Viewing the Crystalball – Forseeing Trends

To obtain sight without time, to see into the past and the future. If only all of us could look into the future. If only. Then, all our fantasies can come true: we’ll be able to know which stocks will do well but are selling for really cheaply in our present; which property is hot in the future so that we could start investing in real estate; who will be the next Bill Gates so you could go check out which circles he/she is running around in present and make sure to rub shoulders with them. And many, many more. (Of course, for those nerds or geeks out there, that’s assuming that it’s a self-consistent time loop. And not gazing out into another timeline altogether and thus getting the future of your own timeline wrong.)

But even if we mere mortals can’t do so, I say, we should try! Yes, attempts may be futile at times (no pun intended), but the potential yield could be far greater than you can imagine – like say reaping you a cool $20 million overnight. What I’m referring to is the special skill of foresight. The ability to predict waves and trends and prepare for them. One of these could be blogging. Blogging got on a slow start many years back but never really took off until a few years later. Now, it’s an exploding phenomenon that even corporations are making use of blogs as marketing tools (Check out famous blogs like Google Blog and Yahoo! Search Blog.)

Elaine Ng (elaine.ng@newstoday.com.sg) writes in Today on Oct 11th 2005 in an article titled: It’s cheap and softens your company’s image, too. But how long will the trend last? (Apologies, the article isn’t available online.)

An excerpt:

“Besides, a corporate blog acts as a good “personality and face” for the company. It provides a space to get information out to customers and to develop better relationships with them.”

Thus why we see so many blogs being created every single minute. What if you had forseen the trend earlier? You would have had more time to create and sustain a better and more compelling blog that would hopefully add value to your company. (Fine, this isn’t really a good example of how forseeing a trend is useful, but let’s move on.)

Let’s take another trend/wave for example, portable videos. Vlogs (VideoBlogs) have a small tight community of loyal followers but due to the lack of ability of technology to keep up with the high resolutions wanted, fast upload and download time per video, vloggers still remain a small number. But perhaps Apple is seeing this as the next big thing and will be preparing to offer some easy way to videoblog. The latest iPod allows you to buy episodes of TV series at a good rate and this is one way to start people off to get them more comfortable with watching videos on small screens and perhaps in that fashion, also get them to subconsciously fantasize being on the small screen as well (ego boost, akin to 15 minutes of fame). So maybe this is the next big thing, but if it is, it will do companies good to start thinking of how they can potentially capitalize on this. By say creating short catchy advertisements optimized for viewing on small screens and for short attention spans. Always thinking along what might happen in the future and relating that to what one can do now to be in the forefront in that future should do a company good. Aim to stay ahead, to be ahead.

Carat’s CEO, David Verklin says: If you’re on the wrong train, every stop is the wrong stop. Lesson to be learnt: predict the arrival time of the right train, hop onto it, hang on and keep up with the bends of the route (change with the market), and eventually, you will get to your destination.