Strategies for Product Foresight

After recently finishing Peter Schwartz’s classic, The Art of the Long View, this article from Core77 was particularly resonant.  Both these works reflect on the important distinction between predictions & assumptions and carefully crafted foresight.

The article deals specifically with product design while Schwartz looks at the broader strategies for society and the marketplace. With regards to product foresight, it pays to be able to differentiate between what’s hip or cool and what signifies actual change.  Kevin McCullagh writes:

The cause of analysing change in a systematic way has not been helped by the self-importance of so many forecasters. Indeed James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting and Innovation asserts that “Because of today’s exaggerated sense of uncertainty and foreboding about the future, forecasters have never been in greater demand–and have never been less credible!” Whether they be economists making predictions to three decimal places based on bogus computer models; black-clad Parisians foretelling the return of the ‘New Black’; or intrepid coolhunters reporting back from their latest Tokyo shopping expedition, they often have the whiff of snake oil.

The article goes on to expand on eight major points in successfully forecasting for a product design, which are as follows:

1. Frame the scope and focus
2. Take a long and wide view
3. Put sociology before technology
4. Get under the surface
5. Be an informed contrarian
6. Have a point of view
7. Be specific about impacts
8. Track and tack

[via Core77]