It can be difficult for businesses to stay ahead of the big changes that are happening in various areas such as technology and society. Life always evolves quickly. However, being able to know the new trends early can give one company a huge advantage over others. To make it clearer for you, I will discuss how you can develop a way to see the future before your competitors do.

Understand how disruptive trends typically manifest

MOST disruptive trends do not appear overnight. They usually start small and grow over time as technologies advance and costs fall. Some examples include how electric vehicles are now growing rapidly after years of advances in battery technology. Another is how video streaming services like Netflix became mainstream as broadband Internet access spread and the cost of video streaming hardware fell.

Understanding how enabling technologies usually progress and prices fall, you can watch out for areas that may experience breakthroughs in the coming years. You should look for technologies or business models that are starting to gain momentum but haven't yet passed a tipping point in widespread adoption. These are real candidates for you who can disrupt existing ways of doing things over the next five to 10 years.

Related: How to recognize money making trends in the market – and increase your profits

Expand your sources of information

Most large companies focus heavily on their industry for signals about upcoming changes. However, disruption often comes from outside the boundaries of existing industries. To see more broadly, you need to expand your sources of information beyond your peers and key industry analysts.

Some areas worth scanning regularly include technology publications, VC investment reports, academic research, crowdfunding sites, discussion forums, tech demos at events and more. You can search for overlapping themes across different sources that point to emerging technology or business model trajectories.

Develop relationships outside of your circle

Passively following various sources of information can help you spot emerging trends, but you should also proactively develop relationships outside of your existing circle. You should reach out to people in startups, universities, technology consortia, investment firms, think tanks, various industries and more. You can have coffee chats where you openly explore new ideas without any agenda.

These relationships can definitely help you learn about developments earlier before they reach your traditional industry reporting channels. The people you meet can also introduce you to others on the fringes of established areas who are experimenting with new concepts. Their insights can point you to some emerging trends before your competitors are aware of them.

Related: Trendspotting 101 – How to stay ahead of the curve in your industry

Apply design thinking methods to predict future scenarios

Staying aware of emerging opportunities is important, but you also need ways to anticipate how they might evolve and potentially disrupt existing ways of doing things. aDOPTION design thinking methods can help with this. You can also start cross-functional projects where you bring together people with different roles and backgrounds – just ask them systematically to brainstorm and prototype possible future scenarios involving emerging technology combinations or business model innovations.

Ask questions like “If development in areas A, B, and C reaches certain milestones in the next five years, how might this affect our industry?” or “What new business models might emerge if input costs in area X were to fall sharply?” This can help significantly.

Challenge your assumptions regularly

If you have a well-established business, it's easy to focus on short-term initiatives and incrementally improve what's already working. However, maintaining the status quo can blind you to the dangers of emerging disruption. You need to build processes that regularly challenge your basic assumptions about trends, customers and business models.

Schedule short sessions focused specifically on questioning the core assumptions underlying your strategy and operations. Try conducting thought experiments exploring what might cause your assumptions to be disrupted by outside forces. This is important because doing these exercises can prevent stagnation and help you improve your ability to spot the warning signs of potential breakdowns.

Monitoring the health of emerging technologies

Once you identify a few emerging technology or business model trajectories that could be potentially disruptive, focus on closely tracking their development. You can monitor several factors such as improvement rates, declining costs, patents, published research, company funding activities, demo technologies, and pilot programs. Create simple tracking sheets or charts that are updated regularly — this will give you a longitudinal view of progress.

Know that you also need to pay attention progress point where the development of a trend goes through the growth of the hockey stick. This may be due to costs that exceed key thresholds or capabilities that meet the minimum requirements for early approval. These turning points can serve as triggers to reexamine strategic plans or scale up experimental initiatives that explore disruptive influences and countermovements. You should also constantly review your watch list – this will regulate your ability to spot rapidly growing threats and opportunities for competitive advantage.

Related: These 3 trends will change what it means to be an entrepreneur in 2025

Expand the testing of new ideas

Once you identify some technologies or business models that look promising, it's good to start experimenting with them. You can try building small prototypes or running short pilot programs to get an early look at how things might turn out; such as, you can test ideas with employees or a small group of customers. Gathering real-world experience with emerging trends helps you get a much clearer picture of their impact and potential downsides. Because it is always better to learn about new things by doing and not just by thinking or reading.

Any organization can improve its foresight if it commits to constantly evaluating new inputs and keeping an openness to alternatives. Those who make anticipating disruption a core competency will find themselves less vulnerable to threats and better able to shape the future. good luck!