Find Future Industry Trends

Tuesday we explored the importance of evaluating trends in your industry. Today, we discover how to find or identify the trends that will affect your business.

You recognize that you should analyze future trends in your industry. Finding trustworthy sources of information presents more difficulties. A variety of sources assaults the senses. Let me share some the sources of trends. Then, on Saturday, we will analyze how to discern the more credible and trustworthy sources.

Sources of Trend Information

The Internet and ability to access, survey, and analyze data quickly created an explosion of economic analysts. For example, the Internet abounds with 6,910,000 references to “bookstore future trends” alone. So, let me share just a few quick sources (use their search feature to find archived articles):

1. Your industry association: Most professional and industry associations will track trends for members of the association.  Find you local chapter or join the national association.
2. Marketplace, Money.CNN, Small Business.Fox Business.com, TED.com, and YouTube. Beware of bias and political leaning in all of these.
3. Kiplinger Newsletters provides one of my favorite trend forecasting. Click on the Your Business tab if you go to the home page. My link takes you straight to Your Business. Don’t miss the Economic Outlook, Small Business Solutions, and other sections. 
4. Wall Street Journal offers trend analysis under the Business tab click on the popup menu rather than rollover the tab to see the widest variety of topics.
5. Market Watch.com: The web site has and Industries tab that allows you to easily see articles on a variety of industries.
6. Bloomberg/BusinessWeek can be confusing. I find their format more difficult to navigate. Make sure you use “” on the search or the results may frustrate you.
7. Google Scholar: Use the more credible section of Google. Type in your industry and the words Industry Forecasters or Industry Trends

These present just a few of the sources of industry trends, however, they will provide enough information for most needs. Start with these, then we’ll share more.

We’ll discuss how to discern good sources from scurrilous sources on Saturday.