So when I wrote about the Millennials (aka Gen Y, aka the
rotten generation) a few weeks ago, my lovely sis-in-law-cum-always-a-whiner,
Kanya Bahwa, protested that I was singling out her generation to have some fun in
my blog. Therefore, this time I have decided to highlight another generation –
no, not my generation….there is nothing cool or funny about Gen X. The
generation I am talking about is the next generation right after Millennials. Logically, after Gen X and Gen Y, the next one
should be named Gen Z but I think calling them just Z does not do any justice
to this tech-savvy, super-smart, and hyper-active generation.
Talking about tech-savvy and super-smart… last year we were
visiting our friends, Sunil/Pallavi in NYC and at that time their daughter,
Cyra was only 1.5 years old but was very proficient with Pallavi’s iPhone. One evening Pallavi was on her phone, and Cyra
was crying hard to get the phone so I gave her my Blackberry to calm her down.
She took it with a cute smile, swiped her tiny finger on the screen…and nothing
happened. She tried again a couple of times thinking this dude seems slow so
may be his phone is also not as fast as my Mamma’s phone. However, after a
couple of trials, when she realized that nothing was happening, she returned
the phone to me with a facial expression, which clearly said, “Here is your
silly phone back to you. Now, tell me, Mr. Caveman, when is your tribe going to
get some cool technology, such as my Mamma’s phone?” I hung my head in shame
and could not face her the rest of the evening. Now I do carry an iPhone in
addition to my blackberry just to avoid those kinds of embarrassing situations
with Gen Z++ers.
Obviously, the silver lining in this cloud was that in this
whole phone exchange process, Cyra somehow forgot that she had been crying for
her mamma’s phone. For the next several
hours, she had a very pensive, though somewhat amused, look. I am sure she was thinking
that her problems were nothing compared to the issues people have in their
lives. Her thought process probably was, ‘take this dude….on the surface, he
appears to be alright from an IQ standpoint but look at his choice of
technology. Wonder if he has monetary issues…. or what if he actually is nowhere
close to as smart as he thinks he is.’ In any case, due to this
all-encompassing pity, Cyra overcompensated me by letting me feed her all of
her meals for the remainder of our stay…which is always the best part of
visiting Sunil/Pallavi.
We have 2 sample of this generation at our home though it is
only the younger one (my 8-year old son, Kush) who truly represents the
characteristics of this generation. Just like Cyra, he is also quite a
tech-savvy kid though he overuses his creativity and hence gets crazy results most
of the times. Recently, he wanted to copy his elder brother, Nyle, and have his
own e-mail address. I showed him the gmail website:
Me: So, Kush, for your e-mail account, you need to think
about a user name and a password. Read the instructions carefully for a
password because your password should be very secure so that no one can get
into your account. First, can you think of a user name for you?
Kush: Of course. My user name should be Kush-is-king.
Me: Hey, that is not a humble user name.
Kush: Nowhere on these instructions they talk about the user
name being humble.
Me: I guess you have a point. Anyway, read the instructions
about the password and let me know what you want as a password.
Kush: I read them and my password should be rama-lakshamana-spiderman-sita-hanuman-delhi
Me: What?? Really? But why?
Kush: Dadda, it clearly says, your password should have 5
characters, including one special character, and a capital.
Me: Speechless.
When Kush was 6 years old in 1st grade in
Chicago, I had the following conversation with his teacher in one of his PTA
meetings:
Me: So, how is Kush doing in his class?
Teacher: Well, Kush is Kush.
Me: What is that supposed to mean?
Teacher: He is a very different kid. Last week, I gave a
writing assignment to all kids, which started as “How to make a…” and their job
was to complete the paragraph describing something they know how to make.
Me: Ok, then what happened?
Teacher: So kids had a wide variety of responses describing
how to make normal things, for example, “how to make a sandwich” or “how to
make a paper-boat” or “how to make a nuclear bomb” (no, just kidding. First
graders do not know how to make nuclear bombs…only second graders do).
Me: And what did Kush write?
Teacher: Here you go.
With that she handed me a sheet of paper where Kush
described “how to make a”…yeah you accurately guessed it.. “Rainbow”. It said, “First you collect 7 colors and you
mix them, add some shine to them, spread them out, and throw them in the air
and you will have a beautiful rainbow.” The problem is that the economic
viability of such an enterprise, if Kush really wants to convert this “hobby”
of making rainbows into an entrepreneurial adventure is not very good.
Though coming to think of it, I have seen some other weird
entrepreneurial ideas…though not from Gen Z++ kids but from the students of the
Kellogg School of Management. When I was at Chicago Booth, I was visiting one
of my Kellogg friends and he told me that many students that week had just
participated in a New Venture Challenge. When I looked at covers of some of the
final reports, I was amused by their entrepreneurial ideas, such as “windshield
wipers for submarines” or a “instant solar-powered flash light” that can help
you navigate your way around during power cuts in Mansarovar Garden, Delhi (I
found out that the Kellogg girl who came up with the idea was from Paschim
Vihar, Delhi…wonder if there is any rivalry between these 2 places in Delhi).
If you need a few more crazy ideas like these, I do have a
long list from the Kellogg report but I do not want to give away everything at
one time. My advice to those of you who
actually are planning to start a company based on these Kellogg ideas is that
you should not neglect the importance of raising capital for a new
venture. In that arena, I have a
brilliant idea – get in touch with some of the rich, but not so financially
savvy, Kellogg alumni (we all know about their lack of quantitative skills) and
then all you have to do is to sell zero-coupon perpetuity bonds to them. You will be able to raise a lot of money and
they will never be able to figure out what hit them.
