Where’s your trend periscope?

It’s a priveledge to work with many different people and organisations. One reason why organizations work with us is to bring “external reference” to the table. So they want us to share with them what others are doing and what the trends are in the market.

I enjoy this role. I find it very important to stay in touch with what’s going on in my area of work (and even the broader context of my work). And sharing our insights is a way to stay in touch. There are others different ways to do this as well:

  • talk to people from other companies
  • visit conferences
  • read books
  • read trend and research reports
  • read newspapers
  • read news and updates on the web
  • work for many different organizations
  • etc.

The good thing about today is that there are many tools to help you keep your “trend periscope” up. For instance, I use Feedly for RSS feeds, Pocket for storing and reading online articles and getting recommendations for this to read from followers, Twitter - still one of the best platforms for trend watching and “ambient intelligence”, LinkedIn (groups) and Google+.

As you see you can do most of this by yourself. And most of the readers of this blog already do. However, what I see in practice is that very little people actually do this. Of course not everybody has to be an information junky - like myself… But I’m surprised that many people I know don’t have their “trend periscope” organized at all. Why is this the case? Too busy? Too much information? You tell me! I’m curious what your thoughts are on this.

But let’s flip this for a second. How can we help others set up their “trend periscope”? In my experience this isn’t easy, but it’s nice work. I usually start small: showing others how I work and helping them make one step, e.g. connecting them with someone from another organization or setting up one tool.

How do you help others open the windows?

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 13, 2016 at 3:31 AM

    Timely article. You know, it is all about updating and never lagging when it comes to knowing what the trends are. Working on an area that best works for you for it to grow or upgrade into a new level is also another thing to consider. Here is an article about how intranets will be in 2015: http://www.simpplr.com/blogs/2016/01/what-will-happen-to-intranets-in-2016/.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 18, 2016 at 12:30 PM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  3. KavinDecember 20, 2016 at 9:37 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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