That's the point - this generation is listening - to us!

We're the "never trust anyone over 25" generation. The only way to inject that much change that quickly is to totally break everything. We're the generation that did that so the next generation would have a better world to start with when they make their own improvements to it and they are.

They are listening to us and to everyone. Innovation is happening at an unprecedented rate because of this.

I work with a lot of Digital Natives. When I speak of intellectual property protection they listen and I need not speak about it twice. It is their older peers that I have to repeat that lesson too (no printing the actual network diagram, complete with FW locations and IP addresses on marketing brochures; no giving away product roadmaps at Trade Shows...)

Digital Natives are innovating and, as always, it's not about the technology and how tricked out they are. It's about how open their minds are to listening to everyone's ideas. It's collaboration like never before and every CEO in IBM's recent survey of 765 global CEOs reported the lack of collaboration as a core problem holding back the growth of their companies.

It's open sourcing of brainpower. And as much as they use far more emerging technologies than we do, they also only use the technology to get things done.

Digital Natives are in our midst - we need to start listening to them. They will change our world.

Jackie Bassett
CEO BT Industrials, Inc
www.btind.com