Wise Elephant: Analysis, Strategy, and Loose Ends » Blog Archive » Analyzing Trends: The Pendulum

Trends swing like a pendulum, creating waves of fashion, art, culture, business, you name it…there is a cycle to trends (if not everything). In order to find, uncover and act on burgeoning innovations I visualize this cycle (as the following slides will display) and play with this visualization as a “game.” You can use almost any trend, idea, history, business for this game and see what you uncover. Let’s set-up the game-board:Imagine a pendulum that has an ink-pen at its tip. As it swings, as seen from a frontal-view, the pendulum draws a line on the ground.This pendulum doesn’t swing in a vacuum. It’s path is pulled by two very strong and opposite forces: the past and the future.The past pulls on the pendulum, informing trends with all that has happened before, seeking to bring us back to the way things were. The future, which has a stronger pull towards innovation, drives us forward into the new, the cool, the hip, and the what’s next.The magnet of the future therefore grinds forwar...