Generation “V” – Forbes Article

There’s an excellent article up on the Forbes website on Generation V:

Generation Virtual

Adam Sarner makes some excellent points in this article about this growing demographic of our population. In the past the popular generations were demarked by calendar years. If you were born in the 50’s and early 60’s you were considered a ‘Baby Boomer’. We’ve had Gen X’s and most recently the ‘Millennials’. The thing that sets Generation Virtual apart is the age range, or lack thereof:

“Unlike previous generations, Generation V is not defined by age, gender, social demographic or geography, but is based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments (merit) and an increasing preference toward the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights. Generation V members create multiple, often anonymous, personae to control relevant information flow into the community and businesses.”

Their impact on business is significant, and will require new methods of marketing:

“Discovering customers’ true identities becomes irrelevant. Multibillion-dollar third-party customer data providers, business intelligence and analytics markets will shift from collecting demographic information to psychographic information to better understand these various personae and their behaviors. Companies will create multiple interactive, virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer exploration toward purchases. By doing so, they will benefit from a deeper understanding of how and what people are exploring or buying, who strays from the normal path and why.”

Adam lays out three behavioral attributes of those in Generation V:

1. They use technology as a day-to-day tool to facilitate communication that is not bounded by the previous limits of geography. This was originally attributed to the “digital natives” that Marc Prensky described.
2. This generation builds on their communications capabilities. They demonstrate an overwhelming desire to participate through involvement in global communities.
3. Members have an overwhelming belief in a meritocratic environment: the value of collaboration, that “we” is more powerful and valuable than “me” and that sharing increases the value of something rather than diminishes or erodes it.

This is an excellent article. If this bears out, we may finally break free of these time period classifications of generations, and instead shift to one based on behaviors of groups of people who share in an overall set of behaviors and lifestyles. And if there is going to be a Generation V, there must also be a Generation L (no, not for ‘Loser’ but for Luddite). After all, there is a segment of our population that shuns technology in virtually any form and are content with the way things were. And Generation L has no age boundaries as well.