For those out there who can identify, watching monolithic organizations trying to add accents of management innovation to outdated collaboration models and tired workplace strategies is like…seeing a creepy 50-year-old guy hanging around at a rave; the effort is contrived and the miss-fit painfully obvious. For the intended beneficiaries, the effort is dismissed and a complete turn-off.

Whether young or old, people like to be communicated to in their own fashion; one that identifies with their value-set and in a manner that resonates with their comfort zones. The upcoming generation of Knowledge Workers will demand even more from their workplace experience - the universe they operate in requires the speed and diversity of Open Collaboration - growing-up with IM, FaceBook, MySpace, Flkr and Wikipedia, one can’t expect anti-diluvian strategies and glib management practices to excite and engage this bunch. They have been conditioned to want it now and it better be bang-on. These gizmo junkies are energized by electronic shortcuts and personalized everything. Getting an insight into how the younger generation interacts, one can simply observe their behavior: even when sitting side-by-side in an office setting, it is more natural for them to text one another than to turn and speak to each other- devices are their engines and speed is their fuel !!! With the prospect of the Baby Boom’s mass retirement (as a group, what don’t they do massively…?), companies must act now to insure that the best and brightest of this new lot wind-up on their shores. They’re skills are hard to separate from their networking abilities – the two seem inextricably merged. Moreover, they’re ability to find what they need either in terms of data and/or people is absolutely unparalleled in the history of mankind – if the conduit is there, the world is at their fingertips.

So if you are your organization’s Innovation Champion, how are you going get their attention, engage them, keep them motivated and make it so that their workplace experience is one that drives those break-out ideas that only passion can engender?

The answer is twofold:

· Management innovation that recognizes the need for Open Collaboration in its many permutations

· Technology platform that embraces an Open Innovation process (preferably mobile-enabled)

The standards that the new Knowledge Workers live by represent an evolutionary shift – professional and social norms are no longer mutually-exclusive domains and an organization’s reputation earns or loses its luster in the same informal online way that recruiters now use the net to search for skeletons in a candidate's closet. Everyone is watching and they know the real score. So trying to pretend that you’re something you’re not, is like showing your age at the rave.