Life 2.0 – The Welcome Disruption of Services and Products in the Future

This post was written by Jacob McNulty

It’s obvious that our world is undergoing changes that are far beyond advances in organizational learning and development…but some of the similarities are apparent.

Business 2.o’s recent cover read “The Next Disruptors:  Meet 11 Companies Whose Breakthroughs Will Change Everything.”  In it we meet businesses that are tackling everything from software to lending to advertising.

The common thread through all seems to be individualization.  Consumers today are becoming more and more catered to and as a result are receiving products and services that are more refined to meet their needs.  We get what we want instead of taking what we’re given.

• Advertising:  Most people were forced to watch commercials on TV breaks because they didn’t want to miss what was “up next” – TiVO has changed that forever and advertisers are now forced to rely on products placed in the actual shows.  Think there’s a market there?  Hamet Watt does.  His company NextMedium “automates and standardizes the process of product placement in TV shows, movies, and videogames.” 
• The two players mentioned in the technology space are Coghead and NetVibes.  Both are built on the philosophy of end-users creating exactly what is right for them.  With NetVibes, more for the individual, “users can rapidly change the look of their start page, select content, add RSS feeds, and custom-build features from other Netvibes users.”  While with Coghead, more for organizations, users “who can code a simple Excel macro should have little trouble using Coghead to create even sophisticated enterprise apps like logistics trackers, CRM programs, or project management systems.”
• And then there’s lending.  A company by the name of Zopa has created a peer-to-peer model for people to lend and borrow money that cuts out the bank, gives lower rates to borrowers and a return to individuals as lenders.  Brilliant! 

These three examples reflect the progressive trends bubbling up in learning and development.  No longer do participants want to sit in a class when much of the information being presented doesn’t pertain to them.  They want to ‘fast-forward’ to what matters.  They want the option to customize things just they way they need or like them.  And, they get most of what they need from their peers. 

Hence the popularity of podcasting, social networking sites, nano-learning, workflow learning, mobile learning and communities of practice.  Take out the middle-men, edit out the commercials, let us get the information to do our jobs when we need it and how we like it.

In the coming years I’m sure we’ll see this trend of customer customization only grow.  As societies figure out that they control what the market gives them, more and more we will be demanding just what we need.  The field of learning and development is paralleling these changes and what is now considered traditional training will be so 1.o.

Tags: Blended Learning, collaboration, Communities of Practice, CoP, enterprise 2.0, informal learning, learning, learning organization, learning strategies, Organizational Learning, podcasting, social networking, workflow learning