Non-Obvious 2019- How To Predict Trends and Win The Future
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The need for design expertise continues to grow, and this trend is still an important one for any type of organization. In addition, design thinking has exploded as a category of learning and insights. The only nuance here is that the “on-demand” need for design services that this trend predicted has not taken off in the same way.
2014 Economics & Entrepreneurship Trends
What’s the Trend?
More businesses and retailers use subscriptions to sell recurring services or products to customers instead of focusing on the one-time sale.
Trend Longevity Rating B-
More industries and brands turn to the lessons of subscription commerce, but as I wrote about in this latest trend report – the big shift towards a subscription based business model was too reactionary for some businesses that are now backing away from the model to find something that works better for their situation.
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What’s the Trend?
As the barriers to starting a new business begin to disappear, incentives and tools mean anyone with an idea can launch a startup knowing that the costs and risks of failure are not as high as they once were.
Trend Longevity Rating A
The shift in many industries from full-time employee to entrepreneur continues to take shape as top professionals continue to branch out on their own. In addition, it is a global priority among national governments to make the process of entrepreneurship faster and easier because there is widespread understanding that entrepreneurs drive economies forward.
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What’s the Trend?
New business models and tools allow consumers and brands to tap the power of sharing and collaborative consumption to find new ways to buy, sell and consume products and services.
Trend Longevity Rating A
While growing last year, the shared or collaborative economy has become one of the more obvious trends anyone could point to today, a symbol of its continued rapid acceleration. While it may be “obvious” now, the impact of it and just how much attention brands are paying to the space justifies its continued ranking among the top trends for its longevity over the years.
The 2015 Non-Obvious Trend Report Overview
Original Publication Date: March 1, 2015
Original Format: Hardcover + eBook
Full Book: www.nonobviousbook.com/2015
THE BACKSTORY
After four years of growing an audience while also solely publishing the Trend Report in digital format, in 2015 I decided to expand. I spent most of the previous year writing about my technique for how I had learned to curate ideas and name trends. I created a “formula” for how anyone could learn to do the same thing, and I published a brand new list of 15 trends as usual. The result was Non-Obvious released as a full length hardcover book for the first time.
The book hit #1 in the entire business category on Amazon and made it up to #27 in ALL Kindle books within 48 hours. The popularity of the book drove it to make the Wall Street Journal Best Seller list the week it launched, but it also introduced the idea of trend curation to a much wider audience. Over the course of the next year, the book was contracted for six translated editions and my speaking and workshops continued – with more global invitations.
RETROSPECTIVE: HOW ACCURATE WAS THIS REPORT?
The trends that year spotlighted culture in a way that many people started talking about – from Everyday Stardom describing how consumer expectation was rising to Selfie Confidence describing the role social media plays in building self-esteem. Other trends included Small Data – which offered a counter idea to the growing discussions of “big data” and media trends such as Experimedia or Glanceable Content to describe our shifting attention spans.
2015 Culture & Consumer Behavior Trends
What’s the Trend?
The growth of personalization leads more consumers to expect everyday interactions to be transformed into “celebrity experiences” with them as the stars of the show.
Trend Longevity Rating A
As the opportunities for companies to use big data to personalize experiences for customers continue to grow, this expectation from consumers to be treated like superstars has only continued to grow and is even more of a necessity for brands today than it was when this trend was first introduced.
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What’s the Trend?
The growing ability to share a carefully crafted online persona allows more people to use social content such as selfies as a way to build their own self confidence.
Trend Longevity Rating B+
Selfies are a misunderstood medium. They were when this trend was first written, and perhaps are even more so today … yet this trend took the optimistic view that those selfies were an important part of how kids build self-esteem today and that remains true two years later, even as self expression has broadened to include more video and broaden beyond just selfies.
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What’s the Trend?
Meditation, yoga and quiet contemplation become powerful tools for individuals and organizations to improve performance, health and motivation.
Trend Longevity Rating A
Not only is this trend back as one of my featured trends in 2017, but it has now come to describe entire industries, new ways of thinking for organizations and a powerful new movement towards improving ourselves at home and at work.
