What can Occupy Wall Street learn from Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement? During a speech at Nielsen’s Consumer 360, author Malcolm Gladwell shared thoughts on that (along with anecdotes on Apple, Star Wars, baseball free agency, chess, and Al Qaeda) in an astute investigation of the paradigm shift from organized hierarchies of baby boomers towards free-flowing networks of the millennial generation.

Gladwell explained that the current shift, epitomized by Occupy, Wikepedia and online dating, is all about social organization, where the past was more about discipline, structure, and centralization. “What we need is a system where we bring out the best of networks and combine them with the best of hierarchies,” he said. “And that’s the thing I think we need to remind the millenials.”