Generation X: America’s Middle Children
Key Chapter Highlights
- While a smaller generation, the approximately 60 million Generation Xers are now coming into their own, reaching the age where they are taking the reins of corporate and political power. Gen-X leadership will be marked by its pragmatism and lack of sentimentality regarding institutions and traditions. They want things how and when they want them, without regard for inherited systems and ways of doing things.
- “They are already the greatest entrepreneurial generation in US history; their high-tech savvy and marketplace resilience have helped America prosper in the era of globalization.”
- With Generation X, technologies that transformed the business world moved into the mainstream consumer world—email, messaging, mobile phones, and video conferencing.
- As workers and as consumers, the Gen-X ROI is “return on involvement”—value for not only their money, but also their effort, energy, time, and loyalty.
- “As consumers and parents on the demand side and entrepreneurs and CEOs on the supply side, Xers will seek new ways of removing professional middlemen (lawyers, accountants, brokers, advisers) from business transactions. Those along the chain who don’t add essential value may be squeezed out.”
