designFUTURIST trends

I have found that the future of any business hinges upon its ability to identify the social, technological, environmental, and legislative trends that will shape its opportunities and products.

While the new-product development process always requires significant investments of time and resources, these investments sky-rocket if you wait until the course you should follow is obvious. Waiting too long to decide what product to produce makes it impossible to respond to your customers needs in a timely fashion.

With a modest effort and investment in identifying and tracking trends you can initiate appropriate product development projects much earlier. In fact, I have found that ongoing trend identification and tracking programs can prove to be the best source of new products and product refinement ideas. They can keep you ahead of the product development curve.
The examples on this page are all the result of my trend tracking efforts as leader of the Frigidaire Home Products "Concept Design Team."

The process of identifying or uncovering trends generally begins with the scanning of many resources (news, publications, conferences, the internet, and focus grouos with consumers).

While creating the Frigidaire Concept Design Team, I developed the following comprehensive list of subjects that were pertinant to uncovering trends that might have an impact on our business in both the short and long term.

• Appliances
• Architecture
   (Home Design & Housing)
• Automotive
• Business
• Clothing
• Competitors
• Cooking
• Demographics
   (Psychographics)
• Design (Form, Color, & Texture)
• Ecology
• Environment
   (Energy, Resources, & Pollution)
• Entertainment
• Family
• Food & Eating Habits
• Fuzzy Logic
• Information Management
   (Communication)
• Kitchen
• Laundry
• Legal
   (Legislative & Regulatory)
• Materials
• Nanotechnology
• New Products
• Packaging
• Process
• Product Safety
• Retailing
• Retro
• Scenarios
• Social
• Style
• Technology
• Transportation
• Virtual Reality
• Work