The kids are all right

摘要

Youth is a time for fun and frolic, and nowhere nore than in one American playground in Florida. Outside, there are basketball courts and volleyball nets. Inside, there are bright colours, Nerf guns and a talking life-size Austin Powers cut-out in the lift; in the games room, pingpong and pinball. Children of all ages run amok, from the pre-schoolers in the day-care centre to the 40-year-old vice-president with the robot collection. This particular romper room happens to be not a school, but the offices of CapitalOne, one of America's largest credit-card firms. A decade or two ago, a big financial institution such as CapitalOne would have had all the gravitas of, well, a bank. Now the firm allocates each department a monthly "fun budget", and managers are graded on their "coaching" skills. The same sort of thing can be found across corporate America these days. The kids—in spirit, if not always in age—have taken over. It is technology that drives business today, and dot.com culture has infected everyone. The carriers of this virus are the young, who are emerging as the rising power in the workplace.