Brightest Millennials in Business: Here’s What They Think

Investors, advertisers, and business leaders around the world are still trying to understand millennials, the generational group that will shape commerce for the foreseeable future. In the past, that’s why we’ve looked at millennial investing and banking preferences, their favorite brands, and even what real estate professionals need to understand about the generation.

Today’s infographic from Adweek is specifically of interest, because it focuses on a very particular subset of millennials. The data in the graphic is from a survey of nearly 500 nominees for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. While the subject range is broad, it’s a good snapshot of how some of the brightest millennials in business think.

What’s interesting is that there on some topics there was a surprising consensus, while others had a diversity in responses.

In terms of consensus, 97% of the brightest millennials agreed that they were optimistic about the future, and 80% said they still believed in the “American Dream”. In a less surprising consensus, a mere 10% of the group preferred a smartphone brand other than Apple.

The question that had the most diverse answers asked respondents about the biggest challenge facing the world today. The division here was substantial, with the following breakdown in answers: climate change (27%), terrorism (24%), and economic growth (22%), and other (27%).

As a final point, it was also interesting that only 32% of respondents were looking to start their own company. Millennials are often characterized as an entrepreneurial generation, so we were surprised that the majority of this select group was not actively looking to go in that direction.