Dan’s comments appear regularly in national and international publications and in various online media outlets.
Rasmus said, Millennials use technology and “time shifting” outside the mode of a traditional corporate mentality, in a manner that may be more suited to telecommuting and flexible hours. “Government has to step up and recognize these changes in the work force.”
—Public CIO (2006, October/November)
One possible scenario could be the emergence of ‘citizen regulators.’ Bloggers are already exposing more of companies’ internal workings, and their voices have been amplified by the ability of social media to communicate to audiences with an interest in the organization. You may start to see employees do what they have not done before.
—Business redefined. A look at the global trends that are changing the world of business. Ernst & Young.
Dan Rasmus, director of information work vision in Microsoft’s Information Worker group, waxes positive about Millennials having these “supernetworks” outside of work. “As they progress through careers, they’re going to bring that supernetwork with them,” Rasmus says. “They will also bring with them an erasure of boundaries and a collective intelligence that is worldwide and not necessarily owned by the company.
—Pink. ‘Welcome to the Matrix’
They have no expectation that the first place they work will at all be related to their career, so they’re willing to move around until they find a place that suits them,” says Dan Rasmus, who runs a workplace think tank for Microsoft. Thanks to their overinvolved boomer parents, this cohort has been coddled and pumped up to believe they can achieve anything. Immersion in PCs, video games, email, the Internet, and cell phones for most of their lives has changed their thought patterns and may also have actually changed how their brains developed physiologically. These folks want feedback daily, not annually. And in case it’s not obvious, millennials are fearless and blunt. If they think they know a better way, they’ll tell you, regardless of your title.
—Fast Company. Scenes from the Culture Clash
Daniel Rasmus suggested the possibility of bundling exclusive paid social and content channels with books, giving buyers premium access to both the authors and the community of experts/sources that contributed to their works. Some kind of incentive system—micropayments, loyalty points, rating scores, etc.—could be used to recognize and reward high-value contributors to the community and could create a unique incentive for buying a book rather than borrowing it.
—Publisher’s Weekly. The Future of Reading.
Interviews
Sometimes, executives will throw their hands up and say the world is uncertain and not really think through what that means. One of the things that we advise is that you put a name on it, so you say, ‘we don’t know how the financial markets are going to turn out, we don’t know what globalisation is going to look like in the future.’ That frees you to start having an exploration of what those possibilities are and to really engage your imagination and I think, more so than anything at this point, is to engage our imaginations as we go forward.
—Times Online
But it’s the cultural consequences of shunning the corporeal moment in favor of the virtual one that are murkier. Dan Rasmus, director of business insights at Microsoft and co-author of Listening to the Future: Why It’s Everybody’s Business, calls one effect digital autism: When you’re engrossed in the digital world, you’re more disconnected from the social and physical world. In particular, it’s the so-called virtuals, those born after 1999, who need watching. “They have parents and elder siblings behaving in a different way, so what are they learning about what’s the right way to behave?
—USA Today. ‘Tweeting, texting render avid users ‘present yet absent’
Thought leadership should intrigue, challenge, and inspire even people already familiar with a company. It should help start a relationship where none exists, and it should enhance existing relationships.
—INK, What is thought leadership?
