Trend- Innovation-Management

Trend and future research belong to the controversial "sciences" which have a reputation for "wizardness" and looking into crystal balls. Despite this, trend- researchers and futurists are getting increasingly popular and receiving increasing public recognition. Nearly every big company nowadays works with one or the other forecasting methods, maybe even has its own "Future Department" or hires some kind of futurist or trend- analyst. The reasons for the fact that there appears to be a "trend to looking at trends" are complex, but more easily understandable when we consider the changing circumstances of global, fast spinning markets:

• Better decision making in strategic management.
  Markets and products today are just too volatile and complex. To understand their dynamics and react adequately and IN TIME, you need some help, advice or "back-up recognition system."
• Quicker and more precise innovation generation.
  While innovation becomes the key element in most markets, driving innovations "to the edge" becomes a sheer necessity for surviving.

Prognostic and trend services are today offered by a wide range of small agencies, think tanks and professional groups, some of them with a long history and tradition such as the Basel based "Prognos". Some are organized in loose networks with gurus in the middle (for example Peter Schwartz with his "Global Business Network"). Others work mainly for politics (like DEMOS in London"), and some are universalists with a "cross-analyzing" approach (like the German "Zukunftsinstitut" in Frankfurt/Vienna).

In spite of the fact that there is no real common scientific method among all the futurists and trend consultancies, some cognitive/working similarities are visible:

• Consumer Trend Research:
  Faith Popcorn, the American Marketing guru, is probably the most famous person who stands for a "narrative", consumer centered, sociology influenced analysis of product- and shopping trends. Her namings and findings have indeed led to a lot of innovative products, with some visible success (and some unknown flops).
• Future Studies and Strategic Forecasting:
  This has a long tradition that goes back to the sixties when American think tanks like the RAND corporation developed War gaming for the future of the cold war. SHELL started to implement scenario techniques into their management strategies. John Naisbitt, who invented the expression "Megatrends", founded the "Second Wave" of more managerial orientated futurism in the 80's. The borderline to "common" consultancies is not precisely clear; every Accenture- or McKinsey activity includes some kind of future analysis. Basically, serious futurists in this field know a lot about system theory, complexity theory and how to connect different branches of modern prognostic science to models of the future (or certain parts of it).

If you want to "work with the future", first of all, you have to decide, if you want the task to be externalized or integrated into your daily business. Second, it is important to define what GOAL you have. Do you want to "empower" your core management group with the current trend and future findings? Or do you want to change entire value creating processes, like the generation of innovative products, in a "futuristic" way?

• External "Future Tank-Method":
  especially liked by car companies, which in themselves are still production orientated, and like to delegate the future work to "Avantgarde Pressure Groups". For example ten talented young designers, artists and trend experts  huddle together in a "Future Lab" in Los Angeles or Shanghai where they exercise their imagination and create images of wild future cars which will fly and roar. The whole thing is expensive, secret and . hermetic. The danger of this method is DISCONNECTION: The conceptual innovation process ITSELF becomes excluded - the company produces the same old boring cars, while the "Loonies" in their labs are getting crazier every day.
• Internal "Future Agents".
  Especially used by the "hype driven" telecommunication companies, but also some big banks and tourist concerns like to work with internal groups, who are producing a kind of "Science Fiction Work" about the "Future of Communications" (or travel/money). These small internal groups (or even "storytelling individuals") paint huge mood boards and evolution charts, where you can see that we all will undoubtedly watch a lot of TV and scan our brains into computers in only 20 years time. All this is put into beautifully designed brochures and presented in "Vision Days" for journalists and other future-hungry people. Future work in this sense is used firstly and foremost as PR- and communication. The problem: Future analysis becomes opportunistic and "interest driven" from the company. Internal futurists are often just greasing-up to the PR departments. There is no reflective element, and it only leads to a redundant self-satisfaction and smugness.
• "Strategic Management Empowerment".
  If you "only" want to empower the top management for future challenges, there are plenty of possibilities for future work, from the good old "Huddling in a hut for days with a famous futurist" to well structured congresses around a special theme. The main technique for this is still - and with still increasing relevance - the scenario technique.
• Collective Intelligence Trend Research.
  Some down to earth companies like BASF or big pharmaceutical companies, which do not have to deal directly with the consumer markets, develop "future sensors" out of their sheer volume of internal knowledge. These develop in data-banks, which are fed constantly by the employees of the company itself. It is a simple and practical "Forecast Machine" for specific themes such as the price tendencies of raw materials or the lawsuit trends in America. Problem: While these instruments are very good in monitoring short-term trends in very isolated and specific fields, they do not give you any clue about circumstances, technology change, interruptions, discontinuities etc.
• Total Trend Innovation.
  Genuinely innovative companies like Virgin, Apple or Nokia re-created their whole innovation process with trend- and future forecasting. There is no difference between the "internal vision" and the "external outlook", nor is the approach of the management of operations different to the management of innovation. Trend- Innovation goes from strategic management right down to the last screw on the product. A lot of Nokia mobile phones were created by such a "seamless trend innovation process":
• Step One:
  Analysis and documentation of different "Trend Sorts" (length, impact, strength etc.). It is important to know, on which level, in which dimensions, and related to which contexts trends occur. To create a clean hierarchy allows the innovation process to base its paradigms on the right order.
• Step Two:
  The next step is to use the right "tools": These are naming of trends in the main categories; Megatrends, Sociotrends, Consumer trends, Designtrends. Out of this background emerges a "World"; a collage which includes the style- and functional elements as well as the technological elements of the product to come.

There are basically two different ways to operate with this method in fast growing and fast changing markets. One could be called the "careful analytical method". The other could be called the "Creative Trend-Speeding". While SIEMENS for example, made a lot of effort in finding out what the customers "could want" from mobile phones in the future, a lot of time went by. When SIEMENS brought their new models onto the market, there were already outdated. SAMSUNG meanwhile worked in a different way. The Korean company created a huge amount of output and brought 80 different mobile phones onto the market, of which 80 percent vanished immediately. The Siemens-method is more inside-driven, while the Samsung-Way, in spite of working with similar, but more creative elements, leaves lots of the end decisions to the customers. Although the SAMSUNG method seems more successful, it is not without risks, because costs are very high, and the method relies on the genuine fashion markets (where the innovation cycle is now 4 weeks, not 6 months, and the products are not so expensive and time consuming). The best approach would be a clever combination of the German carefulness with the more creative approach: or put another way, speed up clever analytical work!

Three main rules stay with us, if we want to work with trends in the management and innovation processes:

Define your goals:

It is important, to know which "system" you want to address. Is it "the brain of management" you want to upgrade with future knowledge? Then more associative, communicative, "mental" ways to work with trends and forecasting are appropriate. To change employees with "future stuff" is not so easy; predictive work has to be "translated" to work as a motivational instrument.  

Beware of Trend-Opportunism:

Never use trends as a guideline for  "guaranteed success" - you will then become a victim of superficial "trend gurus", who can lead you on a merry dance. Trends can be used in very linear way, so that everybody in your branch follows the same clichés, and in the end nobody earns money at all!

When trend work is properly done when it creates a "mapping of possibilities" which gives you the freedom of decision. Also remember counter trends can be more productive than mainstream trends.

Personality matters:

because high complexity is always an element in prediction, forecast und trend research, personality matters a lot. If you work with agencies or trend gurus of your own choice, ask for the scientific and cognitive background of their work. Even if "Futuring" can not be reduced to a mere mathematical tool ("you can´t calculate the future"), trend work and future prediction should be a little more than simply "educated guesses". Good forecasting HAS intensive theoretical backgrounds, which your "guru" or analyzer of the future should be able to EXPLAIN to you properly.