and using digital tools before they could even speak. They’re just now starting to come into and out of college and founding their own businesses. In the last few months, I’ve been speaking to a lot of these recent college graduates who are in the entrepreneur space and starting to look at things differently and create different solutions. My book, Virtual Natives, hasn’t been out that long, but I still haven’t seen anybody else talking much about this space. The idea of the very young generation coming up and being monumentally disruptive. Therefore, it is worthy of a louder voice at the corporate decision-making level than we would ordinarily give very young people because this new generation has such a different way of thinking. It’s probably better to include them and listen to them than be disrupted by them.
of this, and they understand the danger of being left behind. There are far more personal champions of this new technology than I’ve seen for any other previous new technologies. FINDING THE RIGHT PARTNER One of the key things for vendors is to go down the path themselves and live it and breathe it. Only then can you truly be an advisor to others. For those who are looking for partners and advisors, the first question I ask—and this is specifically about generative AI, but really any technology—is, “What was your journey like? What did you learn from your journey?” Anybody who wants to be a good partner needs to go through this internally first before they can advise or hope to partner with anybody else in this whole space. THE NEXT GENERATION Right now, venture capital is in a tough place. We’re seeing a desert for venture capitalists now, unfortunately. The interest rates really impacted them. I think that’s throwing a wrench into the speed and the pace of startups.
Leslie Shannon Head of Trend & Innovation Scouting, Nokia
However, at the same time, there’s a whole generation of young people who were the ones who were swiping
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