How horizon-scanning and trend-spotting drive impact initiatives

Even in large organisations, marketing and innovation teams responsible for trend-spotting often only have the capacity to keep tabs on mega-trends, likely on an annual basis. What’s lacking are hands-on resources to take these insights further, honing the analysis specifically to the client’s particular businesses, initiatives, products and services. For instance, how is the rising cost of living or climate change — two pressing mega-trends — shaping what they’re experiencing in their sector, for their focus issues, stakeholders, customers and suppliers? Whether in a large organisation or an impact product startup, this specificity is key to driving informed strategy.?

With the capacity to keep clients on the trend-spotting pulse with quarterly updates, we support them in evolving their work to align with shifts across their key issues, geographies, sectors and markets. Here, we sketch out the value we’ve seen it bring clients of all sizes, in multiple sectors, alongside the methodology’s potential for enhancing business-impact synergy both today and moving forward.?

Who is this for? Making the value of horizon-scanning and trend-spotting tangible

We’ve seen the value of horizon-scanning and trend-spotting across three broad groupings of clients:

1. You’re running a business with an impact offering at its core

In this scenario, horizon-scanning and trend-spotting fundamentally provide sound business intelligence and market insights, mapping developments in the terrain around your impact product or service.?

Charting emerging risks and opportunities is also a valuable output, including:

• Potential funding sources (grants, impact investors, philanthropists)?
• Partnership, distribution, sourcing and communications opportunities
• Risks to existing financial and go-to-market models
• Pre-empting and managing market shifts?

2. You’re managing a brand with a significant, but non-core, purpose element?

Here, the payoff lies in the ability to embed insights in brand strategy. Take a leading hygiene product brand, for example. Their products’ purpose is to kill germs, first and foremost. Yet they may have a strong, global impact strand promoting health and hygiene education via handwashing in schools. Quarterly updates on regulatory, partner and trend shifts relating to these themes (e.g. health, hygiene, education) are, naturally, instrumental to optimising the brand’s impact initiatives — from scientific research breakthroughs and sector innovations to potential funding and collaboration opportunities.?

From established competitors to potential partners and funders, startup innovators and activists, only by closely monitoring market and stakeholder shifts can you stay agile, reactive and strategic in running, growing and optimising your business and your impact.

3. You’re overseeing impact initiatives from within a corporation

Whether through a sustainability, social innovation or partnership lens, you’re a changemaker supporting big business to deliver impact-led initiatives. The business intelligence and strategic embedding we foregrounded above are absolutely applicable. Beyond those, horizon-scanning and trend-spotting are particularly useful in enabling you to generate and maintain the internal awareness and support your impact initiatives need.?

To sustain buy-in, enthusiasm and funding, it’s vital to remind both internal clients and leadership of the issues, trends and movements relevant to your business’ impact focus. We deliver reports in the format, branding and tone that makes sharing and highlighting fast and easy, enabling you to maintain share of mind, nudge leadership and guide strategy based on better and more regular information.???

Systems Impact

Not even our largest multi-national clients can solve the socio/economic/environmental issues impacting them and their business alone. The issues we work on, which we’ve formulated as Access, Opportunity, Inclusive Cities and Natural Systems, are not simple, linear, cause-and-effect issues. They require systems thinking and approaches.?

Everything we and our clients do is a piece of a bigger solution and can only deliver value and impact if it fits the context, evolving as necessary. The breadth of our experience and data-gathering means that our horizon-scanning and trend-spotting look beyond the linear and direct to secondary and tertiary risks and opportunities — which experience has shown to often be the source of transformative and innovative solutions.

Expanding to exploratory realms

Beyond immediate opportunity identification and risk awareness, clients have also used our horizon-scanning and trend-spotting to extend into more exploratory territory. Which themes, trends and issues are currently just an inkling, beginning to be voiced in their networks? What can we find from researching e-waste or informality and recycling, for example, that might put us ahead of the curve? With this far-sightedness, our clients are primed to scope out their utility, role, threats and opportunities as those inklings become tangible trends. We deliver these over-the-horizon insights via quarterly reporting, and design and moderate workshops with client teams (sometimes including key partners and stakeholders) to unpack, explore and co-create responses.?

Enhancing insights with a cross-sector viewpoint

At Archipel&Co, our corporate impact and social innovation specialism spans multiple issues, sectors and industries. This enables us — particularly as we deepen our relationships with clients — to spot shapes on the horizon that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar. These might have originated in another industry or sector in which we’re active but, it emerges, can be fruitfully applied to your situation. We find that innovation most often occurs in these spaces where previously separate worldviews, strategies and technologies can be overlapped, so we’re driven to bring this breadth of knowledge to the table for our clients.?

Managing today’s better business while shaping tomorrow’s

Horizon-scanning and trend-spotting insights are vital to managing, evolving and optimising impact offerings, simultaneously priming you with tactical awareness and looking ahead to potential monumental shifts in your business and impact landscape. From sensing shifting priorities, to scouting new opportunities, to entering new geographies and business ventures, horizon insights are key to staying the course and charting new journeys.?

Mapping horizons and trends for effective impact: 3 thoughts to take forward

1. On-pulse insights are instrumental

With increasing numbers of actors and organisations in the corporate impact and social innovation space, it’s evolving quicker than ever. This is a huge positive. However, it means that an individual’s or small team’s capacity to stay on top of trends and developments is seriously stretched. If you haven’t the luxury of working with a large in-house impact team, outsourcing quarterly market-scanning and trend-watching enables you to do more with the resources you have.?

2. Evolving insights underpin agility?

Effective impact initiatives need agility built in. As such, shaping yours based on the fundamental understanding that they will adapt and evolve based on quarterly trend analyses will position them for efficiency, effectiveness and longevity. Curveballs will come, so the most valuable thing you can do is give yourself the best chance of seeing them speeding toward you. Regular insight updates will also support holding the conversations with internal and external stakeholders that you need to continue delivering and optimising your impact objectives, no matter the size of your organisation.

3. Up for making some waves?

Delivering regular trend insights that are as valuable as possible for our clients involves co-creating the most effective, impactful way these can be presented to their internal team, stakeholders and leadership. We’re driven to evolve the multimedia and experiential potential of this offering — and we’re seeking clients to join us in that endeavour. If that sounds like a meeting of minds to you, do reach out via comment or message.??