The 2017 Millennial Impact Report just released “Millennial dialogue on the landscape of cause engagement and social issues” completing phase one of this annual study led the Achieve and Case Foundations. Although the study is US-focused and its first phase involves only a small sample of respondents, findings are interesting.  Four main messages. One, millennials do not like to use “activists” to qualify their engagement. They prefer being called “advocates” or “allies”. Two, they do not have clear definitions for “cause” nor “social issue” but generally associate the former with action and the latter with politics. Three, interviewees are increasingly interested in causes promoting equity and impacting vulnerable and marginalized populations. Four, the cause engagement of interviewees has increased since end 2016.

Carmine Gallo’s “Google CEO does not use bullet points and neither should you”. Voila. That’s it. No more bullet point presentations. Share a piece of information and 3 days later people will remember 10%. Add a picture, they’ll remember 65%. I vaguely checked the credibility of this evidence and decided that it did not matter anyway. I have done bullet points and text-heavy presentations before, seen too many, and know that they make me dizzy.

My table this week is from Bruce Stokes’ “Global publics more upbeat about the economy but many are pessimistic about children’s future”. It presents results from a Pew Research Center survey conducted with 34,788 people in 32 countries from February to April 2017. The main message in the richest countries is that even when respondents perceive the economic situation as getting better, they still don’t think children will be better off financially than their parents. Results are not as bad in middle income countries. There is also a generational gap: young people (18-29) are more optimistic about the next generation’s financial prospects than middle age people.

 

 

My quote this week is from Amy Webb in her MIT Technology Review interview “How to think like a futurist”: “If there’s a way to make the future a little less exciting and a little bit more boring, that’s good for everybody because that means that we’re not continually shocked by new ideas, that we’re not continually discounting people on the fringe.”