2015 Marketing & Social Media Trends
What’s the Trend?
Companies increasingly put purpose at the center of their businesses to show a deeper commitment to doing good that goes beyond just donating money or getting positive PR.
Trend Longevity Rating A
Brands continue to focus on purpose and big initiatives to demonstrate a commitment to the environment, social issues, and ethical business practices. Research continually shows that these commitments matter to customers, employees and even investors – companies will continue to focus on this.
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What’s the Trend?
Brands increasingly invest in high-touch in-store experiences as a way to build brand affinity and educate customers, while seamlessly integrating with their online channels to complete actual purchases and fulfill orders.
Trend Longevity Rating A-
The original inspiration for this trend was the rapid growth of “showcase stores” that were being used by brands to offer experiences to consumers with all of the sales made and fulfilled online. Over the years since this trend was first introduced, Louis Vuitton has launched a concept store, Amazon launched a retail bookstore, and there have been plenty of others. The one shift has been that more of these are blending the experiential side with actually selling products like a traditional retail store would.
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What’s the Trend?
As marketing shifts away from pure promotion, leaders and organizations abandon traditional silos, embrace content marketing and invest in the customer experience.
Trend Longevity Rating B+
As content marketing became a greater part of the marketing mix, there were many people running away from describing what they did as “marketing” anymore. This reluctance has equalized somewhat, but the shift behind it away from promotional marketing and toward being useful, providing ultility and answering questions continues to grow.
2015 Media & Entertainment Trends
What’s the Trend?
Our shrinking attention spans and the explosion of all forms of content online lead creators to optimize content for rapid consumption at a glance.
Trend Longevity Rating A
As much as I would love to say this trend disappeared as people started engaging with content longer (see 2017’s Deep Diving trend), this behavior remains true and much of daily or hourly content does need to be glanceable still in order to receive any sort of attention.
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What’s the Trend?
As tracking technology becomes more sophisticated, media, advertising and immersive
experiences like gaming and learning are increasingly tailored to match consumer moods.
Trend Longevity Rating B
Automated sentiment filters and new technologies like eye tracking and vocal analysis are letting consumers have even bigger expectations about how technology will cater to them. That said, this trend always described something that was only really relevant in some situations and therefore not as broad or wide-ranging as many of the other trends.
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What’s the Trend?
Content creators use social experiments and real life interactions to study human behavior in unique new ways to ultimately build more realistic and entertaining narratives.
Trend Longevity Rating B
For a time it seemed that media featuring social experiments was a hot new practice likely to continue for a long time. Over the past few years, though, this trend has slowed down significantly and even though there are still some examples of this happening, it is not at the volumes it once was.
2015 Technology & Design Trends
What’s the Trend?
As people seek out more personal and human experiences, brands and creators intentionally focus on using personality, quirkiness and intentional imperfections to be more human and desirable.
Trend Longevity Rating A
One of my favorite trends for what it described when it was first curated, this trend was partially brought back in this year’s trend report along with Lovable Imperfection from 2014. The idea that brands and leaders are showing vulnerability and building trust through their willingness to share flaws is an idea that continues to have resonance.
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What’s the Trend?
A growing concern for privacy coupled with elevated expectations technology’s role in our lives leads to more intuitive products, services and features to help us live better, safer, and more efficient lives.
Trend Longevity Rating A
The need for the type of proactive protection that this trend continues to grow each day, and you can see this trend’s influence in later predictions from this year’s report in particular – such as Robot Renaissance and Self Aware Data. Both trends build upon this one in a way that makes the influence of Predictive Protection as a trend idea continually valuable.
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What’s the Trend?
Greater understanding of the behavioral science behind habit formation leads to more designers and engineers intentionally creating addictive experiences that capture consumers’ time, money and loyalty.
Trend Longevity Rating A
If you consider the growth of everything from packaged foods to fantasy sports, this trend is still central to how new experiences are conceived and the way that experiences can now be engineered to be irresistible whether they are good for us or not.
