Hard trends can provide you significant understanding into what the future holds. Its critical that you learn how to see hard trends. They are going to happen. Successful entrepreneurs leverage hard trends to transform their customer’s lives.
You might want to grab his books if you want more great insights on how to understand hard trends and soft trends. I’m always reviewing them for ideas and strategies. You might enjoy reading Improve Planning By Separating Hard Trends From Soft Trends by Daniel Burrus
I’ve been leveraging hard trends to grow my clients’ businesses for over 20 years. I learned about these different types of trends from Dan many year ago when he spoke before my organization at SARCOM.
Daniel Burrus’ new book The Anticipatory Organization Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage is going to provide you with the tools you need to better understand hard and soft trends. Learning how to recognize and leverage hard trends is critical to your success.
Lets’ look at the hard trend of demographics. What is it and how do you use it to find other opportunities to grow a more successful and profitable business? Let me explain using one demographic trend involving millennials. Dan shares several ideas on baby boomers in his books so I thought I’d go a different direction.
Millennials are digital natives. This means they are very comfortable dealing with tremendous changes in their mobile technologies. Millennials are changing how they buy products and services. Are you up for the challenge? Are you ready to transform your relationship with this growing economic powerhouse?
Millennials view their mobile devices is differently than many of their older peers. For millennials, It’s the communication center for their lives. They continue using their mobile devices do many more activities. Banking, shopping, and entertainment are several ways millennials are leveraging their devices to get more done.
Are you using shared technologies to keep your technology expenses in line? Social media platforms can provide scalable low-cost ways of leveraging technologies to grow your business. Is your business leveraging the fact that millennials are very digital savvy?
However, they are not going to get any younger. This is a hard trend! Their demands are going to continue to change and evolve.
What happens as they get older and their needs evolve? What could you offer that would help them do the things that occur in this aging population. How can we use technology to help transform our customers and clients lives?
Many millennials will be responsible for taking care of their aging parents. The millennial generation is going to be caregivers for both their parents and their children. In many cases, both and. They still want some time for themselves and their key relationships. This is a big opportunity for your business!
How do you apply hard trends to help you build a more profitable business? How do you take these trends to begin crafting your future business strategies based on hard and soft trends? I think you’ll find the possibilities fascinating and rewarding.
Next week we will talk about how you might apply hard trends to create transformational business models.
See you next week.