lessons of case study, it draws important lessons for managers and decision-makers who must understand the future of the workplace—and that, I believe, means all of us. Generation Blend is must-reading for managers who mean to succeed over the next decade."
—Lawrence Wilkinson, Chairman, Heminge and Condell, and cofounder of Global Business Network

"Generation Blend presents timely data and analysis about the generations from a wide range of sources and is sure to become essential reading for people who want to understand and bridge the generational divide at work. If you want to engage, motivate, and retain young workers without driving the veteran workers away, then this book can help you."
—Penelope Trunk, business columnist, The Boston Globe and author, Brazen Careerist

"Rob Salkowitz turns traditional thinking upside down for a witty and enlightening look at the unique technological challenges facing today's workforce."
—Paul Andrews, technology columnist and author, How the Web Was Won

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470193964
• ISBN-13: 978-0470193969
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #733,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rob Salkowitz writes, speaks and consults on the future of digital media and the global digital generation. His latest book, Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, looks at the future of entertainment and communications through the lens of the world's wildest trade show, the San Diego Comic-Con. His prior works include Young World Rising (2010), exploring the impact of young entrepreneurs around the world, and Generation Blend (2008), on the digital age gap in the workplace. Rob is a founding partner in MediaPlant, LLC, a Seattle-based communications firm. He teaches digital media at the University of Washington and serves on the board of several non-profits. He has keynoted events worldwide and writes frequently for FastCompany.com and Internet Evolution.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Answers questions we didn't know we even had February 28, 2008

By Capcooks

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

40 years ago as a graduate teaching assistant only 5 years older than the kids I was teaching I realized there was a generation gap. Their language was different from mine. Their expectations different. Even their ways of approaching tasks was different. Today, my peers are all labeled Baby Boomers. If there were differences in thinking then, when we were so much more homogeneous, how much more are the differences today. I know I have to work hard to even understand the Gen X and Millenial "kids" we're employing today. And it's up to our generation to adapt or die. We have the perspective to see how we interacted with the generation that came before us as well as those who are nipping at our heels. Salkowitz has done an impressive job of identifying the way each generation works and interacts... and provides a valuable tool for us older managers to understand what makes younger employees tick... and how we can work together to make the workplace more productive and less frustrating.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The best guide to generational difference in technology adoption out there December 15, 2008

By Venkatesh Rao

Format:Hardcover

Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap, by Rob Salkowitz is a book that might have saved me a lot of trouble. I have been managing a social media evangelism effort at Xerox for the past year, and learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way. But then, a year ago, this book probably could not have been written; 2007 was, in many ways, the year these lessons became very clear. The book tries to do three things: describe generational differences in attitudes and approaches towards work and careers, explain them, and examine one aspect of how to manage them: social computing technology. The results, respectively, are very competent, exceeds expectations and competent. Or B+, A+ and B- if you prefer letter grades. But the one A+ is well worth the cost of the book, and it is relatively straightforward to manage around the weaknesses on the other two fronts. It would have been a brilliant book if it had just focused on the explain bit.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading February 27, 2008

By The Raven

Format:Hardcover

As we move forward, it will become increasingly valuable for managers, project leaders, people at every level to understand the challenges presented by the intersection of generational cohorts. Rob Salkowitz has provided all of us with a tremendous resource in this text. It has already furnished me with practical advice that I have found useful in the field.