+160 business people assessing which trend will have biggest impact

There is an interesting debate going on on the Linkedin Group ‘Future trend’. Andreas von de Rheydt, a GM at l’Oréal, launched a discussion on ‘Which one is the SINGLE MOST important trend for you which will influence next years’.

A crucial question, to which 320 people responded so far (end of August). Rather than answering with my own vision, I took some time to go through the responses and tried to structure and segment them. After all this is some kind of a free survey, it would be a pity not to draw some conclusions out of it.

So here it goes, I took into account some 160 answers who were clear and directly answering the question:

Clearly technological developments are in most respondent’s mind. This is to be expected, though in a way it is puzzling as well. It is to be expected, since it is undeniably the most visible and impactful trend we experience. But at the same time it is puzzling, since technology (any specific one) is rarely a trend in itself. It can drive, create, bend a trend, but is it a trend in itself?

Anyhow, I’m not going into a semantic debate here. Technology is important, whatever way you look at it. And it probably came up that high in the responses to Andreas’ question since it covers so many aspects: nanotechnologies, augmented reality, social media, 3D, Cloud, Collaboration, … Again, no doubt each one of these developments will have an impact on our lives in the next decade.

The next group of trends which in between 10-15% of the answers mentioned includes:

• sustainability;
• consumer habits;
• geopolitics (shift to East);
• demographics.

No real surprises here, although I must admit that the shifts in Consumer behavior was out of my scope so far (which is why I’m currently reading the excellent ‘The Next Big Thing: Spotting and Forecasting Consumer Trends for Profit

The third group, mentioned by 3-5% of the respondents, offers a more interesting view.

I would have thought that ‘scarcity of resources’ would score much higher on the list, though one could argue that the topic is closely related to the ‘sustainability’ issue.

The ‘e-Learning’ one might be a good example of the bias in such survey, since this was mentioned by people from the education industry (so does that make it a megatrend?).Bytheway, there are other biased topics next on the list: ‘risk aversion’ and ‘cost cutting’ are very likely biased by the ‘zeitgeist’ in which we live, just after a dreadful financial and economic crisis.

But the two most intriguing topics from the third group of trends are definitely the ‘search for meaning’ and ‘increased speed/complexity’. They are interesting since they are not from a ‘material’ but rather from a psychological nature, they relate to how people perceive the world they are living in. Does that make them a megatrend? No, probably not, they are a reflection of the current times. But since these are psychological factors, they might influence ‘real’ trends in a very profound way…

Which brings me to the second reason why they are so interesting: they seem to relate in many ways to a vast number of other trends. The ‘search for meaning’ for instance relates closely to the ‘Sustainability’ trend, but can also be seen as an effect of some geopolitical and demographic trends (power shift to the East/ declining power of the West / elderly people more prone to feelings of fear/ …) and will definitely influence our consumption behavior in the future (another trend).

It’s intriguing to think about the interrelations of the trend. I’ve played around with the thought, combining the thoughts offered by the conversation on LindkedIn with some other thought from ‘professional megatrend watchers’. For the latter part I’ve selected the views of a number of people or companies (Ernst &; Young, McKinsey, IBM, CSIRO, CIFS (Copenhagen Institure for Future Studies, future watcher Richard Watson and Belgium’s top economist Geert Noels). This provides following picture:

But reflecting on my previous thought and how the psychological aspects can weight on trends, I’ve tried to put the ‘Meaning’ at the center, which provides even yet a more intriguing view:

I’m not an adept of any ‘new age’ or esoteric theory, neither am I a very religious guy, but if I’d ever write a book about megatrends and how to use them in corporate strategy (which I intend to do), I think I would use the concept of ‘Meaning’ as a red line across the book…

The view above is work in progress; feel free to leave a comment if you think I’ve missed a link or a ‘node’…