Gen Z was raised in deep, technological connection

Future. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman believes social media has rewired how Gen Z lives… and not necessarily in a bad way. To Gen Z, everything is an opportunity to connect  with communities and share their ideas within a larger, enmeshed network. With Hoffman’s ideas in mind, the biggest success stories to come out of the generation might be those who can put together unique, diverse teams that work best by giving everyone a voice.

“Network Generation”
Hoffman lays out in the WSJ how he feels Gen Z has reshaped how we live and work.

• He calls this generation the “Network Generation” because of how social platforms have elevated the ideals of connection and creativity— they “lead lives characterized by participation and community.”
• So, Gen Z sees every piece of culture or news story as a way to involve itself in conversation with different communities — almost like a call to action.

Hoffman believes LinkedIn could play a vital role in how Gen Z builds their careers. “We should recognize instead that individual career success depends on both our personal capabilities and our networks’ ability to magnify them,” he says. It’s the like, share, and subscribe equivalent of professional development.

It’s this network mindset that has popularized concepts like “crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, the sharing economy, and collaborative workflow apps like Slack and Figma.” While everything seems to be about individual expression, it’s really more about how individual expression exists within the larger community.

From a professional standpoint, that could lead to some great teamwork.