Trends

Exploring Trends

I have participated in a number of trend focused workshops over the past several months, which have proven to have been insightful into how to implement a structured approach to understanding and synthesising trends that are relevant for a specific business.

One such workshop, hosted by Pure Insight was ran by Dr Tim Jones, Future Agenda, last week in the Netherlands. Using a wide range of trends and future issues from the Future Agenda programme, we systematically categorised the 52 issues, which were focused on the following areas:

• Health
• Wealth
• Happiness
• Mobility
• Security
• Locality

From this categorisation, the group was able to identify a selection of key potential opportunity spaces in which to innovate within. The important element of this approach is that companies do not start with a technology, and then research into how to use the technology for a certain application and market need.  Instead, companies start with an opportunity space and then identify the pathway that the company will take to execute the opportunity. This pathway illustrates key points in time, such as in 2015 the scenario will be X, in 2020 the scenario will be Y, in 2025, the scenario will be Z. For each scenario, an outline of the company’s capabilities and technologies that need to be developed or acquired will be illustrated as a detailed pathway.