2015 Economics & Entrepreneurship Trends
What’s the Trend?
As consumers increasingly collect their own data from online activities brand-owned big data becomes less valuable than small data.
Trend Longevity Rating A
Since the publication of this trend, a best-selling book from Martin Lindstrom of the same title and growing sophistication of technology to personalize experiences has led this trend to be even more relevant today than when it was first curated – so much so that it was one that I narrowly decided against bringing back as part of the 2017 report.
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What’s the Trend?
Creators and makers use new models for distribution to disrupt the usual channels, cut out middlemen, and build more direct connections with fans and buyers.
Trend Longevity Rating A
With the news that Amazon may be considering starting a delivery service of its own, Uber is delivering food and the dramatic rise in products being delivered directly without the traditional middleman (such as mattresses), this trend has exploded in recent years and is likely to impact even more industries across 2017.
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What’s the Trend?
As new payment models, products and experiences become available in bite-sized portions, multiple industries will experiment with new micro-sized forms of pricing and payments.
Trend Longevity Rating B
While there is nothing in this trend that is inherently incorrect or unlikely to continue, it just doesn’t have the same type of acceleration behind it as many of the other top rated trends and for that reason I have to rate it lower than the others from this year’s report.
The 2016 Non-Obvious Trend Report Overview
Original Publication Date: January 25, 2016
Original Format: Hardcover + eBook
Full Book: www.nonobviousbook.com/2016
2016 Culture & Consumer Behavior Trends
THE BACKSTORY
Given the success of the first year that Non-Obvious was available in print (in 2015), this sixth edition of the report had high expectations. For this edition, I decided to publish the book in softcover to make it easier to read (and available at a lower price). Looking backward over the previous trend predictions each year, I also realized that many past predictions still had a lot of relevance for business.
In response, this was the first year I decided to publish ten NEW trends and include five PAST trends in the report (one per category). The past trends would include all new examples as well as my thoughts on what had changed about that trend since it was originally curated and why it deserved to be brought back. The other thing this report featured was an in-depth analysis of the previous year’s trends (2015) and how they had evolved over the past year.
RETROSPECTIVE: HOW ACCURATE WAS THIS REPORT?
Looking back at the previous year is the shortest time frame of all the past trend reports, and so the vast majority of trends are still immediately applicable, current and mostly receive the highest possible rating.
2016 Culture & Consumer Behavior Trends
What’s the Trend?
Despite fears that the e-commerce might kill impulse buying, the growing integration of mobile devices into the shopping experience is opening new possibilities for real time marketing to entice consumers to make split second emotional buying decisions once again.
Trend Longevity Rating A
Over the past year ecommerce retailers have gotten even more adept at encouraging impulse purchases through their interfaces, and one button ordering is growing in availability. Throughout this year, it is likely more and more retailers will continually add more features designed to encourage impulse buying.
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What’s the Trend?
As more products become Internet-enabled and digitally remastered, consumers start selectively rejecting these supposedly improved products and services – opting to strategically downgrade to simpler, cheaper and sometimes more functional versions instead.
Trend Longevity Rating A
A sense of nostalgia remains a high influencing factor for this trend as “retro”products continue to be launched successfully. As newer versions of products and services continue to feel overcomplicated, people will continue to “hack” their own ways to strategically downgrade when it suits their own purposes.
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What’s the Trend?
After years of being sold anti-aging solutions – a generation of newly aging adults are embracing the upside of getting older and finding cause for optimism in the growing opportunities, financial freedom, respect and time that their “third lifetime” can offer.
Trend Longevity Rating B+
The sense of optimism about what will be achievable in life has remained for the older population but over the past year it was tempered by increasing fears about the macro future of things like the environment, politics, the economy and security. These big issues are casting a distant but significant cloud over the optimism that older people otherwise feel.
2016 Marketing & Social Media Trends
What’s the Trend?
Brands used to promoting their prod
ucts or services to other businesses embrace their humanity, take inspiration from other sectors and think more broadly about effectively marketing to decision makers as people first, and buyers second.