In the tech world, things change very fast. New trends are continually emerging and keeping up with them is not that easy. It is no longer enough to know how to maneuver around an already established technology; you need to go beyond today’s solutions and reach out to what lies ahead. This means spending time and resources playing both the catch-up game as well as forecasting on what is likely to happen. To help you keep tabs with emerging technology trends, below are some tips.
Watching the Consumer Space
The consumer space is increasingly becoming the launch pad for most of the recent innovations. Talk of smartphones, consumer-oriented cloud services, tablets, gaming, connected cars among others, the consumer space plays host to most of these. As a business seeking to understand and be at the forefront of emerging technology trends, you cannot afford to ignore these consumer technologies. Before they migrate to enterprise-grade, most technologies start from the consumer space.
Get a Technophile to Your Side
You may call them geeks or nerds, but every organization needs one or two technophiles to keep up with the latest tech trends. Traditionally, IT firms and departments are the home for these nerds, but the tide is changing, and organizations are integrating them into marketing and product development fields.
News Aggregation Sites
There are several news sites out there that keep pace with the latest developments in the tech world. These news sites aggregate all the top stories thereby saving you from the hassle of searching and switching between sites to find the latest in any industry. Curation sites bring you all the exciting tech news in one place.
Throwing Your Heart into the Ring
If you want to experience what future technologies are all about, you should stop trailing the technologies coming out and instead be at the center stage building your own apps and offering free trial accounts. There is nothing you cannot do today with the thousands of tutorials on the web. When you get your hands dirty, you will, in the process, understand the intimate details that make up these technologies on a firsthand basis.
Leverage the Help of Experts
When technologies emerge, you may not be entirely sure how they impact on your company. The best way around this is to have an expert such as Zunesis which can provide you with an overview of the goings on in the tech environment and how such developments may affect your organization. Even then, the kind of experts you engage should be credible, have an authority and a rich background in tech issues.
Set Aside an R&D Budget
It is not possible to have every cool new device that comes up in the market. That said, setting aside a pool of funds to help you acquire consumer electronic devices occasionally can help you keep updated with the broader industry trends. For instance, wearables are fashionable at the moment, and entry-level smartwatches and fitness trackers are relatively affordable.
Also, get acquainted with life outside your industry. Find out how your competitors are faring as far as technology adoption is concerned.
