Not young enough to know everything

When James Matthew Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, proclaimed "I'm not young enough to know everything", he probably wouldn't have guessed this declaration would hold truer in this post-Internet age than any other.

I hate to think I don't know more about technology than someone who's 15 years younger than I am, but in this Web 2.0 era, it's likely that I don't.

Unlike the generation of graduates entering the workforce now, I lived a life once devoid of mobile phones, instant messaging and blogs. Unlike this generation of youngsters¸ I've not been immersed in technology and the Internet all of my life, and things like Facebook, MSN and YouTube aren't second nature to me.

And because they've spent the bulk of their young life interacting with technology, they're not intimidated by it and its use in an organization

No surprises then that industry watchers have been calling for businesses to mind the young, and foster a work environment that's conducive for young talent to let their technologically-tweaked creative juices flow.

This week, research firm Gartner uncovered its top 10 predictions for 2008, one of which highlighted the growing demands of an increasingly tech-savvy workforce for consumer-type technologies. Organizations that fail to support and meet these demands will risk losing their best young talent.

Last month, a new survey revealed that organizations are failing to exploit their young staff's close relationship with IT. Despite their strong association with technology, only 51 percent of university graduates said they actively looked for creative ways to use technology at work, according to the study.

If true, these findings are troubling.

As businesses replace retiring staff with young blood, they need to realize that it's no longer sufficient to simply provide every new employee with a desk, laptop and Internet access. It's now imperative that they also create a workplace that stimulates their young employees' natural affinity for technology¸ rather than allow this aptitude to lie dormant.

In addition, businesses that block their employees' access to social networking sites simply because they're concerned about the impact on staff productivity, or because they don't want the hassle of having to secure their networks to support Web 2.0 tools, are stifling innovation and risk losing their best young talent.

Does that render the pre-Internet generation valueless? Absolutely not, I say proudly as a 34-year old fogey, which actually makes me roughly a five-year-old in Internet time.

Apart from their valuable work experience, older workers bring with them a sense of maturity, composure and worldly wisdom that young employees will need time and years to cultivate.

Combine both talents in your workplace and you'll have the best of both worlds--domain experience that can't be easily acquired with money, and talent that knows how to leverage new technology to produce great innovation.

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Eileen Yu

Eileen Yu began covering the IT industry when Asynchronous Transfer Mode was still hip and e-commerce was the new buzzword. These days, she gets stirred up over issues concerning Internet regulation, intellectual property rights and software patents, online privacy and data protection. Eileen is senior editor at ZDNet Asia, where she oversees the business tech news site.