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Five Ways to Stay on Top of Hot Trends

Spring is the season of new beginnings and an excellent time to review your business strategies. What’s new, what’s hot, and what do you need to pay attention to?

How do you know what new trends to embrace, and which to ignore? You might have the insticts for detecting the most promising new directions for your business, but you can also find out more about emerging technologies and trends by being a good student.

My partner, Patsi Krakoff, and I are both avid readers. We subscribe to feeds and ezines and podcasts. We buy books. We are learning every day. Not everything we study gets integrated into our business, but it all contributes one way or another.

Here are five ways to stay on top of hot trends for your business:

1. Read email from experts in your field. You’d be surprised at how many professionals don’t bother subscribing to ezines and blog feeds because they “get too much email.” Even if you don’t read every word, you can pick up trends from your colleagues and competitors.

2. Get a premium account with Amazon and benefit from free shipping. It costs $70 per year and you will easily save that and more if you’re reading regularly.

3. Attend teleseminars. This is a quick, economical way to get the information you need without having to read a book. In fact, most of the teleseminars offered online are cutting edge; you won’t find them offered yet in business schools. Most are offered via mp3 files so you can study at your convenience. (The Blog Squad’s Spring Sale is on now with eight teleseminars for your business.)

4. Join Facebook and start networking online. This is by far the quickest relationship-building tool, and you don’t have to attend breakfast meetings!

5. Write more often on your business blog. Also read and comment on blogs in your niche. Without doubt, your readers will let you know what they want to learn. Ask them what they need and give it to them.

An interview with Dr. Peter Pronovost of checklist fame

I’ve blogged about the successful use of checklists earlier, and the storm is still brewing. A projected that was funded by the Agency for Health Research and Quality, a DHHS agency, was shut down by another agency on the ruling that the study was performing research on humans without their consent. The project was from the Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care at Johns Hopkins, and was headed by Peter Pronovost, MD, Phd. He is exploring the use of checklists in healthcare settings as a means of simplifying complex guidelines into operational practices that physisians, nurses and others will actually use.

An interview published today in HIStalk with Dr. Pronovost is worth the read. He discusses some of their work and goals in working for practical means to improve the quality of care on a daily level.