What criteria should you apply when you're feeling for a future trend? Radar XYZ give you eight crucial measures
We enjoy the trend-watching and futures work of RadarXYZ, which we’ve profiled on these pages before. This tweet thread on part of their futures method felt very useful. Test it out on your own feel for trends that are emerging, in your field.
How do we know if a trend is big or relevant enough to investigate?
Part of that answer is RADAR's Future Criteria (see above).
On a scale of 8 different axes, we evaluate each potential trend constellation against this rubric to understand if its scope, scale, and context has the depth required to signify true emergence and traction. They include:
Cross-polination: A measure of relevance across multiple industries and cultural categories.
Global in scope: A measure of locational breadth, even if it’s showing up in different ways in different places.
Passion & maximalism: A measure of belief, identifying populations who ride or die for these ideas and movements.
Speed of momentum: A measure of adoption, the distance something has to a tipping point for the masses.
Distance to future: A measure of time, how close a trend is to mainstream adoption.
Problem solving: A measure of utility, the functional potential a movement has to create solutions in the world.
Presence of blockers: A measure of friction, scanning for barriers vs. clear paths to adoption.
Better futures: A measure of value something could have to the world. This one, of course, is particularly important to RADAR – and is something our community takes very seriously, taking a decentralized approach to maximize diversity, inclusivity, and consideration.
And that’s Futures Criteria – a lens on how we begin to separate signal from noise in the Research phase of a cycle.