Justification for Mobile

I was giving a presentation for the Chicago Chapter of ISPI last week on mobile learning and one of the questions that was asked was how do companies justify the need for mobile learning.  As I went through my usual response of tying it into a specific business need, we also discussed the fact that the next generation of employees simply use mobile devices for standard day to day communications.  So I thought when were we faced with a similiar situation in regards to conforming a work process based upon technological advancements?

If you think about it, how significant was the PC's impact on work productivity.  In a research paper written in the Journal of technology and management innovation, they examined both the pros and cons of PC's impacted the workforce and business process improvement.

One story that illustrates how the next generation of talent views the use of mobile devices-- we talked about the news story of 2 girls in Australia who fell into a storm drain.  With mobile phones in hand-- rather than calling for help, they updated their Facebook status to inform people of their situation.  This may sound like a ridiculous situation but in their minds, the phone's primary use was for connecting to their social network-- not as a phone.  So when we circled back to the question of justification for putting training or performance support and job aids on mobile devices, the justification will be easy-- because that's where the employees expect to access if from.