The most important driver behind GENERATION G is a wide variety of consumers and citizens being more generous … generous behavior has already become the long-term norm.
The February issue of the quite formidable Trendwatching.com ‘briefing” newsletter is dedicated to “Generation G” with G standing for generosity. As usual, it contains loads of links submitted by a global network of spotters. (such as this one, a market where everything is totally free!)
Though there is a dearth of analysis in this sort of publications, I do believe they are on to something real, i.e. the deep shift in ways of knowing, being and relating that we have been monitoring at the P2P Foundation as well.
Here’s the intro:
“GENERATION G Captures the growing importance of ‘generosity’ as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy—and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care—the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.
In fact, for many, sharing a passion and receiving recognition have replaced ‘taking’ as the new status symbol. Businesses should follow this societal/behavioral shift, however much it may oppose their decades-old devotion to me, myself and I.”
The article also mentions some interesting statistics on the current mood, from the Reputation Garage:
* As few as 13% of all Americans place their trust in big business (and it’s not much higher for other mature consumer societies!).
* Only 39% of employees in a Watson Wyatt survey said they trusted senior leadership.
* Some three-quarters of US consumers feel that companies don’t tell the truth in advertising.
* Three-quarters of employees in big companies observed violations of the law or company standards in a 12-month period.
Part of what i like about your blog, Michael is that it sometimes covers the new ways that people come to trust and rely on each other – even if they have not met in person. Methinks generosity springs out of a sense of trust and, as keith Ferrazzi write, a notion of who has your back.
I know, in this more transient world, that old tit-for-tat is a helpful start to a mutually-generous relationship – knowing that other person neither tilts to far as a “taker” or a “giver” means that she/he has adequate self-esteem and ability to sept into another’s shoes to help that person in the ways he/she will appreciate. This is vital to long-term peer2peer growth.AND it helps when online communities are designed to reinforce that “Mutuality” that matters so much for “us” to be uppermost on our minds – at least some of the time
Hi Karen,
I think it is useful to differentiate between three kinds of reciprocity, the one that is really person to person, the one that is based on an exchange with a whole community, and a hybrid form in between. It seems to me that p2p-exchange platforms are useful for all three of them, and together they substantially strengthen a new type of trust in strangers, which was very difficult to instantiate before.
For example, a LETS system, if I understand it correctly, facilitates the exchanges of services person to person; when you work for linux or wikipedia as volunteer, you are exchanging with a whole community, “give a brick, get a house”. But projects like couchsurfing introduce in my opinion a third dimension, i.e. trusting a strange person, because he/she is part of the community platform that you trust, and though you will create a relationship with them once you visit, the reciprocity is not personal, and they may never come to your place, but instead, someone else from the community will.
Michel