Decoding Cultural Shifts: How Trend Research Drives Meaningful Innovation
- Neil Gridley
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Neil Gridley & Brechje Vissers
Why Carry Out Trend Research?
Companies conduct trend research for two reasons: to identify emerging market shifts that create innovation opportunities, and to manage risk by spotting changes that could impact their business 3-5 years out.
What is Trend Research?
We often think of trends as what's going viral today. But true trend research looks 3-5 years ahead to decode cultural shifts before they go mainstream. By analyzing weak signals across products, services, art, and culture, we identify emerging behavioural and value patterns that reveal where innovation opportunities lie.
Our work sits at the intersection of culture and creativity: helping brands see the future through the lens of people's evolving values and pinpoint those spaces where the brand can play a meaningful role.
Why This Matters for Innovators, Designers and Strategists
Cultural trends provide both inspiration and validation for innovation projects across different timelines. They enable you to:
Generate differentiating, future-relevant ideas beyond your current portfolio
Refine existing solutions based on evolving customer needs
Capture fresh opportunities by understanding emerging demands before they hit mainstream
Rather than simply noting new offerings in the market, this approach discerns evolving demands and changing attitudes that drive those offerings.
Why Expertise Still Matters
While AI tools can now surface vast amounts of insights at the touch of a button, expertise remains crucial. AI isn't yet adept at understanding social interactions or predicting cultural shifts. Human experts bring access to trend databases, forums, and sophisticated analytical methods that are essential for accurate interpretation and actionable insights.
This becomes particularly important when exploring emerging attitudes and behavioral shifts in specific contexts—whether that's activities (sleep, cook, work), life phases (parenting styles), mindsets (versatile living), or customer journey moments (mobile retail).
An Example: Small Space Urban Living for IKEA
Our 2020 exploration of small space urban living for IKEA was triggered by two shifts: growing urbanization (56% of people now live in cities versus 36% in 1960) and people trading home size for better locations with amenities. We needed to understand which priorities were prevailing and why.
Our research revealed a need for more versatile living environments. This was driven by three factors:
Making the most of less space. People have more complex lifestyles where work and private activities blur together throughout the day.
Individual household patterns. Family members have their own routines and needs, making it harder to sync daily life while still creating time for bonding.
On-demand expectations. We've grown accustomed to software that responds immediately to our needs. We expect our physical environments to adapt just as fluently, without wasting time or space.
One example: "Bedroom Living." Within the context of smaller spaces, bedrooms were working much harder. As lives get busier and mental health issues rise, taking breaks and cultivating friendships becomes crucial to wellness. Gen Y and Z—known for their "indoorsiness"—spend roughly two hours more at home daily than previous generations, using bedrooms not just for sleep but for socializing, gaming, working, and exercising. The lines between work and private space have blurred in both physical and virtual ways.
How It Changed IKEA's Innovation Trajectory
The cultural trends research identified both short-term and long-term "new value spaces" for IKEA—areas of emerging need where IKEA could credibly deliver. We translated these into ideation briefs with just enough data and inspiration to drive creativity without overwhelming teams.
Through ideation with multi-disciplinary teams from relevant regions, we defined concepts and new Value Propositions. We evaluated these with customers in New York, Tokyo, and London.
Three concepts performed well under "versatile living":
Rapidly changing functionality - enabling quick changes of use in the same location (e.g., using the bed for sleeping, socializing, gaming, and working)
Integrating and dividing - allowing multiple people to do different things in the same space more easily
Hidden in plain sight - products that appear when needed but disappear when not, reducing visual clutter
Through multiple rounds of design iteration, we narrowed from 100+ concepts to around 40 products, which we evaluated with target customers and local retail teams.
You can find more about the project here: https://www.ikea.com/global/en/stories/design/ikea-explores-multifunctional-furniture-to-push-limits-of-small-space-221206/
The approach gave IKEA a roadmap of new products driven by a clear value proposition they were confident in. But it also transformed the organization from a siloed, incremental approach to a more entrepreneurial, "future back" innovation mindset. For the first time, different home furnishing areas collided and teams collaborated intensively. Sometimes the biggest innovation outcomes are shifts in how people see the world and work as a result.
The Challenge and Opportunity
The key challenge lies in finding cultural shifts that are emerging but not yet visible in mainstream culture—shifts with future potential that are relevant to your specific business and geography. This requires an outside-in perspective beyond your known category and industry. Looking sideways is crucial.
Trend experts provide this through their methods, databases, local scouts, and analytical experience in a cost-effective way. The insights can fuel innovation across different horizons: operational projects (1-2 years), strategic innovation (3-5 years), and even long-term scenario planning (10+ years).
As technology evolves, so do cultural motivations. How do you see people's changing values shaping design and innovation in your field?
Does your organisation need help looking ahead or exploring new value spaces? Get in touch.
You can also read this on my substack channel.
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