Trend hunter Jeremy Gutsche talks about achieving success and sparking innovation in times of change

Jeremy Gutsche is the “Chief Trend Hunter” and founder of TrendHunter.com , the world’s largest network for trend spotting and innovation. He’s also the author of The New York Times best-seller “Better and Faster: The Proven Path to Unstoppable Ideas” and business best-seller “Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change.”

Here, Gutsche talks about innovation, disruption, and change while demonstrating how they can positively impact everything from growing your business to hiring staff and meeting ever-evolving customer needs. As he puts it, “Dramatic change and simple evolution give birth to a new set of market needs. Identify those needs and enjoy remarkable success.”

TREND #1

Changing Customer Needs

“Visualize disaster and opportunity. A striking parallel exists between ski racing and innovating through chaos. In both situations, you navigate an unfamiliar course of uncomfortable speed. You’ll make some mistakes, but how you react will make all the difference.”

MAKE THE CONNECTION: “Chaos yields both risk and opportunity at the least convenient times. Projects will unexpectedly fall apart. People will quit when you need them most. Superstars will be available when you cannot hire. Competitors will falter, and new customers will become available. Ask yourself: How will you react to the urgent demands that prevail during both disaster and opportunity? How will you deal with sudden changes to customer needs? Teams that rehearse their reaction to the unexpected will be more likely to navigate through the course of uncertainty.”

TREND #2

Asking Questions

“When new hires start, they are wide-eyed and full of questions. When people become more skilled, there is a natural tendency to stop asking as many questions. It’s a way of proving that we’ve become confident and skilled.”

MAKE THE CONNECTION: “True leaders keep asking questions. They constantly push. My favorite book is Paul Arden’s ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.’ To cultivate an environment that accepted failure, he noted: ‘People will say nice things rather than be too critical. Also, we tend to edit out the bad so we hear only what we want to hear.’ Instead of seeking approval, ask, ‘What’s wrong with it? How can I make it better?’ You are more likely to get a truthful, critical answer. A culture that openly discusses imperfection is more likely to accept the failure that comes from acceptable risk.”

TREND #3

Looking for Niches

“Define a clear customer need. If you study the dessert market, you’ll learn that vanilla ice cream is the dominant flavor. However, vanilla is a commoditized space. It would be nearly impossible to capture and retain a vanilla ice cream customer. Vanilla is boring.”

MAKE THE CONNECTION: “Don’t pursue mediocrity. You need a cult following. You need to find the next Cherry Garcia, a Ben & Jerry’s flavor that became its No. 1 seller. As Jerry Garcia himself said, ‘You do not merely want to be the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.’ When screening for opportunity, look deeper than the broadest idea. Look for underserved niches of opportunity.”

TREND #4

Articulating Our Purpose

“Humans have a powerful short-term working memory. The peculiarity is that short-term memory appears to have a finite capacity of seven (+/- two) items. That equates to roughly 2.5 seconds of information.”

MAKE THE CONNECTION: “The implication is that people are better at remembering messages with seven words or less. The concept of ‘seven or less’ is so powerful that some marketing boutiques do nothing but help companies arrive at seven words or less to answer the question, ‘Why should I choose you?’ Southwest became successful because of its consistent answer, ‘low-cost airline,’ but most organizations lack a concise articulation of their value proposition, their purpose. Know your seven words!”

JEREMY GUTSCHE, MBA, CFA, is an innovation expert, one of North America’s most requested keynote speakers, and founder of Canadian-based TrendHunter.com , with an audience of roughly 10 million monthly views. Gutsche, who lives in Toronto, is routinely sourced by the media—from The Economist and the Financial Times to “Entertainment Tonight” and Fox News. He was a management consultant prior to launching TrendHunter, and has been described as a “new breed of trend spotter” by the Guardian, and “on the forefront of cool” by MTV. TrendHunter.com