The Trouble with Trends

A trend, be it social, technological, economic, environmental, or political, is defined as a general tendency, movement or direction and implies a gravitational pull from which it is difficult for individuals or organisations to escape. Anyone ignoring trends or being ‘off trend’, especially with regard to mega-trends, is assumed to be at best lazy or lax or at worst heading for oblivion. Rivals will inevitably leverage such trends to reshape existing products or even radically reinvent markets at the expense of less nimble competitors.

So how can you find these trends and, more importantly perhaps, how can you identify early-stage trends before anyone else has woken up to their potential?

The easiest place to start is, of course, online. This applies to mega-trends, but also niche trends ranging from solar energy trends to drone industry trends. If you search online, you will generally find.

However, so will everyone else. Everyone has easy access to the same information these days and whilst lists of trends can be useful in terms of evolving products and services but is essentially a defensive or backwards-looking activity. Trends are extrapolations from historical data points and whilst they can be extremely useful over shorter time periods, especially for incremental improvement, they are unlikely to result in any long lasting or game changing advantage unless you are very early to the party and able to repeat such attuned attention on a continual basis.

Moreover, a list of trends on its own isn’t much use to anyone. The critical thing is acting upon such information and to do this you must understand their implications. But you mustn’t leave it there. The important thing to get to grips with is why a trend exists in the first place. What are the deeper structural drivers from which a trend has emerged? Also, how might a trend combine with other trends in unexpected or unforeseen ways and where, ultimately, might a trend travel? This is where trend watching intersects with horizon scanning and even scenario planning and where deep, reflective thought can lead to sustained commercial advantage. ?

Working through questions such as where trends are coming from and where they may lead enables organisations to align risk management, R&D expenditure and innovation activity with emerging technologies and new customer needs. But, more importantly, it encourages organisations to continually question what business they are in and how best they can deliver goods and services to customers.

One lasting benefit of trend watching is that it can create a restless corporate culture that is always on the look out for new opportunities and threats. This is the opposite of self-regarding cultures, which firmly believe that what’s worked for them in the past will continue to make them successful in the future.

However, even if you are attuned to trends both within and outside your industry there is still the problem that trends are of limited use if your interest is far beyond the here and now. ?If you are interested in significant capital expenditure that takes place over decades rather than months or years you will need a healthy dose of scepticism.

Trends are, by their very nature, self-serving and it pays to pay attention to potential countertrends and trend terminators.

For example, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in North America has identified Individual Empowerment as a mega-trend stemming from the intersection of other long-established trends ranging from global connectivity and deregulation to the free market economy, human rights, and the push for liberal democracy.

No argument with any of this, although all these long-standing trends are capable of changing direction. In short, trends tend to bend, especially over longer periods. Moreover, whilst it’s easy to identify short-term trends, it’s much harder to extrapolate their speed let alone their destination. Trends can also snap if stretched too far. Indeed, there’s almost a physical law, which states that any trend that becomes ubiquitous will create a balancing countertrend or push-back in the opposite direction. Countertrends are not as generally as powerful as the initial trend, but they can be significant. Think of the way that globalisation is being tempered by localisation or the way that mindfulness, the Slow Movement, and provenance are all counter-acting our fast, virtualised, globalised, borderless world.

Individual Empowerment does seem like a trend that’s here to stay, but like any other trend it’s capable of being tempered, reversed, or superseded. The internet, for example, could be locked down or at least heavily censored by governments seeking to limit data leaks or control what citizens have access to. China and other countries are doing this already.

Similarly, while personal technology and instant mobile access are currently accelerating and accentuating individual empowerment there could be a shift towards a group mentality, especially if people collectively recognise a significant and cohesive external threat or people become concerned about the excesses of certain individuals.

So, keep an eye not only on current trends, but on anomalies that are seemingly off-trend or anti-trend, as they may represent the early signs of a shift and thus new opportunities.

In scenario speak, these indicators are known as weak signals and if you are trying to be truly radical or disruptive weak signals can be far more interesting than trends in that they can signify less obvious and less-well known developments. You need to practice deep looking and deep listening to find weak signals, they are not as easy to stumble upon as trends, but a good shortcut is to pay attention to things that are at odds with common practice or beliefs. For example, if you seek out enthusiasts that are heavy users of goods, services, or technologies you may find something of significance. People that are modifying things, especially mass-produced items, or materials, can similarly a sign that their needs or wants are changing.

The same can be true at the edge of established markets where small start-ups are doing things differently and with research institutions that are pushing the boundaries of conventional thought or inventing new ways of addressing problems.

These final thoughts perhaps link with another, which is that trends can be straightjackets. They can keep you safe, but ultimately true success stems from breaking trends not following them. Being ‘on trend’ is a form of imitation and over time imitation can be commercial suicide. #trends #trendspotting #trendforecasting