Love Letter & Break Up Letter to Trend Reports
This week I will be conducting a workshop on implementing a trend analysis task force in an organization; the preparations have made me frantic. I have mixed feelings about this topic: on the one hand, I teach trend analysis in the Futures Studies and in the Food Design graduate programs where I work, so I recognize that this activity is valuable and feasible. On the other hand, every year, I observe with certain prurience the frenzy (fetishism?) with which individuals and companies collect trend reports and consult them as canons.
One of my favorite exercises in class is to perform open-heart surgery on your favorite trend report: which one is yours?
I ask students to contrast it with the guidelines they learned in class to reveal how the reports were made. Sometimes, I enjoy their disenchanted faces: I am not a friend of trend reports that do not report trends but advocate behaviors, pushing the agendas of specific organizations.
Trend analysis from a prospective point of view is meant to feed into futures ideation exercises. They are not checklists or precepts to be followed. Trends are often like trains: not all will take you where you want to go.
With this in mind, I recently collaborated with Eduardo Hernandez Obieta to develop the Mixed Martial Arts of trends (MMA): four martial arts-inspired moves that suggest different attitudes towards trends.
Thinking of trends as indicators of change that are part of a more extensive process rather than prescriptions of behavior, I accompany my students in the elaboration of trend reports such as these, which are not commandments, but reflections on possible changes in different contexts (totally perfectible, next year we will surely do better):
In this regard, in a few weeks, we will publish a collaboration with the Danish consulting firm Kjaer, with whose founders we collaborated so that the students could adapt their Atlas of macro trends to the Latin American reality.
Across the gap, in recent years (perhaps more than I am aware of), a twisted use of trend reports has been promoted; who and for what purpose?
Let’s get straight: trends are dominant behaviors occurring in specific geographies. They are not predictions. You read that right: they are NOT PREDICTIONS, dammit!
A trend is the possible direction of change in a given context based on the detection of patterns. Patterns are based on facts, and the facts are in the past (or are developing in the present). In the future, there are no facts.
Here are some working assumptions that I consider crucial for trend analysis. I share them with you to open the discussion; I don’t pretend to have the last word.
- Change can leave detectable traces, but not all changes are noticeable before they reach a certain degree of development (when they are already widespread).
- Change processes have a life span: to understand their stage of development, you must investigate the past.
- Trends are not destiny. If something is occurring consistently today, nothing can guarantee that it will continue to happen tomorrow, even if the probabilities so indicate.
- Change does not occur in a linear or unidirectional way. Change is a circus of many tracks, each going at a different speed. Therefore, you have to question trends presumed to be linear and gather evidence from different contexts to ensure that we are talking about events with extensive geographic coverage (in which case, we are already talking about megatrends, following Enric Bas, 2004).
- To understand change, you must identify “ground wires,” counterweights, or counterforces that help you test your beliefs. Noah, the man who sells coconuts from a cart outside my house, and my aunt Esther, who doesn’t have a cell phone, Internet, or microwave out of conviction, are some of my most essential ground wires. Always look for counterexamples that challenge your belief that the change you have detected is universal or that the change is impossible, following Jane McGonigal (2023)
- Trend analysis has a subjective component. Subjective means “perceived by a subject”; it does not mean “ungrounded or arbitrary.” Trends are fiction in the same terms that Clifford Geertz (1073) refers to as the result of dense description being fiction: a narrative that aspires to truth, made by someone, in a particular socio-historical context.
- The trends are traversed by language games, following Wittgenstein (Hunnings, 1988). I recently worked on a trend study for milk producers and explained to them that the consumption of “vegetable milk” deserved attention because it was displacing the consumption of animal-based milk in key cities in Mexico: “Plant-based milk is not real milk; it is a vegetable drink, there is a standard that regulates the labeling of these products so that they are not identified as milk,” they told me. They argued that for that reason, vegetable-based drinks are not a threat to the consumption of milk and dairy products. In the consumer’s mind, if it’s white and you can put it on your cereal, it’s milk; when you go to Starbucks, the barista asks you what kind of milk you want (bovine, soy, almond, coconut), without making a distinction between dairy and plant-based drinks. You may be vulnerable to disruption if you don’t understand this contextual language game.
- Today’s taboo could be tomorrow’s mainstream and vice versa. I am paraphrasing Amy Webb (2016), who states that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, so I qualify by saying that “could,” I also think it may be the other way around: today’s mainstream may be tomorrow’s taboo.
- Trends are opportunities or threats depending on who is observing them. Therefore, they cannot be considered universal opportunities: your disruption can be my advantage.
What are the most frequent errors when analyzing trends?
- Transfer what has been observed directly into the future. The future cannot be predicted because it does not exist, following Dator (2019). Trends help feed conjectures about alternatives that allow us to distinguish the desirable from the undesirable and build paths toward the desirable (unless you are a masochist!)
- Authority bias (e.g., because a prestigious consulting firm said it, it is undoubtedly true).
- False consensus effect (assuming that all people in all contexts act the same when faced with the same stimulus)
- Confusion of causes with correlations (See Silver, 2012)
- Lack of transparency/traceability. Fascinating insight, but how did you arrive at that?
- Use of unreliable information instead of verified facts
- Use of a single method/instrument (the magical, unique, and memorable method that we created in my consulting firm and that I cannot share with you because it is a trade secret)
- Pushing of interest group agendas. Not describing dominant behaviors based on facts but behaviors that the brand I work for would love to be dominant.
What do you need to analyze trends?
- A research question
- Variables to guide the research. These variables depend on the research question and the context you are studying. The variables for studying change in a person, an organization, or geography are different.
- Methods and instruments for mapping and capturing information. These variables depend on the research question and the context you are studying. The variables for studying change in a person, an organization, or geography are different.
- Counterweights: who is your anti-microwave aunt or your corner coconut vendor? Who is your counter-case?
What do I do, declare war on trend reports?
Not at all. Instead, learn to do surgery on them: be clear that they are not predictions, that some of them respond to agendas that sometimes are not explicit, make sure you know the methods with which they were made, and do not consider them universal. Use them as input for future scenarios: not all of them are trains that will take you where you want to go.
What should I read to do a trend analysis on my own?
Bas, E. (2004) Megatendencias Para el Siglo Xxi: Un Estudio Delfos. Fondo de Cultura Económica
Dator, J. (2019). What Futures Studies Is, and Is Not. 10.1007/978–3–030–17387–6_1.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books
Hunnings, G., (1988) The World and Language in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy. Suny Press.
Kjaer, A., (2014) The Trend Management Toolkit. Palgrave Macmillan
McGonigal, J. (2023) Imaginable. How to Create a Hopeful Future. Spiegel & Grau
Silver, N. (2012) The Signal and The Noise. Penguin Books.
Webb, A., (2016) The Signals Are Talking: Why Today s Fringe Is Tomorrow s Mainstream. Public Affairs.
