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
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.
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.
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.
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.
No one has shown any connection whatsoever between these games and tragic incidents such as Littleton, or to youth violence in general, ... But countless studies have shown a linkage of youth violence to factors such as poverty, lack of parental involvement, family violence, untreated mental illness, the proliferation of guns, substance abuse and illegal drug wars.
Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.
To me, this is not an information age. It's an age of networked intelligence, it's an age of vast promise.
In an age where everything and everyone is linked through networks of glass and air, no one - no business, organization, government agency, country - is an island. We need to do right by all our stakeholders, and that's how you create value for shareholders. And one thing is for sure - no organization can succeed in a world that is failing.
Business cannot succeed in a world that is failing.
Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is.
In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it's very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access, not just to knowledge, but to the intelligence contained in people's crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis.
Leaders of institutions everywhere have lost trust. The global economy is stalled and the world is deeply divided, too unequal, unstable and unsustainable.
Leadership is happening, but it's not coming from the leaders of the old institutions. Everywhere you look, you see these extraordinary, sparkling new initiatives that are under way.
The blanket assertion that corporations are people obfuscates the complex issues at play in the changing business world. Corporation are institutions. People are people.