KnowledgeWorks Education Trends Forecast

KnowledgeWorks is a social enterprise providing "innovative tools, training and assistance to school leaders, teachers and community stakeholders".

They recently released a forecast on the future of education called Recombinant Education: Regenerating the Learning Ecosystem, a title that proves they're educators and not marketers or copywriters (just kidding).  

What caught my eye was is two of there of their 5 major forecast trends relate to small business and independent workers.  The 5 major disruptive trends are:

1. Democratized Startups: Transformational investment strategies and open access to startup knowledge, expertise and networks will seed an explosion of disruptive social innovations.
2. High Fidelity Living: As big data floods human sensemaking capacities, cognitive assistants and contextual feeback systems will help people target precisely their interactions with the world.
3. De-Institutionalized Production: Activity of all sorts will be increasingly independent of institutions as contributions become more ad-hoc, dynamic and networked.
4. Customizable Value Webs: Innovative, open business models will leverage complex networks of assets and relationships to create ultra-customer-centric experiences across industries. 
5. Shareable Cities: Next gen cities will drive social innovation, with urban infrastructure shaped by patterns of human connection and contribution.

Democratized Startups and De-Institutionalized Production - focus on the growing role small businesses and independent workers are playing.

Democratized startups discusses the shifts that are making it easier for anyone to start a small business. Although focused on tech startups, I think it's safe to say the forecast intent was to include the much broader category of small businesses in general.

De-Institutionalized production talks about the decline of full-time employment and the rise of independent workers.  

Since these two areas are the focus of our work, I was pleased to see them highlighted in the forecast. I was also pleased to see them linked to education. An example from the report: 

"By modifying, building upon, and connecting one another’s innovations, edu-preneurs will stimulate continuous learner-centered recombination across the learning ecosystem."

I have no idea what this means, but I like the term "edu-preneurs".  

The forecast is quite interesting, well worth reading and improved my vocabulary.