In Part I we began our discussion and review of Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends because minitrends, which are often the leading indicators of emerging megatrends, can be very vaulable to their discoverer in the short term and, sometimes, provide the foundations for new billion dollar enterprises. Starting by noting that a minitrend is an emerging trend that promises to become significantly important in the next two to five years but which is not widely recognized or appreciated, we noted that minitrends are doubly important because failure to recognize them could also lead to the downfall of a billion dollar organization.

We then indicated that a mini-trend can often be identified by applying a mix of the following seven strategies:

• Follow the Money
• Follow the Leaders
• Examine Limits
• Consider Human Nature
• Watch the Demographics
• Analyze Frustrations
• Search for Convergence

So where do you begin your search? According to the authors, you:

• Utilize Public Sources
  start with printed material including books, periodicals, and newspapers and use editorial assists to scan for the most relevant sources
• Utilize Electronic Sources
  as more and more print goes online and more and more electronic search tools become available
• Engage Key Associations
  and the membership that might have insights into emerging trends
• Establish Social Networks
  both physical and virtual to get exposed to a wide range of ideas and opinions
• Identify Experts
  and engage with them in thought-provoking and informative manners
• Examine Patents and Patent Applications
  especially recent patents and applications
• Review PhD publications
  from top schools and labs in particular
• Pay Heed to Television
  and the educational and technology oriented networks like the Discovery Channel, History Channel, Science Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel in particular
• Examine the Platforms of Losing Presidential Candidates
  often ahead of their time, they often come back with a life of their own in the near to mid term

The right mix of printed sources, electronic sources, assocations, social networks, experts, patents, and tv documentaries will often yield a multitude of potential minitrends to the emerging eye. So how do you know when you have a good one? Based on my review of the nine minitrends presented in the book, a good trend will be easy to understand, improve upon a current situation or offering, and present a viable business opportunity. The following examples exemplify this:

Example 1: Support for People Working at Home

Given that as much as 25% of white collar work is now being done in private residences by people who take advantage of flex time, telecommuting, and self employment opportunities, this is a valuable minitrend for anyone who can help overcome the (perceived disadvantages), such as the loss of nearby coworkers to bounce ideas off of, the lack of (high-end) office facilities and equipment, and administrative support. This is why we’ve seen a rise in business hotspots such as Starbucks, Hubs, and rooms you can rent by the day or hour; e-fax capabilities and business centers at office supply stores; and virtual receptionists / virtual office locations.

This trend is easy to understand, associated offerings improve upon a current situation in one or more ways, and the offerings present a viable business opportunity as many self-employed individuals or virtual small companies will take advantage of services designed to help them succeed.

Example 2: Evolution of Meaningful Maturity

For a variety of reasons, be it financial situation, desire for daily human contact, a continued ambition to do something useful, or an inability to just sit still, the aging populace is staying in the workplace longer, but not always in a traditional full-time 9 to 5 role. Also, many enterprises are starting to recognize the importance of the wisdom in their aging workforce and the need to explicitly capture the implicit knowledge in their heads. Furthermore, appropriate mind training can often enhance the mental actuity of the aging workforce and add years to their employment effectiveness. Thus, any advance that will improve knowledge capture, increase the useful life span of the aging workforce, or enable flexible work arrangements will have value and sustain the minitrend.

This trend is also easy to understand, dictates the need for services that improve the well being of the people involved as well as the organizations, and offers a number of viable business models that small businesses can adopt to be successful in one or more markets.

Example 3: Advances in Digital Manufacturing

Accompanying the improvements in thermoplastics, ceramics, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals that we take for granted on a daily basis are improvements in the underlying manufacturing technology including stereolithography, selective laser sintering, shape deposition manufacturing, 3D printing, bioplotting, and layer object modelling that, combined, define an overall trend of continuing advances in digital manufacturing.

While the technical specifics may be beyond the average person, when one looks at the continued advances in consumer devices and pharmaceuticals, one can understand that there must be a corresponding advance in manufacturing techniques, even though one may not know what it is. In addition, one can see that any organization that can create a better manufacturing technology or process can advance the mini-trend and create a viable business selling the advancement to large corporations that rely on such technology. Thus, this is also a good minitrend to take advantage of if you are able.

