I think the concept of a “trend” as something that can be predicted, created, harnessed, or exploited is dying. So to me, setting out rules on watching trends is like setting out rules for tracking the stars’ “orbits” around the Earth. Interesting, but flawed.

One pattern that I do see merits an open conversation is just that: open conversations. We are entering an era of cheap, global communications for everyone: the Internet, citizen journalism and blogging, micro markets, self-publishing, WiFi and VOIP. We now have the tools and access to talk about what is important (or trivial), and what it means to be alive, with billions of strangers. No one knows what will come of that.

I think the flow is reversing. The old trend watchers should consider giving up on guessing and predicting, prepare to be on the receiving end of things for a bit, and see if and how their skills at pattern recognition and aggregation are relevant in the “big talk.”

Oh yea, and ditch the rules.
Richard

…but, you knew that was coming, there are some things I might add or counter or whatever you’d like to call it today.

When it comes to “cool” if you have to ask you’ll never know.

Gladwell is a fantastic example but he isn’t unique, just smart and famous. The oracle isn’t dead. Just lost in a sea of false prophets. Try Bruce Mau, Gore Vidal, Douglas Coupland, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Rem Koolhaas, these are visionaries and far from a complete list. Ask your trend watcher how many of them they have heard of. Not what they know about them just if the names are familiar.

Tom Wolfe is a boomer relic and journalists make lousy trend watchers anyway.

The best answer your “cool hunter” could give you when you ask “why” is “I don’t know.”

Cool is an existential “is”. It’s like talent, you either get it or you don’t. If you suspect they are ignoring part of the equation you probably don’t need them anyway. You are seeing more of the big picture than they are.

Trends can not be predicted. They can only be observed, created and guessed at. Someone who is worth the money is someone sensitive enough to the trends that they get there without thinking about it.

That’s Tipping Point and Blink 101. It’s also not Gladwell’s creation it’s his articulation of a societal bell curve. Harness the 2%, influence the early adopters and the rest will follow… probably. Innovator, early adopter, laggard, they all flow in and out and the titles are not universal or static.

In short, there are no rules and defining them is asking for someone “cool” to come along and break them.

Grant McCracken directs his weighty thinking to Trend Watching and defines 10 rules for trend watching…. And we now have an increasingly crowded marketplace of suppliers.In these early days, there are many models and extravagantly different standards.

Grant McCracken directs his weighty thinking to Trend Watching and defines 10 rules for trend watching…. And we now have an increasingly crowded marketplace of suppliers.In these early days, there are many models and extravagantly different standards.

Grant McCracken directs his weighty thinking to Trend Watching and defines 10 rules for trend watching…. And we now have an increasingly crowded marketplace of suppliers.In these early days, there are many models and extravagantly different standards.

Grant McCracken has written a splendid post with rules for trend-watching. His number 9 rule is this: The trend team should be making predictions. The people in the capital markets routinely go back and try to determine where they

in my line of work, hot ideas are zero-sum because our investable funds are at any time a given sum. so if we invest in my can’t-lose schemes, yours may unfunded. hence, lots of brawling as to just why i think my scheme is a money-maker.

but isn’t that the case every time a firm decides to commit capital to an investable idea?

don’t the clients of trend-hustlers expect more than someone with a golden gut saying “trust me, this will be hot”?

trendspotting, as i understand it, has less of an either-or quality. they might all be correct or none might be correct. but rarely does one hot new trend being correct imply that another hot new trend is wrong (or at least require it be rejected).