Ten Technology Trends Worth Adopting in 2013

When I read the title of the article on the Stanford Social Innovation website, I thought I would see yet another “standardized” list of technology trends to look for 2013, but this list actually is very interesting. Maybe also because it’s focussed on non-profits and the scope, or different scope, from other technology trend lists.

Mark Tobias is president of Pantheon, and gives his ten technology trends on the Stanford Social Innovation website:

1. Measurement and transparency. What gets measured gets improved. The 2012 NCQA “State of Health care Quality” report reveals that measurement and transparency around health care performance are at an all time high.

2. Consumer-oriented online engagement. People who interact with your organization online don’t want to have to work to make sense of it. Companies like Google, Zappos, and Amazon have spent millions of dollars and years in development to build designs and navigation tools that people understand and already know how to use.

3. Deploying data to answer burning questions. Think beyond your web analytics dashboard. Instead, what are the core questions your organization wants to answer? An example: Google wondered whether managers really mattered and used metrics to learn that they in fact did.

4. Knowledge hub rising. To survive and thrive, nonprofits and associations must add value beyond membership and advocacy. Knowledge hubs take the vast amount of data that nonprofits collect and open it up to others for analysis, comparison, and sharing.

5. Mobile plus. More and more organizations are creating mobile-friendly websites, but the future of mobile is finding ways for people to accomplish even more when they’re away from their desktops.

6. The unfettered conference. Recognizing that the world and its travel budgets are changing, nonprofits and associations would be wise to rethink and retool conferences.

7. New types of products. Nonprofits and associations are using a series of technology-propelled products to make a big difference for both their members and markets (such as health or education).

8. Whole Foods-ification. It’s organic! Nonprofits are slowly learning not to treat their website and technology as they do their annual reports—projects that are perfected and completed.

9. Digital learning is soft. The explosive growth in Massive Open Online Courses proves how much America likes to learn. The school experience of today is dramatically different than previous generations.

10. Proof and standards for digital learning are hard. As learning transcends time and place, colleges and employers are challenged to develop meaningful proof that a degree or certificate reflects the knowledge and skills necessary for job success.

Read for the full elaboration the article on the Stanford Social Innovation website.

Below my feedback on some trends:

Ad 1.

What gets measured gets improved, so be sure to measure the right things, because it influences a lot of things in business processes and actions.

Ad 4.

Great, co-creation, open data and open innovation, unlocking new and unique insights by letting people analyse and be creative with data.

Ad 8.

Spot on, iterative, agile development, test, test, test. I worked also this way for five years and it works effectively. Not a big blueprint, big plans and what more, but small steps, test, learn, adapt.

Ad 9 and 10.

Very important, education and digitization. On IntelligentHQ we’ve been reporting much on MOOCs and I think after music and other industries this could be the next industry to be disrupted.

An infographic on educational technology for 2013:

Source: edcetera.rafter.com via Damarque on Pinterest