What’s next? It’s the question we never stop asking, with new answers emerging every day from trends and data that offer tantalizing clues for the discriminating observer. For example: pets now outnumber children in the USA, Europe, and Japan. What product lines may emerge from this shift? Doggy Prozac? Megatrend expert Alison Sander explains how you can spot growing trends and gives five tips on how you can use trends to your advantage.
Alison, through her role in BCG’s Center for Sensing & Mining the Future, tracks more than 100 Megatrends to help clients find their next areas of growth. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA in political science with high honors from the University of Chicago. Alison is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations (www.cfr.og), a Board member of the World Resources Institute (www.wri.org), an Overseer of the Museum of Science (www.mos.org), and a founder of AltWheels (www.altwheels. org). Alison has been with the Boston office of BCG since 1997, originally serving as Globalization Topic Advisor. Alison has worked in or travelled to more than 91 countries.
About the TED Institute: We know that innovative ideas and fresh approaches to challenging problems can be discovered inside visionary companies around the world. The TED Institute helps surface and share these insights. Every year, TED works with a group of select brands to identify internal ideators, inventors, connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk development to sharpen and fine tune ideas.
