If you want to study consumer trends, a couple of links might be of interest:
Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies – and their downloable book Creative Man.
Filed under: trends
February 14, 2008 • 7:20 am 0
Two strategies in trendspotting
If you want to use Trendspotting as a way to find business opportunities, you may choose different strategies:
The general or the focused perspecktive
Taking the general perspective is about scanning the market and the world – or a general area - for any kind of trends, and use that as take off for the search of business ideas.
Examples:
Rising oil prices – maybe in combination with political attention on global warming. How will that effect the world politically, socially, technologically and economically etc.? And what will the world – or specific people – start looking for. What kind of new products, services or solutions will be neededj? Who will get what kind of pain?
Mobile phones spread rapidly in developig countries: Since mobile phones are becoming increasingly widespread in developig countries, a lot of people will go on the internet for the first time via mobile phones without ever having used a PC. How will communication i societies with a lot of mobile phones but few PC’s work? And what will people need, that is different from more developed countries.
The Focused Perspective
The above could lead you in a lot of different directions. And that is finde if you are indifferent about where you discover business opportunities. If however you are looking for business opportunities in a more specific area, you will probably want to search more focused.
Example:
If you are very interested in social media, virtual networks, Web 2.0 and that kind of stuff, you would probably want to look for trends in that area.
After the huge success of MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, where it has become a sport to have as many friends as possible, some people in the business have started talking about more focused and exclusive communities as the next big thing. People will get tired of being in huge networks with people the hardly know. The will search more narrow networks with people, with whom they have a lot in commen.
We have already seen the same trend in dating-websites, where new and more focused sites have come up – like Farmerdating, Fitnessdating and Beautiful People.
What kind of new opportunities do you see in that context.
Combine general and focused trenspotting
If you know, in which area you want to search for opportunities, you may want to start with the specialized focus. But to find surprising opportunities, it could be a good idea to do the general search too. It might lead to nothing, but also to some surprising opportunities.
What do you see, if you take the trend towards more specialiced communities and the spreading of mobile phones with internet acces in developing countries?
Practical exercise: Tak a big sheet of paper. Draw three circles (one inside the other) and in the center you write trends in a specific area. In the second circle you write trends in related areas, and in the outsite you write trends in the world and society in general.
Filed under: trends
February 13, 2008 • 7:44 am 0
Start looking for opportunities – not ideas!
Don’t rush to getting ideas. A little patience and a good preparation will pay off later! We are only looking for opportunities in the beginning.
After the first lecture we have already started looking for business opportunities, that can later transform into ideas. We had a short brainstorm on trends in different areas:
Environment – where we have new trends in political attention as well as industry and consumer behavior.
Web and software – where we have new trends in business and marketing as well as social and gaming activities.
Marketing – where new media are dominating and more general trends in society and in the world influence the media and the messages in marketing.
Real estate – where we have several relatively new markets in fx the Baltic states.
Design and innovation – where topics like ergonomics and customization seem to be important.
The point of starting out with this trendspotting-brainstorm was to turn your eyes to the world and be sensitive about what is moving – and where. We stared out very generally, and of course it is quite complicated to gain insight in the whole environmental area – from renewable energy sources to organic food – so it is time to focus.
If the area, that you worked with in the trendspotting session is very general – like marketing or environment – i recommend, that you start focusing more narrowly on specific issues of interest. If your area is the web in general, “social networks” might be a specific focus.
Start reading specialized media, that write about your topic. Be careful with general media, they often wait until things are peaking. Danish media only recently started to really talk about Facebook – though it has been in the market for a long time.
And talking about social networks: If you know anybody, who work in the area, that you are interested in, don’t hesitate to contact them and get a feeling about what is moving out there. People in the battelfield hear the bombings before the media arrives.
So simply start making your own trendspotting brainstorm.
Filed under: industry analysis, trends
September 16, 2007 • 6:46 pm 0
Quick trendspotting
Trenspotting is a great way to get inspiration for new business ideas, but don’t spend too much time on making y0ur own research, when there are a lot of other people out there gathering information – and keeping eyes open.
Trendwatching.com collects information on trends from 8000 users. They are not necessarily professionals, but they probably got two eyes and two ears like the rest of us.
There is a lot of free material on the website, but they don’t give away everything.
September 16, 2007 • 6:39 pm 0
Inspiration for business ideas
After a quick warm up in the first couple of lectures, we are now entering the phase of creating business ideas. Our own brainstorming might lead to “the next big thing”, but why not get inspired from what others have already thought.
Springwise.com has 8000 users spread around the world to spot new business ideas, that might be The Next Big Thing. At least thats their ambition.
Feel free to copy and steal within the law and reasonable ethics 
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