Exclusive Collection has launched a new insight paper on navigating the impact of reduced attention spans at business events and conferences.
The paper, NETWORKING4.0, is based on quantitative insights from clients and is co-authored by Peter Mandeno PhD, an expert in the science of human connection.
With attention spans continuing to decline from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8.25 seconds today and with 70% of employees struggling to focus for 20 minutes, event formats must evolve to maintain engagement and effectiveness.
The research finds that the reason employees struggle to focus is due to multitasking and constant digital disrupts.
The paper offers practical insights for event planners and organisations to address the challenges of reduced attention spans while ensuring business events remain commercially impactful.
Stephanie Hall, Exclusive Collection’s group director of sales and marketing, said: “As event scenarios become increasingly experiential, attention has emerged as a vital metric for evaluating effectiveness and ROI.
She added: “Technology plays a dual role in this landscape; while it enhances access and engagement, it can also fragment focus —particularly among digitally native generations. Capturing and maintaining attention while recognising there is a cost to distraction is more difficult and more important than ever, hence why we created NETWORKING4.0”. “
The report found that for 37.3% of event professionals collaboration is the most important thing at a business, closely followed by networking and problem solving (28.8). The least important thing was creativity (5.1%).
Furthermore, 46.5% of respondents said that interactive workships help to maintain focus best, followed by short presentation (44.1%).
The insight paper finds that the way people learn has undergone a significant transformation and traditional formats have given way to more interactive experiences, with breakout sessions and workshops fostering deeper learning and collaboration.
As learning becomes increasingly experiential, attention has emerged as a vital metric for evaluating event effectiveness.
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