New generation of thinking, learning and innovating

Don’t feel depressed when you find that you have nothing remotely close to these kids’ accomplishments. Be inspired.

What are common?

• Age and credentials doesn’t mean a whole lot. These kids are ready and willing to break out of the box. Those with credentials are often groomed into a certain way of thinking and may be more ready to accept status quo.
• These kids are hungry for answers to their questions AND they take steps to solve them. Believing that they can find a DIFFERENT answer is a per-requisite to any breakthroughs.
• The internet plays a huge part in helping them gather information, establish contacts, find support or whatever. That resource is ready, available and growing every day.
• These kids have no fear and don’t mind being rejected. They know all they need is one ‘YES’ amongst the many ‘NO’s.
• Not all things ‘old’ are bad, these kids would not have done what they did without leveraging off support from the ‘establishments’.

Thoughts

• If age is not an issue to them, why does it matter that you may be double or triple their age? You too can do something significant if you are passionate about it
• If credentials are not important to their achievements, why would you care so much your own or other people’s credentials? Learn and get inspired from sometimes the most unlikely sources.
• When “Google” became a verb, there is a paradigm shift in terms of how we learn. In my generation, we memorize, adopt facts and follow protocols through our education. We learn and focus on things prescribed by others. We specialize and excel in our own tasks. We are often taught to follow road maps leading to stable jobs. For the new generation, the abundance of information on the internet allows information to flow through unscheduled, spontaneous as needed, sometimes random as per search keyword, etc. This encourages associative learning/thinking. This also enables the new generation to innovate new applications of existing principles at a much faster rate.
• Even if we are not ‘talented’ enough to accomplish what these kids did, we can certainly help support the next generation – not through controlling their thinking process but to inspire / empower them to learn, think and find new answers.

Exercise
It is optional but I really hope you take some time to think through it and how this applies to you.