From my experience we can separate folks into three categories:

1)  40+ year olds that went to college with slide rulers.

2) 30 – 40 year olds who grew up with the PC.  Playing the Atari 2600, using Windows 3.1, and connecting to the college mainframe.

3)  0 – 30 year olds that grew up connected electronically to everything.

In my opinion that 3rd group is a new being that business leaders truely have a difficult time grasping.  I’d go as far to say that they are wired differently from the first two groups.

Take a look at this Presentation PEW gave at this years CES to get a feel for how that 3rd group grew up. (link)

Thoughts:

• This thought has been around for some time — kids today have grown up with a revolutionary technology.  That fact is well established — what’s interesting is the first group inability to adapt.
• I’ve read dozens of articles on how business today needs to embrace the online social landscape and be apart of the conversation.  The reality is that businesses do not get it, don’t act on it, and don’t profit from it because the business leaders simple cannot embrace the mind set of a consumer that is wired in a post 1995 mindset.
• Traditional brands need to be concerned — without leaders embracing the way today’s consumers engage brands, each other, and purchase decisions there are big opening for new savvy competition to fill the holes.
• Web 2.0 is not profitable – YET.  Five years into Web 1.0 no one was profitable either.  Web 2.0 will be profitable and will change the landscape — if today’s business leaders don’t get a handle on this now they will be left behind.  Web 3.0 is only 5 short years away (check out HTML 5 to see the future).