Track Trends Like A Futurist

Track Trends Like A Futurist

How do Futurists see what's coming before it has arrived? Partially, it's by subscribing to feeds and resources known for being the first to discover new and potential trends.

When you are deciding the best way to position a business, understanding how consumer behaviour is changing is crucial for decision making. You want to know if a trend is changing:

  • What your customers expect from you
  • What they are willing to pay for
  • What they need to hear to see your offer as a priority
  • If the ceiling for your current growth plans is about to get shorter

And you want to understand who else is playing in that market.

I don't mean fluffy competitor research they teach university marketing students or that ChatGPT spits out. I mean understanding every single business that is one or two pivots away from what you're doing. For a director serious about growth, pivots are part of that growth and the indirect competitor can teach you so much about what lies ahead. That's why one of our research tactics is to unearth them on our trend feeds, scan them using tools like Wayback Machine, so you can see every time they changed a target audience or messaging tactic. That way you don't waste your time on costly 'growth' that someone has already discovered is a dead end.

Back again? Here's a shortcut to the trend feeds:

Emerging trends are the equivalent of spoilers, but for a marketplace. Instead of ruining the ending, they're insights revealing a future that your business can lead the way in.

I have compiled over 100 of my favourite resources for discovering the future that include everything from an AI that analyses culture (Sparks & Honey) through to the team working on what the world might look like up to 10,000 years from now (The Long Now Foundation).

Read a few, get inspired, and then schedule a chat with Reimaginers so your business doesn't fail in the first season while everyone else has fans beating down their door for the next season to drop.

The Council Have Given Me Permission To Train You

General Trends

IBISWorld (note some countries have their own subsection of IBISWorld, use the country of interest for most relevant data)

VML Intelligence

Stylus

Sparks & Honey

WGSN

WARC

Institute For The Future

The Long Now Foundation

World Economic Forum – Strategic Intelligence

Canvas8

Entrepreneur

Harvard Business Review

Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Economist

New Scientist

Springwise

Think with Google

Google Trends

Answer The Public

Also Asked

Thing Testing

Trendwatching

Matt Klein

Nielsen

Exploding Topics

Hubspot

Subreddit Stats

TECH & AI TRENDS

Tech Crunch

This Week In Creative Technology

IFTTT

Nvidia AI

Digital Trends

Within

GitHub

Now This Earth

Futurism

Future

Moz

Ahrefs

Social Media Examiner

Social Media Today

Litmus

Really Good Emails

Awwwards

Product Hunt

Futurepedia

Daniel Eckler

Karen X

Cloudflare Domain Rankings

FOOD TRENDS

Food+Tech Connect

Food Dive

Restaurant Dive

Eater

626 Night Market

Bompass & Parr

Mold

Sugar & SPACE

Foodlosofia

Eatelier

The Counter

WELLNESS TRENDS

Global Wellness Summit

Insight Timer

Lonely Lingerie

Sober Girl Society

Apartment Therapy

Mental Floss

Freelancing Females

Shan Boodram

Esther Perel

Lanserhof At The Arts Club

Nikki Gonda

Modibodi

Hims

Sephora

Future of Sex

Museum of Sex

Pink Bits

Intimate Ecology

SeedLabs

CREATIVE TRENDS

Daisie

Twitch

Pinterest Trends

BuzzFeed

Reddit

Shower Thoughts

Fuck Jerry

Colossal

Designboom

It's Nice That

Jessica Walsh

MSCHF

Meow Wolf

Preen.Me

Popsugar

CENSUS STATISTICS

Australian Bureau of Statistics

Census India

Eurostat

National Bureau of Statistics China

Statistics Canada

Stats NZ

UK Office for National Statistics

Union for African Population Studies

United States Census Bureau

I analyse trends daily as part of what it takes to design disruptive businesses that will open wallets as much as shape the future. In addition to tracking broader shifts in culture, I keep on the pulse for trends changing every consumer facing industry. This enables me to have an always-on landscape of opportunities for my clients.

If you want know what the future looks like for a business like yours, speak with a Reimaginers insights expert.
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