Gen Y++

There is nothing new about the chasm between generations. It was there as I was growing up in tied died blue jeans with shoulder length locks (yes, no kidding, me!). It was there as my parents left the old country to come to the promised land of America, and it's there today as my daughter lobbies for an iPhone. So maybe I'm just taking my place in a long line of older generations when I step up to the microphone to express my amazement at how wide the gap seems to be from where I stand.

Yesterday I had the chance to talk about innovation to a group of underfrad students at Babson. It's not a new venue for me. I've guest lectured at a number of schools and was an adjunct at Boston College for several years. But it's been a little while since the last time I did that. Boy was I in for a surprise!

Over the past few years I've been immersed in the innovation discussion with corporates. I've interviewed dozens of CEOs and Chief Innovation Officers and many more execs who are tasked with increasing their organization's ability to innovate.  I have a standard set of questions, observations and insights that I share with them. I expect a certain set of answers, obstacles, and objectives. Having been in that mode so intensely for so long it's second nature to me. I needed a wake up call.

The 23 students I spoke with challenged every stereotype I had developed of the corporate mindset. Their understanding, appreciation of, and fluency in the nuance of innovation so closely mirrored what I often set out as the ideal of innovation that I felt at times as though I had suddenly walked through a time warp and had ended up in a future I can only dream about.

As I asked them questions that normally get blank stares from professional audiences, how innovation differs from invention, what sorts of mechanism would create a culture of innovation, how new ideas are nurtured, they fired back precise, articulate answers. It was like pitching underhand to major league hitters. I watched each answer float effortlessly out of the park.

I left with a euphoria that there must be something being done right to get this next generation to understand the meaning behind so many of the mantras that we recite but do not follow through on. Innovation was instinctive to them. Most people I talk to still need a checklist.

At the same time I wonder how well their bright ideas and intuition will be greeted by the more entrenched minds that already inhabit the corporations and institutions they will join. My advice to them was simple, "Don't let anyone tell you it can't be done that way, just because it never has!" But I know it will be an uphill battle for them. In a workforce where four generations often work shoulder to shoulder the struggle to bring new ideas to the table crosses many chasms into which many ideas perish.

Maybe it's just that I'm getting too old and cynical. Perhaps this new generation will blow through all of these obstacles and someday stand were I do today and be just as amazed at how endless this cycle of discovery, progress and innovation really is.

I sure hope so.