I don’t understand the fascination with location independence and bucking the trend. In fact, one is a recycled buzzword and the other is just plain unimaginative.
Location independence has been the crux of “achieving the American Dream.”
Side Note: Here is a an extensive piece of research by Johnson Controls with findings on global Gen Y. I plan to do a post on this, but obviously – it’s not written yet. Back to post.
Being able to move yourself wherever you wanted to so you could have the job you want (and fast forward: become successful) is an accomplishment made manifest by various societal and economic events (for example Americans moving West for the Great Frontier, Blacks moving North, etc.).
And,while those migrations were driven by various historic triggers, the individual motivations are not so different from that of some 20-something ranting about how moving to Thailand for a month “bucks the trend” of having a run-of-the-mill corporate job.
Change is dependent on how mobile one is, physically and mentally. This goes for everyone. You can’t move anywhere unless you have the means – and the motive.
Moving on: I’ve been thinking about change. This is nothing new. Yet, the peeves with Gen Y notions of innovation bug me for very strange reasons. I know this. The word innovation in sole connection with young people leaves me…unsure about its relevancy.
Since when did innovation become patented by youth?
Innovation is about the unfinished. What’s being improved upon. The Economist wrote a piece about management thinker, C.K. Prahalad, who thought about innovation towards the bottom of the pyramid. Going against grain and being innovative has lost its familiar groove. I am not interested in it, but I am interested in the unfinished.
What is there left to do and what can be improved? I think innovation will take on far more interesting and intricate meanings if it were approached this way.
And, I’m sure I’m not bucking a trend.