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The paper examines the birth of trend forecasting in the USA and position trend forecasters and professional futurists within the wider history of marketing, market research and advertising.

The study is based upon archival research, interviews and close readings of primary and secondary literature.

Trend forecasters split from traditional market and opinion research in the early 1970s, as concerns about the future became paramount for businesses. At this time, entrepreneurial trend forecasters such as Faith Popcorn started firms, adopting futurological methods to make predictions about the future of culture. The field continued to grow into the 1990s as it developed or modified a host of mostly qualitative research methods, including environmental scanning, consumer ethnography and scenarios. Trend forecasting reveals the complexity of the relationship between business and “the future” and how trends aimed to predict as well as direct that future.

The article is among the first academic treatments of trend forecasting, drawn from original interviews and exclusively accessed archival research. It contributes to a theory and a history of the concept of a trend, which is understood here as a way to package the movement of culture as sellable. It likewise offers a unique exploration of the relationship between futurology and business.

A particular feature that makes foresight powerful is its capability to learn from past trends to help guide decision‐making for future policy. However, in studying both past and future trends, network perspectives are often missing. Since networks are capable of revealing the structure that underpins relationships between stakeholders, key issues and actions in the past, they are powerful to help envisage the future. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological framework to incorporate network analysis in foresight.

The paper develops a generic framework to incorporate network analysis into foresight's five stages. Trends identified by respondents of the Big Picture Survey are used to demonstrate how we operationalize this framework.

A network perspective can enrich foresight analysis in that it helps reveal structural linkages between trends and thus can better identify emerging future issues, both of which are critical in foresight.

The inclusion of network analysis can shed light on the process of understanding complex data and assist in building a model based on links and relationships. Network analysis can reveal otherwise unobservable structural features of the data and can help boundary setting discussions in foresight.

Network concepts and measures could usefully enrich the interpretation of foresight data for further analysis, or plausible scenarios.

Network analysis offers a new way of looking at the foresight data by disentangling complicated issue webs. As shaping the future becomes more essential because of the complexity of science, technology and society interrelationships, the incorporation of network perspectives in foresight might be one of the ways to propel future studies.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the difference between futuring and visioning and to suggest how they may be better implemented as complementary approaches to strategic decision‐making.

A veteran of more than 80 scenario development projects, the author describes the tools required and the best practices for defining the mission, setting the goals, developing a vision, and making plans that move a business beyond the familiar of today to the uncertainties of tomorrow

Offers examples of companies that used futuring and visioning tools to prepare product scenarios that anticipated the future, unarticulated voice of the customer.

Guidance for leadership: Recognize the difference between futuring and visioning, and do both in a complementary way. Encourage, if not require, people to think about the future of both customers and products. Set up a futuring unit to prepare trend monitoring and scanning, trend analysis, build forecasting models, and prepare narrations on the future of the external business environment for the entire company. Set up a program whereby employees have opportunities to participate in visioning exercises, especially when the topic question involves visioning at their own operational levels. Use the products of futuring as a frame of reference for visioning exercises. Develop a vision for the company based upon wide participation and using both futuring and visioning. Consistently articulate the vision for both external and internal audiences.

The article provides guidance about the process of learning about the future so that organizations can routinely integrate futuring and visioning into a vision statement and strategic plans

The need for management to better anticipate the future is the urgent message currently being advocated by consultants in strategic market planning. Uses a survey of high‐level managers from Fortune 1,000 corporations to illustrate the advantages of cultivating a flexible mindset concerning environmental trends and their strategic marketing implications. Reviews projected developments in the economy, technology, ecology and the social/political environments that are expected to occur by 2005. Discusses appropriate marketing responses to these trends.

The paper aims to present an integrated foresight framework and method to support decision-makers who are confronted with today’s complex and rapidly changing world. The method aims at reducing the degree of uncertainty by addressing the inertia or duration of unfolding trends and by placing individual trends in a broader context.

The paper presents a three-layered framework and method for assessing megatrends based on their inertia or duration. It suggests that if long-term trends and key future uncertainties are studied in conjunction at a meta-level and placed in a broader multi-layered framework of trends, it can result in new insights.

The application of the proposed foresight method helps to systematically place a wide range of unrelated trends and key uncertainties in the context of a broader framework of trends, thereby improving the ability to understand the inertia, direction and mutual interaction of these trends.

The elaboration of identified trends and key uncertainties is partly case-specific and subject to interpretation. It is aimed at illustrating the potential use of the framework.

The paper presents a new approach that may, by itself or in combination with existing foresight methods, offer new means for anticipating future developments.

The use of the proposed framework has potential to provide better insight in the complexity of today’s rapid-changing world and the major transitions taking place. It aims to result in sharper foresight by reducing epistemic uncertainty for decision-makers.

The paper demonstrates how megatrends, Kondratieff waves and century-long trends can be placed in an integrated framework and analysed in conjunction.

Futures research is commonly reported on the macro scale, and involves analysis of a global or national situation with a long‐range view of trends and alternative futures. This article approaches ageing and the future from the micro scale, examining the future one life at a time; suggesting that futures methodology can, and should, be effectively applied to individual lives. Three propositions relating to development of personal futures are introduced, focusing on life stages, personal trends and life events after age 60. These three elements of life are then shown as a framework on which individuals can build personal scenarios and create personal strategic plans for the stages of life after age 60.

