Gen Y
www.hbr.org
HBR CASE STUDY
How ca n Sarah and
Josh work together m ore effectively?
Gen Y in the
Workforce
by Tamara J. Erickson
•
Reprint R0902X
This document is authorized for use only in MBA Global Management by Rob Anthony at Hult International Business
School - Boston from October 2012 to February 2013.
How I learned to love millennials (and stop worrying about what they were doing with their iPhones).
HBR CASE STUDY
Gen Y in the Workforce
COPYRIGHT © 2009 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
by Tamara J. Erickson
“RU BRD?”1
The text message from Ashok stood out in bold block letters on the small screen of Josh Lewis’s iPhone. Am I ever, Josh thought, stuffing the device back into his pocket and emphatically rolling his chair away from his PC and the backlit spreadsheets and formulas that had made his eyes bloodshot and his mood sour. He stood up, stretched, and took a minute to consider his plight: For the past three days, he’d been crunching U.S. and international film sales, attendance, and merchandising figures nonstop for his boss, Sarah Bennett, the marketing chief of the movie division of Rising Entertainment.
Bennett and her team were in the midst of prepping the promotions, advertising, and branding plan for the next Fire Force Five film; her presentation to the company’s CEO, its head of distribution, and other unit leaders was planned for Friday.
Two more days—many more hours, many
more stats to go over before I sleep, the 23-yearold marketing associate estimated. He plunked himself back down in his chair.
A recent graduate of the University of Southern California, Josh had had visions of making films that offered strong social commentary— like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or Morgan
Spurlock’s Super Size Me—and distributing them on open platforms so that his message could reach the greatest number of people.
With some championing from his uncle—a
HBR CASE STUDY
How ca n Sarah and
Josh work together m ore effectively?
Gen Y in the
Workforce
by Tamara J. Erickson
•
Reprint R0902X
This document is authorized for use only in MBA Global Management by Rob Anthony at Hult International Business
School - Boston from October 2012 to February 2013.
How I learned to love millennials (and stop worrying about what they were doing with their iPhones).
HBR CASE STUDY
Gen Y in the Workforce
COPYRIGHT © 2009 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
by Tamara J. Erickson
“RU BRD?”1
The text message from Ashok stood out in bold block letters on the small screen of Josh Lewis’s iPhone. Am I ever, Josh thought, stuffing the device back into his pocket and emphatically rolling his chair away from his PC and the backlit spreadsheets and formulas that had made his eyes bloodshot and his mood sour. He stood up, stretched, and took a minute to consider his plight: For the past three days, he’d been crunching U.S. and international film sales, attendance, and merchandising figures nonstop for his boss, Sarah Bennett, the marketing chief of the movie division of Rising Entertainment.
Bennett and her team were in the midst of prepping the promotions, advertising, and branding plan for the next Fire Force Five film; her presentation to the company’s CEO, its head of distribution, and other unit leaders was planned for Friday.
Two more days—many more hours, many
more stats to go over before I sleep, the 23-yearold marketing associate estimated. He plunked himself back down in his chair.
A recent graduate of the University of Southern California, Josh had had visions of making films that offered strong social commentary— like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or Morgan
Spurlock’s Super Size Me—and distributing them on open platforms so that his message could reach the greatest number of people.
With some championing from his uncle—a