Coolsearch: Keeping Your Organization In Touch And On The Edge...

"CoolSearch" is a warning to all business seeking to attract the new generation of Millenials - those born after 1980 - as recruits and consumers. Millenials may have the same beliefs and behaviours as their teenage and twenty-something predecessors, but they are in a better position to fulfil their aspirations and chosen lifestyles and their ambitions may not include working for or buying into - you.

Yet the best of them have all the qualities, skills and characteristics your business needs. They have gripped a mouse for longer than they have held a rattle, they are brand-savvy and in terms of innovative lateral-mindedness, they have it in a way that other generations didn't. As "Fast Company," bible of the dot-com business age put it: 'If you want your people to think outside the box, why not learn by working with people that don't know there is a box.'

You cannot afford to ignore Millenials. They will keep your business in touch and on the edge. To benefit from their fresh attitude to work and 24/7 living, you need to throw away the personnel and brand management rulebooks.

Millenials do not think the way you assume they do. "CoolSearch" will unlock their world for you.

There never has been a time when changes in taste, social outlook and lifestyle have been faster and more fundamental. Coolsearch shows that the revolution that is going on inside the workplace and that which is taking place in the marketplace are two sides of the same coin. Traditional divisions between work and play and between home and the office are being eroded. Twenties-somethings are using their mastery of new technology to transform product development, marketing and merchandising as consumers and ideas generation and decision making as workers.
But how can older companies with deeper vested interests and complex hierachies keep in touch with the needs generated by the new generation? Syrett and Lammiman show how street-wise market research, better use of technology, shorter decision making hierarchies, corporate venturing and bottom up leadership has helped a variety of seeming dinosaurs get abreast of the trends. Stories and case studies of companies such as IKEA, GMT, 3M, and L'Oreal and their championing the latest trends and thinking are throughout the book.
Coolsearch draws on original research by the authors on how new ideas are inspired and shaped in organisations as well as on interviews with leading thinkers in innovation including London Business School's Costas Markides, Strategos's Gary Hamel and Insead's W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.