Trend Cards on Futures Platform and How to Use Them
Save time on horizon scanning and explore a rich library of trend analyses by leading futurists
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Futures Platform’s foresight database hosts more than 1500 trend cards and scenarios spanning across a broad range of industries and geographies. Curated by our team of futurists, each trend card features compact, easy-to-digest analyses on future changes, and many of the cards also feature two scenario descriptions that explore alternative future development paths for the trend.
The structure of Futures Platform’s trend cards has been carefully designed to streamline horizon scanning activities and enhance future awareness among organisations. In addition to significantly speeding up research and trend scouting processes, the trend cards also help make foresight easy and accessible for organisations that don’t have dedicated foresight teams.
In this article, we’ll go through what a Futures Platform trend card typically contains and how they assist our users with their foresight work.
Each trend card typically contains:
Title
Theme Tags
Summary & Video
Background
Impact Assessment
Related phenomena
Additional information
Latest News
1. TITLE
Naturally, each trend card begins with a title that explains the core of the phenomenon in a few words. They’re usually general and straightforward, such as On-Demand Services and 3D-Printed Food.
Some titles can be industry- or region-specific, like Robotics in Healthcare or Digital Divide in Latin America. In the case of wild cards, the title can also be a mini-sentence or a phrase that describes a potential future state. For example, the wild card titled Knowledge Behind Paywall explores a future where there are no freely available knowledge resources online.
2. THEME TAGS
Along with the title, the theme tags help users understand the scope of the trend at a glance. Futures Platform’s trend database is categorised into 30 themes, covering domains such as digitalisation, business, values and ethics, public governance, and climate change. Each trend card has one to three tags, representing its primary areas of impact.
As seen from the example above, the trend Secondhand Market is tagged with Services, Business and Sustainability & Recycling categories.
3. TYPE
Every card on Futures Platform’s foresight database is assigned a type according to its anticipated future development path. We categorise future changes into four types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal.
Strengthening phenomena are those that are gathering momentum and becoming increasingly more influential. Most of their change potential is still ahead, meaning that they’re not going away anytime soon. This category commonly includes trends and megatrends, such as Single Households and Virtual Influencers.
Weakening phenomena are those that have already reached their peak of influence. Most of their change potential has already occurred, and they’re no longer as dominant or impactful as they once were. Some examples of weakening phenomena are Traditional TV Broadcasts, Offshoring, and Retail in Brick and Mortar Stores.
Wild cards are low probability, high impact change possibilities. They can either be single events like a solar storm, or they can be bold, speculative future projections of current trends.
Weak signals are the first emerging signs of a potential change or phenomenon. They’re still a long way from reaching the mainstream, and it is not yet clear whether they will evolve into trends or disappear without any significant impact.
4. TIMING
Except for weak signals, all trends on our foresight database have an expert-assessed timeframe within which the phenomenon is anticipated to either accelerate or decline. Our team uses S-Curve Analysis and Trend Impact Analysis to reason the probable time range. Each card also includes an additional crowdsourced timestamp, which is the median average based on the assessment of all Futures Platform users.
We don’t specify timeframes for weak signals because they’re mere observations of a potential change that’s just beginning to form, and there’s not enough data to assess their possible development paths at the given time yet.
5. SUMMARY & VIDEO
As the name suggests, the summary section is a synopsis of the key points discussed in the trend card. It explains the core of the trend, its current situation, and its most likely future development path and impacts in one paragraph.
Following the summary, there's a video by an external party to supplement our analysis and provide an additional viewpoint. The featured videos are often by neutral and trusted sources, such as news outlets or research organisations. Depending on the trend, some cards may also include videos by corporations that demonstrate their products, research or expertise on the topic.
6. BACKGROUND
The background section of the trend card serves to convey an overall understanding of the phenomenon. It outlines the trend’s history and relevance, its current state, and prominent case examples. As our team of futurists continuously monitor changes, the background sections of trend cards are updated frequently to cover the latest developments in the field.
At the end of this section, there’s also a Main Actors part that lists the key players pushing the trend forward. These can be companies, countries, or groups of people – such as Gen Z consumers or gig employees.
7. IMPACT ASSESSMENT
This is the most extensive section of the trend card and contains multiple subsections. It begins with a list of Main Drivers, which are the key driving forces behind the trend as identified by our futurists. These drivers are also the building blocks of the scenarios presented in the subsequent section.
Alongside Main Drivers, there’s also an Other Drivers list featuring other influential factors shaping the trend’s future.
We make this distinction between the two sets of drivers to provide transparency into our scenario-building process. Since there are multiple variables at play behind any given phenomenon, it’s always possible to arrive at different future scenarios by analysing different sets of drivers and how they may interact with each other. Hence, the Main Drivers section helps readers understand the scope and focus of our scenarios, while also inviting them to explore different scenarios that may not be covered by our analysis.
Next up in the Impact Assessment section are scenarios. Each card contains two in-depth scenario narratives that reflect our futurists’ assessment of the two likeliest directions the given trend may take in the future. Each scenario describes one potential future state of the trend and its potential impacts from a practical perspective, featuring insights that can be immediately put to use in various processes such as strategy testing, innovation, or risk identification.
Both scenario descriptions are followed up by a development path section, which lists three to four steps and timelines that could plausibly happen to move us closer to the given scenario. The purpose of this section is to give readers a list of signs and indicators to look out for when monitoring the future development of the trend.
There are also two additional scenario titles at the end of this section, representing other possible but less likely trend development directions.
8. RELATED PHENOMENA
The related phenomena section links to 3-5 other trend cards from Futures Platform’s foresight database to map the interconnections between different trends and encourage further exploration.
9. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This section lists additional sources of information for those who want to dig deeper and read different perspectives on the given trend. The featured sources can include statistics, news articles, product releases, or opinion pieces.
10. LATEST NEWS
Last but not least, all trend cards also have an AI-generated newsfeed that updates daily, which helps our users stay ahead of the curve and identify impactful change signals early on. The news bots roam 500+ trusted news sources from around the world, following advanced search queries with related keywords. The list of trusted news sources are handpicked by our team of futurists to ensure the quality and reliability of the featured information, and the list keeps on growing as we identify new sources.
Get free access to 1500+ trend cards and scenarios on Futures Platform today and discover insights from leading futurists on the most important trends affecting your industry.
To stay ahead, organisations must widen their lens, exploring not just their own industry but what’s happening on the edges.