External impulses provide the necessary inspiration for considerably boosting the chances of generating both incremental and disruptive ideas. With a regular trend update, such as in the form of a newsletter, you will inspire your colleagues and motivate them to work with trends and innovations.
The Trendmanager gives you access to over 30,000 global and cross-industry micro-trends that help you to prepare your internal trend update. We publish new content for you every day in our tools and offer you up to 250 new innovations every month in the shape of micro-trends.
Choose the topic
Start by choosing the topic for your trend update:
- Industry focus: Which current innovations are influencing your industry?
- Macro-trend focus: Which current innovations are there regarding macro-trends, which you believe to be relevant for your company or business area? (Top tip: With the “Trend Radar” method, you will identify which overlying macro-trends are relevant for you.)
- Inspiration across the board: Which current innovations are surprising or confusing? What is different to what we already know? What implications can be derived?
Identify the trends
When looking for micro-trends for your trend update, you have a variety of possibilities for your chosen topic.
You can take an explorative approach to the search. To do so, scroll through the recently published micro-trends. Whenever a micro-trend captures your interest, you can add it to your Research/Workspace via the plus symbol. You can also collect micro-trends in your Research/Workspace throughout the month and refine the selection for your trend update. You can limit the search results for explorative searches too, in order to increase the relevance of the displayed micro-trends. However, we recommend not limiting the search too much when using the explorative approach. For the subject you are working on, it may be a good idea to set a filter for the innovation type.
If you have chosen a topic-based setting, such as an industry or a macro-trend, for your trend update, you can use specific, relevant filters for the search. If you are looking for micro-trends that are influencing your industry, set the industry filter. It is always worth taking a look at what innovations are emerging in related industries, as new innovations often appear along the boundaries between different industries.
Create a trend update
To collect micro-trends for a trend update, you can set up a Workspace in the Trendmanager.
Choose the best format for your trend update. You can export the selected micro-trends as a PowerPoint or PDF and make them available to your colleagues as a file. Alternatively, you could use a newsletter tool or create an easy-to-edit e-mail template.
You can motivate your colleagues to work on the content with just a few quick questions: What is different from normal here? Why does it make me think? How can this micro-trend be adapted to our own business area?
Monthly trend update at Wilo
As Head of Innovation Management, Sven Grave is responsible for trends at Wilo. In an interview, he explained to us how the monthly trend update has become an important tool for an active innovation culture at Wilo and how he makes use of the micro-trends from the Trendexplorer (the Trendexplorer and Trendmanager access the same TRENDONE pool of micro-trends).
What role does trend research play in your company?
Wilo is a future-oriented company so trend research plays an extremely important role for us. Our company strategy is geared towards six mega-trends. These are globalisation, urbanisation, water shortage, energy shortage, climate change and digital transformation. We track these trends very closely because they will have a long-term effect on the world and therefore also on our company and business activities.
You are responsible for Innovation Management.
In what way does the Trendexplorer help you in your work?
The Trendexplorer has become an established tool in our innovation management toolbox.
For example, we publish a monthly trend update on our innovation platform. Our
aim is for the update to inspire all the staff and encourage them to think
about the trends and the topics they cover.
The Trendexplorer is the basis of the trend update. We use it to look for micro-trends that are relevant to Wilo and then create the trend update. Thanks to the compact format of the trends in the Trendexplorer, including a photo and link, it is not difficult to create a trend update and there is always great interest in our trend updates. Usually, the updates are read by 200 to 300 colleagues on the same day that they are released.
And what happens next? Can you give us an example?
A good example is the impenetrable cat food packaging from Dreamies. After we included this trend in our trend update, many colleagues asked us about it – material engineers, product managers, right though to our reception staff. They had all read the update, discovered the trend and formed their own ideas on it. “What kind of material did they use? What could an impenetrable Wilo pack look like? How can the material be recycled?”. That was a great example for the vibrant innovation culture at Wilo. Innovation doesn’t just emerge in small groups, but is lived and felt throughout the entire company.