Last July, I had the honor of speaking on CRM and sports at the annual offsite conference of Comcast Spectacor (the owners of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers, among other franchises). The offsite was attended by 250 enthusiastic employees, of which about 240 were 35 and under. No exaggeration. Two months prior, I went to Croatia to keynote that country’s first-ever CRM conference. There were about 165 attendees, roughly 80 percent of whom were 40 and under.

This youthful phenomenon transcends the anecdotal.

Gen X, those born between 1961 and 1982, are just beginning to enter business leadership en masse. In the United States, there are approximately 132 million combined Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers—a.k.a. echo boomers—as opposed to nearly 79 million baby boomers. The youngest echo boomer is 16 years old—of age to be a consumer with money to spend. The oldest Gen X-er is 43 years old—and poised to take those leadership positions coming available as baby boomers step down.

These new generations think differently and want significantly different things out of life than previous generations. And they are demanding new business models to give them the kinds of customer experiences they seek. What do they mean by a great experience? They desire enough visibility into companies they deal with to enable them to make smart choices easily through many means of communication.

There is a reason why Samsung Electronics has passed Sony as the leader in consumer electronics. In my opinion, Sony developers are a cloistered group of engineering monks. Samsung spends a lot of time, energy and dollars on working with its customers through advisory boards that help determine its next lines of consumer products. Samsung’s approach is a harbinger of what happens when a business model is based on real collaboration between companies and their customers.

This is no trivial matter. If your company doesn’t develop a new business model that provides this kind of proactive collaboration between you and your customers, then these new consumers will simply take their business elsewhere. The CIOs willing to figure out how to make these new models work in the context of their own businesses will be well positioned to flourish in this era. Those who don’t will be toast.

Who Are These Gen X-ers?

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at what the research shows. According to generational consultant Claire Raines in her book Beyond Generation X, Gen X-ers grew up with both parents working, so they became self-reliant—the ’latchkey generation." They desire to control their own destinies and their own experiences. You can see this in the incessant advertising aimed at ’lifestyle" choices. These ads attempt to sell not a particular product or service, but the experience consumers might have using a particular product or service. Products and services are now being sold as lifestyle solutions by companies that understand the deeply rooted desire of these new consumers to control what kind of lives they have.