Anticipating Future Trends

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to put forward.

ENTREPRENEUR: Companies would pay millions to know for sure how the market's going to develop in the future. The trouble is, of course, this isn't possible. What they can do though, is employ people to analyze the market and "project", or make "informed guesses", as to what might happen. These people are called futurologists. How do futurologists make their predictions?

ENTREPRENEUR1: No, not like that. In fact, they try to predict the future by a method called "triangulation". So, how would a futurologist use triangulation to analyze the possible future market developments of this product? Well, the first stage, research, involves asking the consumer questions. The futurologists hold focus groups, send out questionnaires and speak to "key consumers", those people most likely to purchase the product.

ENTREPRENEUR2: For example, they'd talk to a range of different runners marathon runners, joggers, sprinters in order to find out what they want from a running shoe and what kind of changes they'd suggest making. In addition, they might also talk to various other demographic groups, housewives, for example, or businessmen, in the hope that their product is reaching a wider market. From this research, the futurologists can find out not only what consumers think about the product, but also get ideas for new design initiatives. For example, perhaps they notice that a certain group of key consumers like exercising both in a gym and in a park or on a road. This might lead them to think of a new design that would be popular with this demographic.

ENTREPRENEUR3: Or they might observe that, due to today's smaller, more convenient listening devices, more and more people are listening to music while running. Or, that certain 'key consumers' increasingly want to know how many calories they've burned. Once the futurologists have gathered information about how the consumer uses their product, and what they'd like in the future, they then move onto the second stage: observation. The futurologists analyze the consumer habits of different groups of people then guess how trends will develop in the future. For example, they might notice that the housewife demographic is becoming an increasingly important core customer, or that the company are losing their market share in the businessman demographic.

ENTREPRENEUR4: Or, they might discover that a certain design of shoe is proving more and more popular with one of the key demographics. In other words, it's only when the futurologists know who is buying what, and how these trends are developing, that they're able to project the future direction of the market. So, this takes us to the final part of the triangulation process: making a projection. To do this, futurologists don't just need the facts, they need their intuition. This is where futurologists really earn their money.

ENTREPRENEUR5: Anyone with basic market research skills can collect and analyze data. However, what futurologists do is use this data to make accurate projections of the future product. To do this, they come up with a number of 'What if ... ?' questions. For example: What if we design a new kind of easily washed material, to make a new kind of running shoe that's convenient both for the gym and the road? What if we invent a small machine in the shoe that controls the speed of the music, so that when a runner slows down, the music slows down too, and when the runner speeds up, the music speeds up too?

ENTREPRENEUR6: Or, What if we put a calorie counter, just like the ones you see on running machines in gyms, but inside the shoe, so that after a run, the runner could take their shoes off and be able to count how many calories they'd burned? Of course, these are just ideas. The futurologists now have to give these ideas to the board of directors and the CEO, and they're the ones who will decide on the future direction of the product. However, due to this combination of research, analysis and intuition, futurologists can help companies anticipate future trends, predict how people will be using a product in the future, and make it the market leader.