Five Strategies for Spotting Trends First - Innovationedge

To respond to an ever-increasing degree of technological, social, and economic change, managers must improve their trend-watching capabilities. This can lead to better responsivemoves and can enable and empower them to pounce on emerging opportunities. Five strategies can guide managers: (1) audit their information diet to monitor how much time they spend on substantive versus trivial items, (2) develop new antenna by becoming well informed about a broad range of topics and by actively engaging with customers, suppliers, and experts, (3) use social media as an early warning system to identify events likely to move the market, (4) recalibrate their forecasting skills by thinking in terms of probabilities and by being alert to personal bias, and (5) take action on trends by altering processes or changing business models.