TrendWatching: April 1, 2020, Where Next?: 10 Cross-Industry Trends That Have Been Radically Accelerated By The Coronavirus
The prospect of a pandemic has been a well known systemic risk for many years, but no one could have predicted the exact timing or nature of the current coronavirus crisis.
That’s often the way with trends: the big shifts are well known; there are many weak signals; but it’s hard if not impossible to know exactly the timing and shape of the bell curve that most trends follow. Will they stay niche for one year? Three years? Or suddenly see accelerated mass adoption because of some external trigger?
That’s why at times like this, when everything seems to be in flux, it’s useful to be able to look at trends that were already ‘out there’. Which new behaviors have early adopters and pioneer brands already been embracing? Which trends looked years away from the mainstream (and so were easy to ignore), but now feel primed to become totally normal in a matter of months, if not weeks?
