Trendwatching - a new trend?

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked at LIN is about leisure trends - and the answer to that question would be huge and always changing. So this week I attended a  webinar on how to be a trendwatcher, sponsored by ACE Communities in Alberta.

The webinar addressesd:

• The “trendwatching trend” and its importance 
• Knowledge of specific trends at local, provincial and global levels
• Strategies for becoming a trendwatcher
• Community leadership required for responding to trends

There is an increasing need for all of us to watch for and identify trends because we live in an era of unprecedented change. We don't have to always look for the big earthshaking trends...we can also look for "weak signals" - emerging ideas, discoveries and innovations which have the potential to impact locally in the next 3-5 years.

Every product or service has a life-expectancy,  so we simply can't keep doing the same things, running the same programs or offering the same products without taking a look at the changes around us and what the impact might be. When decline in demand is anticipated, there are a couple of ways to respond. W can "extend the sunset" by adding value to the existing product, or we can concentrate on developing new services to meet changing demands.

This quote from the webinar seems particularly apt: "The future is already here, it's just unequally distributed" (William Gibson).


How could LIN help in identifying trends? Could we all become trendwatchers, with LIN as the catalyst - a repository for the "weak signals" that, if they are identified in multiple locations, could become the trends? Send me your thoughts and help shape a new initiative for LIN.

For more about trendwatching:

The Foresight Blog from Rethink
Handout from the Trendwatching webinar
Recent article in Municipal World



Thanks to Brenda Herchmer, ACE Communities, for sharing this with us.