Dictionary

An event, observation or wave that has the potential to change the way we think, feel, work, shop, or experience the world. Trends can pass quickly, like styles that are in one season and out the next, or they can have huge, durable impacts on how a group of people or businesses view the world, as is the case with sustainable business.

A trend that with certainty will happen and impact you. Hard trends are future conditions. Rule of thumb: ask yourself, “do I have a choice?” If the trend is hard, the answer is “no”. Of hard trends we can mention digitization, automation, monitoring and a long life. Driverless cars is a hard trend that many people today will describe as a former soft trend, which is now a hard trend – because we can begin to “see” the trend manifest around us.

A trend that is exciting, frustrating, fun, odd, hyped, irritating or will cause a stir in the duck pond. Rule of thumb: ask yourself, “do I have a choice?” If the trend is soft, the answer is “yes”. Soft trends will not necessarily happen or impact you, but represent life’s many opportunities and the diversity of the world. You should welcome soft trends; it is especially the trends that you cannot let go off, the ones that continually pop into your head, that are especially worth looking at.

An impactful trend that occurs as a combination of several trends. Megatrends can consist of both soft and hard trends, but it has that special characteristic that especially the people in power agree on its importance. Megatrends are the trends “we believe in,” and can therefore act as self-fulfilling prophecies. The spiritual revolution could be an example of an emerging megatrend. Urbanization – the tendency for people all around the world to be moving into cities – has been a megatrend for a long time. World leaders, construction companies and other beneficiaries treat urbanization as a hard trend, but in fact it is not. There are plenty of counter-trends, which means urbanization can be reversed – given that enough people agree that the best lives are to be found outside of the cities.

A counter-trend to another trend. An anti-trend to “Always Online” is “Digital Detox” (to go offline for a weekend, a week or maybe just a night).

The trendcard that slaps you across the face. When you find your specific game changer, the future all of a sudden seems all too close. As an example, the game changer of journalism is algorithms that write articles way better than human journalists, while also researching and fact-checking more thoroughly. For cab drivers, it is the self-driving car. The game changer can destroy one’s whole industry, if one does not successfully upgrade and prioritize unique human capacities.

A change or event that has a small likelihood of occurring, but has the potential to radically change the world if it does. The consequences of a wildcard are huge, uncontrollable and very rapid. For example, if science obtains proof that God exists, data collection reveals that people are totally predictable, or world leaders introduce Gross National Value-Creation as the successor to Gross Domestic Product.

The visualization of your future – oftentimes in your desired or ideal version. Being a visionary is to appreciate that things could be explained quite differently from today’s accepted wisdoms. A vision is constantly in motion. A good vision motivates you to work with what you do not know and what does not yet exist, thus preventing you from automatically jumping to familiar solutions and thoughts you have already arrived at.

Basic assumptions about how the world is interconnected. Trends challenge the status quo and hard trends always challenge the established power structures. We all live in the same reality, but some are better at reading the trends than others – because they understand the rules of the game, and therefore more quickly and easily arrive at their goals. Rule of thumb: if life feels extremely tough and unfair, and other people seem to be cheating, then it’s time to update your basic assumptions about how the world is put together.

The projection of existing trends, statistics or movements. Prognoses often start with the sentence “if this trend continues then …”, and then you extrapolate from the curve. Prognoses are often done about the weather, elections and population growth. They often make sense when it comes to technology, for example with Moore’s Law, but are frequently misused by the media: “the number of surrogate mothers is growing enormously.” That could be the case if the number rose from 8 to 64 within a year, but that does not imply that the number will rise to 4096 in another year, and 16,777,216 the year after that.

An imagination about the future that shifts your most basic assumptions. Scenarios are visions of the future that makes you think “what if?” Scenarios train the brain’s visionary capabilities. Scenarios are the leader’s non-committal playground. A kind of Swiss knowledge society, where everything is allowed and most is possible. Scenarios are often extreme and fun to work with.