2009 Horizon Report Economic Development Edition

About the Horizon Project

The Horizon Project is a long-running research project that since 2002 has continuously examined new and emerging technologies and the trends and issues accompanying them, and produced an ongoing series of reports, wikis, discussions, papers and other resources related to this work. The annual Horizon Report, the project's flagship effort, is released each January and is currently published in six languages. That report looks at the applications of key new technologies to teaching, learning, and critical inquiry from a global perspective, and reaches hundreds of thousands of educators worldwide.

Throughout the year, a series of related editions are released that reflect the project's work in specific economic sectors and geographic regions. This report, the Economic Development Edition, is part of that effort, which also includes an annual K12 Edition and an annual Australia-New Zealand Edition as well as a series of high-level discussions within the museum community. The Economic Development Edition is a special report focused on the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, especially in light of the current economic climate.

Like the umbrella efforts from which it sprung, the Economic Development Edition used qualitative research methods to identify the technologies selected for inclusion in the report. The process began with a survey of the work of other organizations and a review of the literature with an eye to spotting interesting emerging technologies. When the cycle started, little was known, or even could be known, about the appropriateness or efficacy of many of the emerging technologies for these purposes, as the Horizon Project expressly focuses on technologies not currently in widespread use. For the current report, more than sixty of these were initially considered by the members of the project’s Advisory Board.

The 29 members of this year’s Advisory Board were purposely chosen to represent a broad cross section of business and industry, as well as key writers and thinkers from education and other fields. They engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications, and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of candidate technologies for their potential relevance to small to medium businesses. This work took place in a single face-to-face meeting and in a special online forum in July and August 2009, using a variety of tools specially purposed for the project. All of the work was captured and may be reviewed on the project wiki, at http://biz.wiki.nmc.org/.

For additional background on the Economic Development project and specifics about the research methodology, please see the section on Methodology at the end of this report.