John Brandon| Inc
Time to dust off the crystal ball and start looking to the future. These might not seem like game-changers quite yet, but how you respond (and make plans) for these trends could impact your bottom line dramatically.
1. Reverse outsourcing will pick up speed.
Everyone knows the jobless rate is too high in the U.S. Himanshu Sareen, the CEO of IT service provider Icreon Tech says he sees an interesting trend for 2013 developing that will involve “redistributing jobs.” That’s a fancy way of saying businesses will bring jobs back to the U.S. from overseas. Even Apple has announced it plans to start building manufacturing facilities here, despite what Steve Jobs once told President Obama.
2. Reputation management gets serious.
I first wrote about reputation management in a recent column in Inc. According to Leah Luddine from TrendSetter Communications, businesses will become even more concerned about what others are saying about their brand on social networks. She says the issue will become more important because of a greater need for accuracy in reviews of a company service or how a brand is covered online, and because tools like Reputation.com now work more effectively.
3. Flash will finally give way to HTML5.
Mobile browsers used to run slowly unless you had a fast 4G connection. That’s changing all across the U.S., which means the technology behind the browser will start to change. Case in point: HTML5 can transmit rich content on your phone without the burden of compatibility. That’s why Peter Friedman, the CEO of content management company LiveWorld, says HTML5 will start to replace Adobe Flash for movies, animations, and other rich content.
