Beatles, Social, Cloud and the Millennial CEO

When the Beatles came to America, they ultimately changed rock 'n' roll. Adding their collective influence to the voices of their time, they made music better. In the form of synergy, the millennial leaders of the future seek to do the same.
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It's like the Beatles arriving in America all over again. A culture shift is upon us.

The winds are changing, the boomers are aging, and the reigns of start-ups, small businesses and enterprises are slowly but surely being turned over to the millennials. Much like when John, Paul, George and Ringo touched down in New York in 1964, there was some resistance at first, but in the end the new guard managed to convince skeptics and change minds. In one case music and culture was changing. In the case of the millennial leader, business and technology are shifting.

Cloud, mobile devices, Big Data and social media have become a permanent fixture of today's business.

From the solopreneurs to the global enterprises, companies are more connected than ever before to their customers, employees, shareholders and stakeholders.

Enabled by connectivity and powered by the cloud, this is more than just "Marketechture," this is the engine of our business future. Millennial leaders are strongly committed to embracing these technologies and putting them to use in a way that drives their businesses forward: leaning on cloud applications to keep employees connected to anyone from anywhere. Allowing business to be 24×7 when it needs to be, yet providing the employee with the ultimate flexibility of being able to untether from their desk and still be productive.

I don't see anything wrong with that, do you?

And then there is social media. This phenomenon isn't just about tweeting and "likes" on Facebook. Social media is a shift in the way we as humans are able to engage and extend our communities through the most powerful business builder in the world, the Internet.

Thanks to social powers, the timeline for building a global business has shifted from decades to days because word can spread and new markets can be created at an accelerated pace where one start-up after another can reach their target markets instantly delivering answers to the most simple and complex business problems.

Building the Future, Differently

When the Beatles came to America, they ultimately changed rock 'n' roll. Adding their collective influence to the voices of their time, they made music better. In the form of synergy, the millennial leaders of the future seek to do the same. Leaning on the generations of the past and their success in building great businesses across a plethora of industries, the CEOs of the future seek to continue this innovation.

The goals will be similar in many cases, but different enough that our generational mark will be felt. We will build businesses that are social, enterprises that are connected and we will leverage the great resources provided to us through cloud and Big Data. We may approach problems differently, but our goal like generations past is to solve them effectively. Building a smarter planet through technology is exactly what the millennial CEO of the future will set out to do.

What does the leader of future look like to you?

This article was originally featured on "Smarter Planet," the blog on IBM and can be found here.

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