Don Tapscott
Don Tapscott
Don Tapscottis a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. He is CEO of The Tapscott Group, and was founder and chairman of the international think tank New Paradigm before its acquisition. He is Vice Chair of Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations, a new company building a portfolio of companies in the collaboration and social media space. In World Business Forum 2013, Tapscott stated that today...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth1 June 1947
CountryCanada
These kids [of the current generation] have no fear of technology ... sort of like I have no fear of a refrigerator.
To me, this is not an information age. It's an age of networked intelligence, it's an age of vast promise.
Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.
All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join the economy.
This is the first generation of people that work, play, think and learn differently than their parents, ... They are the first generation to not be afraid of technology. It's like the air to them.
Companies that don't understand that these kids are different as consumers, are going to be in deep trouble, too. I mean they have huge power as consumers, much bigger than the baby boom per capita. We really need to wake up and understand. Because it's going to affect the brand, it will affect everything that we know about marketing.
Kids are very savvy about the technology. But I'm not sure they totally understand the implications of a billion people being able to see them doing whatever is posted.
There is a fundamental change taking place in terms of how corporations create value and arguably, in terms of the core architecture of the corporation. I think it's the biggest change in a century in the ways that companies build relationships and interact with other entities, institutions in the economy and in society and arguably, the nature of the corporation itself.
These kids are different, and they're about to change the world.
These kids are 80 million alone in the U.S. They're like a tidal wave. And we've all been sitting on the beach wondering what kind of day it's going to be and no one noticed the tsunami just off the horizon, one hundred yards high, that's about to sweep us all away. We've got the first generation to grow up digital, and you know it.