The ‘M Age’ And Beyond

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The ‘M-Age’ and beyond

Intersperience Research Ltd.

Open Ideas

May 2011

2

Digital Natives

What comes next?

Adapting Immigrants

26th May 2011Intersperience Research Ltd.

Pop

ula

tio

n

Internet

‘i’ Natives

M-agers

Touch generation?

Mobile technology phones, laptops

Computer technology, PC

1982 onwards-----

Tablets, smart phones,mobile web

-----2011

Adaptive Immigrants

Keyboard generation

Pre-PC

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Who are the M-agers?

• Immersed in technology since birth (born since 1997)

• 2018 = 24% UK population

• Growing up with personal mobiles

• Apathetic about technology

• Self-directing; uncomfortable with hierarchy and question authority

• Prefer to learn by doing ‘fiddling’ and figuring it out

– Active, experiential learners

“Biologically programmed to learn constantly…the result of situating learning in a collaborative and social learning environment is an increased range of skill versus what can be attained alone.”

− Marc Prensky



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• Smart phones are mouth-wateringly desirable

“the hospitable host; constantly nurturing the technology in order to ensure a successful relationship”

– Ciborra et al, 2000

• Mobile web and touch screens

– Mobile phone ownership is almost ubiquitous across teenagers (UK and USA)

“The mobile phone is an emblematic technology of space-time compression, touted as a tool for anytime, anywhere connectivity”

– Ito, 2004

• Divergent characteristics

– Large differences in lifestyle




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• Communication gap

• Attention economy

– Social networking sites

– Blogging 28% 14% in 4 years

– Instant messaging


Adaptive immigrant- Open a dialogue of debate until a

cogent argument is reached and operate with informal divisions of power

i-Native- mix of formal and informal

M-ager- Existing needs, visually enhanced chat, flirtatious style and compete to make cool remarks

Kollman, 2000

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• Internet savvy; understand the benefits, question the accuracy and are highly aware of the risks

“Since the Net Generation work and play in an environment where trust, authentication and the authority of information is fluid, they develop sophisticated information skills to enable them to secure authenticity”

– Dorman, 2000

• Depth of knowledge and skills that businesses need to understand

• Mobile internet is empowering

– Autonomy

– Freedom


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• Companies faced with more resistance to the use of data and more difficulty obtaining accurate data


– M-agers who don’t feel obliged to give accurate information

• Trust in previous experiences

– Frequent and consistent contact with brands builds trust

– Word of mouth, third party endorsement, social network buzz

• Ageing population



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• Technological drift

“Technology meshes with its social context of use, so humans appropriate new ways and transpose new meaning and purpose onto said technology... people interact recurrently with whatever properties of the technology are at hand”

– Orlikowski, 2000

• Portability; Mobile phone, laptop and tablet

• Re-creation

“the promise of the web as more than just a readable, searchable resource has been slow to be realised... until now”

“The internet is for putting ideas in, as well as taking them out”

– Baird & Fisher, 2006

• The future… let’s find out together




- <date>

The ‘M-Age’ and beyond

Intersperience Research Ltd.

Open Ideas

May 2011

Business

The ‘M Age’ And Beyond