Lisa Bodell, CEO of consultancy FutureThink, recently offered some excellent tips and tricks for individuals to hone their innovative thinking in everyday life, two of which involved "detecting the weak signals."

And according to Beverly J. Davis, an associate professor of organizational leadership and supervision at Purdue University's College of Technology, the ability to identify weak signals is "key to effective management."

As today's business environment places huge importance on innovation and forward thinking, being aware of current weak signals can lead to huge rewards from tomorrow's trend.

WiseGeek quite simply distinguishes between fad and trend:

A fad by definition is a short-term event, what some may call a "flash in the pan." A trend, on the other hand, has the potential of becoming a long-term influence on the future of a market. A fad and a trend may resemble each other at first, but there is almost always a definite beginning and a definite end to a fad.

The long-term returns come from capitalizing on trends, of course.

In order for a fad to become a trend, Davis said, it must meet the following criteria:

• Appeal to the mainstream;
• Be accessible to all;
• Be easily understandable to the average person;
• Be easy to obtain; and
• Be affordable.

Managers want to detect weak signals to minimize time to market and losses, as well as change directions when needed. "Often big changes follow small events, and these can happen very quickly," noted Davis. Examples of changes that started small and grew significantly: cafes for mobile and fast-paced customers, cell phones and the diminished attraction to large vehicles in the face of higher prices for gasoline.

In last week's recap of the 2007 Progressive Manufacturing Summit, two of the eight tips and tricks provided by Bodell suggested simply looking at the long-term signals in terms of the big picture related to political and environment forces, referring to futurist. She suggested visiting the patent office online or Google Patent Search to find out what ideas are already registered, as "this gives a good glimpse of what's just around the corners as soon-to-be product offerings."

Taking this further, and to help managers distinguish between fads and trends and detect trends and amplify them, Davis offered the following tips (some of which reassert Bodell's):

• Read all of your industry's materials you can, even if they don't directly relate to your job or business. "This will give you a much larger perspective and viewpoint on which to base decisions," Davis said.

• Scan other industry trends. "It is difficult to detect trends and weak signals when they begin where you least expect it," she said. "That's why you have to stay on top of trends in every sector."

• Rely on your leadership experience and trust your intuition.

• Be open to ideas that are thought to be irreverent and disruptive of the status quo.

• Try to see the big picture or the system rather than focusing on parts.

• Be aware of biases and chain of thought, in both you and the organization, and the limitations of relying on past certainties in your industry.

• Have an ongoing process to identity and monitor weak signals, and once detected, prioritize and create action steps or goals for the organization. Davis suggested organizations can do this by conducting constant research and even having a task force or committee assigned to identifying possible trends and how they could affect the group or business.

Moreover, in his book The Strategy Paradox, Deloitte Consulting LLP's Michael Raynor notes:

Salespeople, who are among those closest to the marketplace, will likely be well positioned to pick up the weak signals that suggest a long-term strategic challenge is brewing.

Raynor, however, cautions against having salespeople "crafting 10-year contingencies."

Detecting weak signals may require some intuition before sensing any data that can be quantified. "Trusting your intuition" may fit into the category of right-brain thinking, and "the challenge is that many people haven't been called on to use these abilities, so their 'muscles' have atrophied," explained Daniel H. Pink in the New England Board of Higher Education's summer 2005 CONNECTION.

The point of trusting intuition comes as a surprise in the age of metrics. Not that there aren't decisions that must be made for which no data exists — but we are overwhelmed with data thanks to computers, the Internet, media researchers and cookies.

Pink's call for development of intuitive and advanced design abilities makes sense.

The world is full of accidental inventions. A few of the better-known ones, according to Partha Dasgupta, an associate professor on the faculty of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Arizona State University in Tempe: Teflon, TNT, X-rays, bubble gum, Velcro, the telephone and the phonograph.

You can capitalize on future developments by detecting their weak signals before they cross over from fad to trend. A fad is fleeting; a trend has staying power.

Resources

Purdue University

WiseGeek

The Strategy Paradox

NEBHE, CONNECTION

Arizona State Univ., Computer Science and Engineering Dept.