BUS602: Marketing Management

At this stage, it is important to recognize three things: 

• trends don't exist in isolation, 
• trends are extrapolations of the past and the present, not future facts, and
  
• trends have uncertain future trajectories. 

During this process of assessing trends, you need to spend some time exploring how the trends might evolve over time. You should have started to do this when you scanned, and now you are looking at a number of trends to see how they connect or operate in isolation from each other. There could be weak or strong connections between trends, and some trends might collide. 

Wildcards and other discontinuities might intervene and derail a trend trajectory completely. For this exercise, you need to be applying system thinking principles. The further into the future you explore, the more uncertain the trajectory of a trend is, and the more potential turning points there are. You will need to be exploring multiple alternative pathways to see whether your view that this trend is important to your organization is robust across those alternatives. Look, in particular, for possible pathways that might have a significant impact on how you do business today. 

Ask questions such as: 

• what would cause a fundamental change to the way your organization delivers its services?
• what would generate fundamental change in how your industry is organized? 

Remember that you are scanning at the moment to improve your assessment, rather than selecting trends for further evaluation. 

• As with Insights a number of simple thinking methods exist to improve your assessment including: 
• Assumptions: research underlying uncertainties further 
• Brainstorm: quickly identify key opportunities and risks 
• CLA: deconstruct conventional metaphors and re-make new futures 
• Counterpoint: develop reverse strategies to the trend 
• Debate: formally discuss opposing views 
• Devil's advocate: critique someone else's analysis 
• Genus: learn from the past 
• Megatrend: examine probable global futures 
• Panarchy: understand the source and role of change in systems 
• Red hat: anticipate opponents actions 
• Self-critique: identify weaknesses in your analysis 
• Starburst: generate early questions rather than answers 
• STEEP: identify critical driving factors 
• SWOT: determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats 
• Surprise: identify and analyze potential disruptors 
• Tipping point: spot upcoming turning points early 
• Visioning: determine a compelling image of a preferable future 

All of these are available through the Shaping Tomorrow website.