Author John Naisbitt earned himself a wing in the Futurists Hall of Fame with the publication of Megatrends a little over 30 years ago. A number of his predictions proved remarkably prescient, as I recounted last week.
But that was then. What about now? Let’s look at seven major trends shaping our own era.
Trend 1: We’re witnessing the death of expertise. A generation ago, a nation huddled each evening to hear Walter Cronkite and a few other national figures tell us how it is. We trusted expertise then. Today we trust expertise far less. We assess an item’s quality based on the starred reviews of 10,000 people, not by what some critic decrees. Even if an elitist Simon Cowell says with profound gravity that something stinks, the people get the last word: Our phone calls and texts will decide the matter, not Cowell. [For more on this uber-democratic phenomenon, read Fareed Zakaria’s 2003 book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, especially his remarkable chapter on “The Death of Authority.”]
Trend 2: We’re moving from great monologues to great conversations. We used to read columnists in the local paper, not because they were interesting, but because they had a column and we didn’t. The new reality, in which anyone has a chance to gain her own following through new media, means that everyone is futilely chasing an ever-shrinking share of a fragmented and self-interested audience.
The future will belong less to those who dominate the spotlight than to those who can generously bring others onto the stage. Success will increasingly require engaging others in great conversations rather than trying to be the center of their attention.
Blowhards and exhibitionists will come and go. But the real winners will be persons and brands and organizations who can convene forums where everyone gets a chance to share and exchange ideas. Yes, “none of us is as smart as all of us”—and the smartest of us will find new ways to capitalize on this.
Trend 3: If an idea is important but not interesting, it will vanish. It will be years before any factor supplants eyeballs, engagement and virality as the primary gauges of a message’s effectiveness. Other factors such as credibility and trust are important but secondary.
Twenty years ago, no one knew or cared how many people read a particular article in a publication. Now, stats for page views and social-media shares for almost any article are all too visible. It means that effectiveness (and advertising potential) will be judged first and foremost by quantitative measures.
Trend 4: There is a great contest between the synthetic and the organic. We’re a practical species, willing to hack anything to make it bigger, faster, sweeter or easier. Then we inevitably begin to worry that we’re poisoning ourselves.
While this plays out in mostly food and health debates, it will increasingly play out in our emotional lives and our approaches to interpersonal communications, as studies show that our brains are reacting as badly to synthetic communications as our bodies are reacting to synthetic food.
Naisbitt argued 30 years ago that high tech and high touch will reinforce each other. It applies equally today. This means there will be new markets for events and forums and venues that allow people to disconnect from technology and connect more deeply to other human beings.
Trend 5: Our careers are now non-linear. Very few people will sustain careers involving conventional ladders of success. Experts in industry and academia note that most of us will have to retrain repeatedly for new careers that don’t even exist yet.
Granted, most of us will not be entrepreneurs who run our own businesses—but we all will have to be entrepreneurial about our own career development and redevelopment.
Trend 6: We’re taking it easy in an age of hyper-informality--for now. We tolerate and even celebrate Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodies and Sergey Brin’s monkey casual business wear. We accept untucked shirts. We give whimsical names like
Trend 7: Most major trends result in a counter-trend. Now consider Trend 6 again. The concept of Silicon Valley casual was a refreshing antidote to stuffy ways of the past. That means that, in a sense, the current casual trend is just a counter-trend to an earlier formal one.
Bear in mind that every great trend carries within it a seed of a counter-trend. I’d argue that a trend toward greater formality and fanciness seems imminent. And that will again result in a counter-trend down the road.
Here’s the upshot: As you plan out your business or your career, you may find that your biggest opportunities don’t come from chasing a current trend, but rather from anticipating the opportunities that would arise from a counter-trend.
We’ll likely see other counter-trends. For instance, the appetite for collective national moments will likely increase in the post-Cronkite era. These moments might become less frequent, but they will be even more powerful and memorable. And sports teams and musical icons and will connect people more deeply than ever across the lonely ether of our customized and fragmented lives.
In a later post, we’ll take another look at the art of futurism, by exploring a few timeless principles that should inform our guesswork about tomorrow. Please join the conversation in the comments section below. And hit “Follow” at the top of the page to receive notification of more career and management coverage from Rob Asghar.