Concerned with the rising social, economic and technological disruption in the world, the impact of the technological disruption had a significant impact on the future of work and it has been tremendously increased in past five years. Further, with the rising uncertainties and COVID-19 in the picture, the trends suggested by earlier literature might not hold. The purpose of this paper is to understand the evolution of technology in the workplace in the past five years, how does it stand during COVID-19, will the trend continue in light of disruption caused by COVID-19, the impact of COVID-19 on the future of work.

The paper uses bibliometric techniques to identify the conceptual and intellectual structure of the studies. The programming language named after authors Robert and Ross (R) software and Biblioshiny were used to identify the structures and the themes underlying those structures, which further helped in forecasting the trends of the studies.

The paper shows the drastic evolution of the studies in past few years and different technologies implemented at the workplace in the same period. It further identified the influential papers, authors, journals in the area with an emphasis on the various collaboration network among authors and countries. It also paints a picture of the impact of COVID-19 on the future of work. The paper finally concluded with future directions for the emerging trends and themes in the area in aftermath of COVID-19.

This paper takes the microscopic view of the studies carried out in the past five years as during the past five years, the studies related to this topic have grown tremendously and accordingly many trends have been identified but with the COVID-19 pandemic in the picture, the trend is likely to get accelerated. This paper takes this view and identifies the trends in the future by identifying the themes based on periods and at different levels – organizational, managerial, individual.

Strategic decision-making is a complex process and encompasses an exhaustive knowledge base, collective guidance, contemporary foresight, analytical capabilities, paradigmatic congruence, and risk assessment and optimization within mission space. Employing advanced sciences convergence and analytical methodologies, the aim of this report is to provide a set of plausible solution trajectories to complex scenarios.

Three methodologies are reported here which provide policymakers with plausible solution pathways and alternatives. The methodologies, namely: TechFARM, ADAMS, and NESTTS, involve convergence of scientific disciplines, cutting edge technologies, social dynamics, astute extraction, and principles of foresight to support the process of informed decision-making, as comprehensive tools to develop a plausible solution space and future trends.

The methodologies provided in this report provide scientific basis to trends analysis and foresight. Few selected examples are reported here indicating its practical implications. The methodologies are currently applied to and likely to be used for many applications in trends analysis for government, industry, and even academics. These applications are particularly relevant to policy-making due to their capacity for identification of emerging trends.

Being highly adaptable, these methodologies were initially generated for defense applications, but have since been applied to clean water, cyber-security, the medical sector, and environmental health and safety (EHS) and evaluating eco-toxicity of nanomaterials, to strategically address a variety of global challenges. Additionally, these methodologies support investment recommendations and implementation of policies that promise significant benefit to the public at large.

Futures research and long‐range planning in an urban school district involve the use of a methodology having no direct answers or precise rules in terms of experimental and design alternatives. While some design options can be found in operations research and management science, futures research projects in education are more likely to follow the directions for policy analysis initially suggested by Yehezkel Dror and re‐examined in Aaron Wildavsky. They note in policy analysis, 1. Much attention would be paid to the political aspects of public decision‐making and public policy‐making (instead of ignoring or condescendingly regarding political aspects) … 2. A broad conception of decision‐making and policy‐making would be involved (instead of viewing all decision‐making as mainly a resources allocation) … 3. A main emphasis would be on creativity and search for new policy alternatives, with explicit attention to encouragement of innovative thinking … 4. There would be extensive reliance on … qualitative methods … 5. There would be much more emphasis on futuristic thinking … 6. The approach would be looser and less rigid, but nevertheless systematic, one which would recognise the complexity of means‐ends interdependence, the multiplicity of relevant criteria of decision, and the partial and tentative nature of every analysis … (Wildavsky, Aaron, “Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS” Public Administration Review 29. 1969. pp. 189–202. Wildavsky's reference is to Dror's “Policy Analysts : A New Professional Role in Government Service” Public Administration Review. 27. 1967. pp.200–201). The intent is to describe a single futures research project conducted in a large urban school district staff development program. It is reported here as a means to outline a general approach to policy planning that might be used or adapted by other administrators who share an interest in futures research.

Purpose – This chapter explains what is known about international homicide trends, highlights gaps in existing literature, and proposes avenues for future research that will expand understanding about international homicide.

Design/methodology/approach – We review extant literature on international homicide trends, and draw on data from the World Health Organization from 1990 to 2015 to identify patterns in contemporary international homicide trends.

Findings – We demonstrate evidence of an international homicide drop across most regions around the world. Nonetheless, the homicide decline is not a global event as several countries – particularly countries with high homicide rates – did not experience reductions in homicide during this period. The key question remains as to what the causes of changes in international homicide rates are and why many countries experience very similar reductions in homicide while a few experienced increasing violence. We propose potential explanations and suggest areas for future research.

Originality/value – This chapter documents an international homicide decline occurring between 1990 and 2015. We also demonstrate that homicide trends are likely influenced by factors beyond local phenomena and domestic policies since homicide rates largely track together for regions throughout the world. Accordingly, the chapter suggests potential avenues for future research that can help better explain this trend.