The Signals Are Talking | Hinesight....for Foresight

At Houston Foresight, we’ve announced that our Gathering next spring will be on “Scanning the Fringe .” So I’m looking for interesting work that touches on the topic, which drew me to Amy Webb’s The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream.

The book is focused on her approach to trend identification and analysis. Her scanning is aimed at identifying an emerging trend – really a big trend, or we might say macrotrend, driver, discontinuity. The idea is to pass on the identified trend to [mostly] tech clients so that they can develop a product/service/offering around it. There are many very interesting and well-told stories of how blockbusters were based around understanding a new trend [she doesn’t take credit for enabling this, but simply points out how the trend ID & analysis can work].

A quick side note: Readers of this blog might find interesting is that the scenario step in her methodology is done in order to validate trends[s] she is identifying. So, the fundamental unit of analysis in her work is trends. In our Framework Foresight method at Houston, we primarily use trends are inputs to the baseline/alternative futures).

We are in strong agreement that scanning is both a challenging and fundamentally important part of the process, as it is the foundation of the work that follows. There is no pat formula for tapping into the fringe, at least neither of us have found it yet! What I took from the book and a chat with Amy, is that we can:

vary the sources that we consult. Not just articles and blogs, but also discussion boards, social media, interviews, patents, and so on.
broaden the context of scanning beyond the specific topic, and scan the periphery of the topic.
and of course recognize the today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream (as the book title suggests)

Yep, yep and yep So, we’ll continue to probe and question how the best scanners do it, with Amy’s book a nice stop on the journey. — Andy Hines

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About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Comments

Sean Daken says

July 5, 2017 at 12:19 pm

Thanks for the resource!

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Murray M. Coffey says

July 6, 2017 at 1:12 pm

Hi Andy, Murray Coffey here. Hope you are well. Is this a book the lay person (me) will find accessible?

Reply
- Andy Hines says
  
  July 6, 2017 at 5:47 pm
  
  hi Murray, nice to hear from you! Yes, indeed, it is very well written with lots of stories to illustrate the points. Much more user-friendly than anything I’ve written 🙂
  
  andy
  
  Reply

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