Last update: October 20, 2024
In this document, we describe Anacode’s AI framework for identifying, profiling, and ranking trends that are relevant for specific industries and companies. The focus of our approach is on transparency and actionability - a trend can only “work” for a company once it is addressed with specific use cases, and the analyses in our framework form the basis for recommending these use cases.
The methodology is structured into two big steps:
The points made in each section will be illustrated with examples from different industries, incl. Airline, Automotive, Financials, and Healthcare. Using the airline industry and the specific example of easyJet, we will see how to compute company-specific trend scores.
The analyses are based on Anacode’s database, which consists of a broad variety of articles from public online sources covering the timespan July 2020 - December 2023. Since we aim for insights that reflect the perspectives of different stakeholder groups, such as consumers, employees, investors, and entrepreneurs, the database combines different types of sources in order to reflect the perspectives of these different stakeholder groups.
Figure 1: Major types of data sources in Anacode’s database
In a first step, we build the initial set of trend candidates - topics which will be examined and sifted in the second step. Ideally, this step is carried out together with the customer, allowing us to “pick the brain” of the customer and optimally integrate their domain knowledge with our data and AI algorithms. When compiling the initial set, quantity goes over quality - the task of filtering out fads, noise, and other superfluous candidates is performed in the next step.
Trends exist in different areas and can be initiated by different groups of stakeholders. In this section, we will look at some of the trend areas that are relevant for modern businesses.
Figure 2: Trend examples by trend area
With the growing pace of technological progress and digitalisation, technological innovations impact various industries and aspects of business. They can be used to enhance existing offerings, but also to create completely new categories of products, services, and experiences. For example, AI is widely used across many B2C industries to personalise products and services by learning about the individual preferences of customers. Virtual and Augmented Reality is transforming the education landscape for both children and adults. Beyond customer-facing products and offerings, technologies such as Intelligent Automation can also be broadly used to increase the efficiency of internal business operations such as manufacturing, logistics, and sales.
Many trends originate directly with consumers. On the one hand, these trends are an imperative since consumers are the ultimate buyers of your products and services. On the other hand, they are not always aligned with business interests and profitability. For example, as digital products become more and more ubiquitous in our life, tending to steal away our attention and peace of mind, consumers naturally counteract with new lifestyle trends such as mindfulness, slow movement, and digital detox. The growing awareness of the limitations of our planet, together with inflation and growing living costs, leads to more conscious consumption, simplification, and minimalism. B2C businesses need to be respond to these trends in order to stay relevant and maintain an attractive image among consumers.
With the pressure of global labor shortages and the growing demands of “Gen Z”, employees are becoming more and more outspoken and influential as a business stakeholder. In order to build up strong human capital, companies need to address these demands by offering more flexible models of work (remote, hybrid, etc.), a competitive offering for career development, and a proactive approach to work-life balance. Just as consumer trends, workplace trends can spread over from one industry to another as employees propagate them via social media and word-of-mouth.