Daily Inspiration: “Don’t just stay one step ahead – stay one trend ahead!”

25 years ago, I would speak of 5, 10, 15 or 20 year trends. Today? My time frame keeps on shrinking – 5 years, 2, 1 …. 6 months. NOW!

In my keynotes, I often talk about how the rate of change — whether with business models, product life cycles, the rapid emergence of new competitors, business model disruption, skills and knowledge and more! — is speeding up. It’s the era of acceleration, and organizations need to figure out how to fire up their innovation engines to warp speed to keep up.

With that, the entire process of watching, understanding and interpreting the trends that might impact you is changing at a furious pace.

Take the concept of bio-printing of human body parts for use in surgeries. Two years ago, I spoke at one event about this trend as some sort of science-fiction like idea. Last December, I worked it into one of the key trends to watch in my ’19 Trends for 2019’. Last month, an Israeli organization announced significant advances in this particular aspect of science. It’s gone from science fiction to prototyping to reality – just like that.

This reality makes the process of planning for the future more difficult than ever before – and so you don’t just need to watch for the next trend – but the trend after that!

Human body parts? Last week I was the opening keynote speaker for the American Association of Orthopaedic Executives. Obviously, 3D printing of human body parts as a trend was in my slide deck. Literally 10 minutes before I went on stage, I saw something in my Twitter feed that told the story of the 3d printing of a *robotic enhanced* 3D arm. The next trend after the current trend, unfolding in real time.

An instant modification to my slide deck, and I was now speaking one trend ahead of the one trend ahead of one trend I was speaking about!

Stay one trend ahead. Your future depends on it!