If you take stock of the last two years, there’s been a sea change in the way we work. Remote working made all of us highly reliant on technology, from video conferencing to file transfer systems. Contactless home delivery of food and cloud kitchens also became quite popular.
As the world changed, businesses adapted to the new requirements the pandemic brought on. Adaptive technologies (we’re not talking about assistive technology that is used by disabled persons, but technology that shapes to new requirements), are the need of the hour. And as technology advances, adapting new technology in business is vital.
The Need for Change
If you think about the pandemic, we all adapted to new forms of technology. Teachers had to teach through video conferencing and students had to upload their homework and take tests online.
Businesses, especially creative ones like advertising and design, had to find ways to communicate and work together – while being apart, physically. Using adaptive technology in the form of collaborative softwares helped, since everyone had the ability to work on a project together and make changes in real-time.
If you want your business to move ahead and stay ahead of the curve, you need to adapt to new kinds of technology at the workplace. The pace with which technology is changing is staggering. There are new updates to apps that happen every day. You and your employees need to be open and receptive to new forms of adaptive technology, or risk losing out.
How to Make New Technology Work for You
A new form of technology, if you choose to use it, should be easy to use and add value to your employees and your bottom line. So before you adopt it, ask yourself a few key questions.
- Does the technology fit into your needs? Is it a good-to-have, or something that will actually aid your processes?
- Have you run enough tests to see if it runs smoothly or causes hiccups? These hiccups could turn into delivery and logistical issues down the road, so be sure to test and test again.
- Have you trained your staff in how to use this technology and equipped them to handle it on a day to day basis?
If most of these answers are negative, then you probably aren’t ready to adopt an innovative new technology just yet.
Innovations and Adaptive Technology for Business
Innovations can either enhance old technologies, or completely transform them. The Apple iPod was a transformative innovation that allowed music lovers to carry thousands of songs on a small device. No clunky CD player required. The later versions of the iPhone enhanced upon that transformative innovation (the iPod) by integrating Apple Music and increasing storage so that now, users could listen to music on their phones.
So in this case, Apple used adaptive technology and got more users hooked on to their products by offering them a better version of an existing product — effectively clubbing a smartphone and a music player together. Now, someone who wants an Apple product can buy just one (an iPhone) and enjoy the benefits of both a phone and an MP3 player. Plus, by plugging their own streaming apps – Apple Music and Apple Podcasts – onto the iOS platform and the device, Apple is giving users a feature-rich device that gets them hooked on to their technology.
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Business-Centric Adaptive Technology needs Adaptive Learning
If technology can adapt to the needs and requirements of the future — shouldn’t our education system? The problem is, today’s education system isn’t adapting to the future, or even the present. Our universities still rely on a teaching format that’s more than a century old: stand and deliver, textbook theory-based learning, memorised and summed up in a test paper.
Students, particularly in STEM, need to learn the basics of science, tech, engineering and maths, But they also need to learn how to build innovations that can improve outcomes for businesses and consumers — and propel their careers to the next level.
But adaptive technology and STEM innovation don’t happen through textbook learning. They require a hands-on, practical approach and skills that move beyond the rudimentary theories in science, tech, engineering and maths. Combining basic STEM knowledge with business, management and entrepreneurship skills is what will aid STEM students and professionals to create with the intent to enhance and transform the world as we know it and turn a profit.
NewLedge for STEM is a course designed for STEM graduates and professionals that combines innovation, entrepreneurship and business skills that are relevant to today’s high-growth STEM companies.
The tools and methodologies you will learn in this course can help you build adaptive technologies and take your STEM innovations from idea to market. We teach you how to build, refine, market and commercialise innovations, so that you improve business outcomes (for yourself) and improve the lives (of consumers).
If you’d like to learn more about the course, visit our homepage www.newledge.io