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.
General Trends
IBISWorld (note some countries have their own subsection of IBISWorld, use the country of interest for most relevant data)
World Economic Forum – Strategic Intelligence
Stanford Social Innovation Review
TECH & AI TRENDS
This Week In Creative Technology
FOOD TRENDS
WELLNESS TRENDS
CREATIVE TRENDS
CENSUS STATISTICS
Australian Bureau of Statistics
National Bureau of Statistics China
UK Office for National Statistics
Union for African Population Studies
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.