So, now that you know how to find minitrends and identify good ones, how do you select one for exploitation, develop an exploitation strategy, put it into action, and capitalize on it? That’s the subject of the third and final post in this mini-series reviewing Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends.

In a post late last fall, we asked how important are minitrends since they are, according to the author of Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends, often the leading indicators of emerging megatrends which can have a significant impact on business for decades. However, if the minitrend is, in actuality, a short-lived trend that is here-today and gone-tomorrow, then any attention paid to the matter might be a complete waste of time if you can’t adapt fast enough to take advantage of it.

In order to determine if a minitrend is important, we first have to detect it, and to do that, we have to better understand what a minitrend is. We start with a review of the book, which describes what a minitrend is; where to look for them; how to find them; what makes them attractive from an individual, small company and large company perspective; how to select one for exploitation, how to develop an exploitation scheme, and how to put the scheme into action.

According to the authors, John H. Vanston and Carrie Vanston, minitrends, which are emerging trends that promise to become significantly important within the next two to five years but which are not widely recognized or appreciated are important because, like precious gems, they have inherent value, require effort to uncover, entail processing to achieve their full value, and, can be very valuable to their discoverer.

In fact, a minitrend can be the basis of a billion dollar business. As an example, the authors explain how Dell and Southwest airlines took advantage of minitrends to establish new, successful, businesses that blossomed into billion dollar enterprises in a short time frame. They also explain how a number of other business, which are still growing, capitalized on minitrends to become multi-million dollar enterprises seemingly overnight.

A small to mid-sized company with low overhead and the flexibility and ability to move quickly is often in prime position to take advantage of an emerging mini-trend that relates to one of its areas of expertise. In comparison, large companies that have invested significant capital into certain markets and products are often in a poor position to take advantage of short-term trends and may feel motivated to ignore the trends in an effort to capitalize on their current investment, even though this can be a bad idea. For example, it was likely a failure to recognize emerging minitrends that brought down The Sharper Image and Circuit City and that led to recent hardships at Starbucks (which had to do significant layoffs a couple of years back) and General Motors.

So how do you find a minitrend? You apply a mix of the following strategies:

• Follow the Money
  who will make money, who will lose money, and who will pay money — those who will pay are the customers, those who will make money are the crusaders (for the cause), and those who will lose are the defenders (of the old regime)
• Follow the Leaders
  look for those who have non-conventional vision, who have influence, who move and shake, and who look to the future; Time’s 100 most important and Fortune’s most powerful, the Warren Buffets and T. Boone Pickens’ of the world, and the futurists like Raymond Kurzweil and Lawrence Vanston are prime candidates to identify emerging minitrends
• Examine Limits
  there are three types of limits: physical, perceptual, and practical; the latter two are most important for minitrends (and any redefinition of the former would likely indicate the emergence of a megatrend) — when circumstances, public opinion, or driving forces alter a perceptive or practical limit, a minitrend can emerge
• Consider Human Nature
  people want to establish meaningful long-term relationships, improve the lives of their children, and have top quality medical care — if different opportunities to satisfy these needs arise, minitrends often emerge
• Watch the Demographics
  immigration, population shift, and birth rate all impact what may or may not emerge as a minitrend as differences in goals, expectations, and viewpoints exist between the various age groups
• Analyze Frustrations
  anything that bothers a large group of people — like waiting in line at a bank, paying huge late fees on returns, or not getting value for their money — that can be improved offers a great opportunity for a minitrend to develop
• Search for Convergence
  anywhere two distinct fields or technologies can meet presents an opportunity for a minitrend to emerge

Then, once you find identify a set of minitrends, you need to select one for exploitation, develop an exploitation strategy, put it into action, and capitalize on it. But before we get to that, we will discuss how to search for minitrends and present three minitrend examples to help you understand what you should look for as an individual, a small company, and a large company.