Emerging trends

Vinay Dixit from GM had recently asked this question on LinkedIn, and got responses that included the following interesting ones apart from the usual suspects:

1. Corporates exploiting social networks to a greater extent
2. Greater environmental consciousness and related opportunities like carbon trading
3. Re-birth of the family unit
4. Increasing co-creation of brand value by engaging consumers
5. Standardised global accounting standards
6. Expanded awareness horizons - global concerns competing with local / national issues
7. Collective intelligence e.g. blogs, wikipedia
8. Shorter product life cycles
9. Culture as a leveler over economics

The ones that i contributed were:

1. ‘Security’ will emerge as a strong human need – physical, psychological, emotional and social
2. Environmental consciousness amongst consumers will rise and this will benefit brands that advocate the cause
3. Education will emerge as a new big opportunity especially in countries like India and private businesses will join governments in driving this.
4. Simplicity and ease of use in case of technology products will become increasingly important as technology gets more complex.