Why You Should Run a Foresight Sprint? [An Expert Walk-through]
Understanding trends is a crucial part of any business activity. Businesses should keep an eye out for trends in order to stay on top of changes in their industries, new ideas in the business environment, and what customers really want or need. But imagining and predicting what direction the future will take in a couple years’ time is very difficult for businesses since they tend to focus on operations and execution.
This is where a Foresight Sprint can help. A Foresight Sprint offers insight into the drivers that will shape a business environment from now to five or ten years ahead and identifies opportunities so that an organization can keep abreast of changes in their industry. At The Product Architects, we help our clients run Foresight Sprint workshops; highly interactive trend workshops that help them gain insight on current trends in their business environment and look for opportunities that their company can seize.
What are trends and why are they so important?
Trends are changes of direction in values and needs driven by underlying forces, which manifest themselves in certain behavior. Trends focus on changes in people and their behavior, and are influenced by two aspects: developments and forces.
1. Developments are changes that occur in broader contexts (economical, sociological, technological, political, industrial, geographical, etc.). Developments and trends influence each other interchangeably because changes in behavior (i.e. trends) always underlie developments.
2. Forces are long term, stable patterns and powers that drive the changes in people’s values and needs. Although forces are unlikely to change in the short term, they are not immutable and are some of the most interesting aspects to evaluate in a Foresight Sprint (or even in a Vision Sprint, which we will elaborate on in an upcoming article). Trends can last a short or long term, but trends have a high chance of becoming a force the longer their terms last.
3. Due to their interrelatedness, we will refer to developments, forces and trends collectively as trends in the remainder of the article, but aspects discussed would apply equally to developments and forces.
Unlike hypes—which rise quickly and cause a huge impact, only to die out and fade into oblivion—trends are a constant change over time that have a lasting effect on people’s behavior and needs. There are three different kinds of trends, defined by how long they last and how wide-scale their impact is:
1. Mega trends consist of the broadest and most persistent phenomena, which are usually global in scale and can last decades.
2. Macro trends are major in scope, involving large populations and often lasting five to ten years. They affect the environment a business operates within, even if the business does not appear to be directly related to the focus subject of the trend.
3. Micro trends are smaller in scope and typically last three to five years. They manifest as specific changes in products, services and experiences that are developed based on the underlying values and needs in the bigger macro trend umbrella.
By understanding, predicting and responding effectively to different trends, businesses can ensure that they survive and thrive. Analyzing trends, developments and forces helps businesses look for opportunities to seize new directions or behavioral changes in their early stages, providing space for a company to be proactive and innovative.
How trends help businesses innovate
The adoption of innovation usually follows a certain pattern, described by Everett Rogers as the Diffusion of Innovation. The theory explains the way a new idea or innovation passes through stages of adoption, from introduction to spread throughout societies, and creates trends.
1. Innovators: A very small group of people who are comfortable taking risks and adopt new ideas or concepts in their earliest, most fragile stages.
2. Early adopters: A slightly larger group of people who follow innovators and are interested in trying and adopting new ideas or concepts. Early adopters are crucial for trends to break into the mainstream since they are influencers who introduce the early majority to innovations and help spread the word amongst the early majority.
3. Early majority: The early majority are part of the general population that adopts ideas from their influencers. They are often the first within a larger network to adopt certain ideas or concepts, but required more convincing than early adopters to embrace new ideas and concepts. They pave the way for an innovation within mainstream society, serving as a bridge for trends to reach the late majority.
4. Late majority: The majority of consumers in the general population that follow the early majority into adopting an innovation as part of their daily life.
5. Laggards: A large group of conservative, risk-averse people that tend to require the most convincing and adopt innovations latest.
Diffusion of innovation:
By using and analyzing trends, businesses can focus on innovators and early adopters to ensure that they detect new ideas and concepts in early stages. The ability to perceive developing trends gives businesses a significant advantage over their competitors from an economical point of view. As the first to pick up on and develop new ideas, a business' investments will have a higher return than competitors that step in at later stages. Organizations that adopt innovations in their latest stages often find themselves struggling to receive a positive return on investment. By understanding trends that are on their way up, businesses can adapt their products, services and designs to ensure that they stand at the forefront of innovation.
How can our Foresight Sprint workshop help?
Whilst the idea of standing at the forefront of trends and innovation is an exciting concept that many strive to execute, it may be difficult to put into practice. Although understanding trends is crucial to forecasting business activity, many find it difficult to identify emerging trends, imagine what direction they will take in a few years' time or recognize ideal opportunities, since the nature of their jobs require them to focus on operations and execution instead.
This is where our Foresight Sprint comes into play. The Foresight Sprint is a workshop format based on our strategic product design approach, that will help clients gain insight on current trends and seize opportunities. Through the workshop process, we inspire clients by identifying opportunity patterns in trends, developments and forces that they can seize. Clients are also presented with a research report that will help them understand and gain insight into the latest trends in their industry. Depending on the client's mission or objective, workshops may be conducted with different formats (such as ideation or scenario planning) specifically catered to helping them achieve their desired goals. By the end of the workshop, clients will understand the trends that will shape their business environment in coming years and be ready to move on to the next step: a design sprint or product/venture track.
Transforming Trends into Action:
