2020 Vision
The year was 2000. We had just survived the apocalypse and, since we were all still there and the economic engines were still in motion, we kicked of the new year by envisioning what the world needed over the next two decades. More specifically, we pondered what the 2020 workplace would be and how employees would want to learn in the future. Flash forward twenty years and we are here. The future is now. The 2020 workplace surrounds us. Literally and virtually if you have a VR headset.
Our aspirations for this new era were lofty. Some of us thought we would be much further along with AR and VR given we were creating solutions for each even back then. I don't remember any of us thinking the cell phone would be the dominant tool for everything given the results of the Palm Pilot. We did think robotics was going to become more important to industry. Autonomous vehicles and cobots were further out. Prosthetics, bionics and human augmentation were not even on the horizon especially with the advent of new materials and technologies like Alexa and Google Home. All of these are now driving forces in the evolution of learning solutions and the overarching impact on traditional HR.
What we did see was that technology was going to play a major role in the new millennia. We knew online learning, online shopping, online everything was where we were headed. Our company at the time was pioneering 3D for the web and virtual reality. We were creating electronic performance support systems and training simulators. We were learning the skills that were foundational to our work then and now. In fact, some of the early work we did on human social skills, sales dialog and diversity and inclusion are just now being recognized as fundamental to the future of work and the return of the "human factor."
We are in an amazing time. Technology is a key enabler to just about everything we do. We can now create many of our visions through advanced virtual and physical (3D printing, new materials, etc.) techniques. Previous limitations are dropping by the day. What used to be three and five year goals are now more like three to five months. The speed of advancement of our tools and the dynamics of the modern workforce - gigs, remote workers, social consciousness, etc. - are truly moving us away from the old industrial model and into a just-in-time, customer-centric product and service solution. Even with the introduction of advanced robotics, AI, cobots and the like, the opportunities for humans are not shrinking. They are growing.
Let's focus and make our 2020 vision clear.
Our aspirations for this new era were lofty. Some of us thought we would be much further along with AR and VR given we were creating solutions for each even back then. I don't remember any of us thinking the cell phone would be the dominant tool for everything given the results of the Palm Pilot. We did think robotics was going to become more important to industry. Autonomous vehicles and cobots were further out. Prosthetics, bionics and human augmentation were not even on the horizon especially with the advent of new materials and technologies like Alexa and Google Home. All of these are now driving forces in the evolution of learning solutions and the overarching impact on traditional HR.
What we did see was that technology was going to play a major role in the new millennia. We knew online learning, online shopping, online everything was where we were headed. Our company at the time was pioneering 3D for the web and virtual reality. We were creating electronic performance support systems and training simulators. We were learning the skills that were foundational to our work then and now. In fact, some of the early work we did on human social skills, sales dialog and diversity and inclusion are just now being recognized as fundamental to the future of work and the return of the "human factor."
We are in an amazing time. Technology is a key enabler to just about everything we do. We can now create many of our visions through advanced virtual and physical (3D printing, new materials, etc.) techniques. Previous limitations are dropping by the day. What used to be three and five year goals are now more like three to five months. The speed of advancement of our tools and the dynamics of the modern workforce - gigs, remote workers, social consciousness, etc. - are truly moving us away from the old industrial model and into a just-in-time, customer-centric product and service solution. Even with the introduction of advanced robotics, AI, cobots and the like, the opportunities for humans are not shrinking. They are growing.
Let's focus and make our 2020 vision clear.
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