Creative Generation is the answer
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ANALYSIS, US, UK, EU, Australasia — There is a current fascination with technology that goes beyond its practical use in improving our lives.
Technology should improve lives on a personal level, or on a professional level. In the current time, technological advanced solutions are often used to simple human problems, best solved by practical, mechanical or human ’soft’ solutions.
One symptom of this is increasing engagement with screens in front of you, and reduced engagement with people. This is symptomatic of the younger Creative Generation.
If you are managing, working with or teaching this younger Creative Generation, it can seem they are difficult to reach.
Continuous Partial Attention
The article that piqued my attention this last week, regarding this, was the LA Times article that reported a number of Silicon Valley tech firms had dropped laptops, blackberry’s, phones and all manner of gadgets from meetings.
“All of our meetings got a lot more productive,” Wilkens said.
It’s not exactly attention deficit. Linda Stone, a software executive who worked for Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., calls it “continuous partial attention.” It stems from an intense desire to connect and be connected all of the time, or, in her words, to be “a live node on the network.”
Generation Z & Y people I meet, and many of my own Generation X, do constitute the Creative Generation. But their attention is a multi-tasking, unfocused, continual partial attention. An attention drawn to a screen.
The Creative Generation is a term invented by 2thinknow in 2007, that we have noted has been taken up via various schools in creative programs. One such program is here - Creative Generation Queensland.
Symptoms of Creative Generation
Creative Generation is represented by generations increased lateral and creative approaches to complex problems or issues. Conversely, often this valuable creativity is reflected in a lack of focus.
Gadgets with wireless tend to mean that people can interact with others who are not in the room, or the matter in front of them.
This generation also think in terms of lateral ideas and connections, networks and nodes. Aristotlean structures of modernism is not them, it is more a web than a grid.
I am one of this Creative Generation, a transition member being only 33, but with training and skills in what is considered process and process design. Grid and Web, if you like.
However, for a majority of this Creative Generation, their lateral creativity is symptomatic of a lack of process.
Like many ‘older’ leaders of this Creative Generation, I will form the leadership group and set directions for younger members of the Creative Generation, a bridge between an aging society and a society in transition.
What the Creative Generation means…
This means we will need to devise new ways to work, and examine older ways to work in order to deal with this emerging lack of process.
We will also need to revive forgotten methods of learning. We will need to redress learning priorities.
And we will also need to examine the assumption that technological improvement leads to societal improvement, as years of industrialization have polluted our planet, and new information technology enables increased control methods for creativity.
As the transition from an industrial process and mechanical society to a post-industrial society, we will need to create new working methods, in tune with the zeitgeist of the times.
Keeping some gains, within a new paradigm
A large part of that will be examining real outcomes, and retaining some of the efficiency gains of Taylor-ism and Ford-ism, whilst embracing the new paradigm.
So we will need to give younger employees, and the new entrants to the workforce practical skills and tools to embrace the Creative Society that is the next paradigm of work, arts and culture.
Contact 2thinknow if you would like to know more about skills for a Creative Generation.
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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