Once I have awareness of an emerging trend, I become hyper-vigilant  of any clues that might signal the strengthening or disappearance of that trend.  Of course this might make me biased, since I am “hyper-vigilant” I might be more likely to see connections that aren’t actually there … but luckily I work with a lot of really smart analytical and empirically grounded people who can bring me back down to Earth before I go all A Beautiful Mind or Conspiracy Theory on the world .

Ever since mass customization has made it’s way into my vocabulary, I have noticed some phrases being tossed around that signal the strengthening of this trend.  For example, I heard the following quotes at a meeting this morning:

“Students are paying the money, they should be able to consume courses however they want.”

“The day has long passed where we can write our own code to do everything we need to do.”

The first quote very obviously alludes to the notion of mass customization’s role in education.  Since it has become apparent that learning is a very personal process (as opposed to an easily mass produced process that is the same for everyone), there is a lot of talk in the education sphere about customized learning solutions and the role of technology in all of this.

The second quote might be more of what one would call a “weak signal” that the effects of mass customization are spanning multiple domains (from education to IT).  Because technology solutions are often tailored specifically to both environmental demands as well as constituent demands, those demands have surpassed our own abilities to adequately meet them and therefore we need to seek outside solutions when necessary.  For example, if a specific company has excelled at creating a “single sign-on” solution, it might be more cost effective/time effective to hire that company than it would be to try to reinvent the wheel ourselves.

I will be on the lookout for more connections regarding mass customization, but please stop me if my desk starts to look like the pictures below from Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind: