Trend analysis and forecasting
Mega-trends
Trends come in different sizes. A mega-trend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, mega-trends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example.
Potential trends
Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future (for example: just a few years ago, alternative medicine remained an outcast from modern medicine. Now it has links with big business and has achieved a degree of respectability in some circles and even in the marketplace).
Branching trends
Very often, trends relate to one another the same way in which a tree-trunk relate to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward a minimizing differences in the relationship between the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.
Life-cycle of a trend
When does a potential trend gain acceptance as a bona fide trend? When it gets enough confirmation in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.
Other suggestions for thinking about the future
- "Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous." (Jim Dator)
- "Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you." (Patrick Dixon)
- "The future is clear to me. What I don't understand is the present." (Gerhard Kocher)
- "There are no future facts." (Fred Polak)
- "A part of our future appears to be evolutionary and unpredictable, and another part looks developmental and predictable. Our challenge is to invent the first and discover the second." (John Smart)
- "The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present." (Calvin)
(Wikipedia)
