Why and How to Use a Trend Radar

You are certainly aware of how important it is to look into the future. Perhaps you also already have an idea of how you can do so or are already working on it. But do you also know how to understand, interpret and use what you see there for your own corporate strategy?

Collecting, assessing, evaluating, and structuring the latest trends and emerging technologies can be a major challenge that many are not up to. In addition to collecting, analyzing, and understanding trends and emerging technologies, smart insights also need to be mapped into the relevant organizational environment to be truly useful. 

What is a trend?

Trends are expressions of new consumer attitudes, expectations, or behaviors, and present consumer and market shifts that drive new change. These shifts indicate market PULL and guide innovators in knowing what consumers need, desire, and occasionally demand. Emerging Technologies refer to the development of new, emerging, and evolving technologies. These developments are designed either in response to needs or as a precursor to nascent demands, and so represent a market PUSH. Driven by R&D and innovation, these are the tools capable of meeting—and sometimes creating—new needs, desires, and demands. The ability to visualize the PUSH and PULL of trends and emerging technologies, respectively, enables functional and time-saving interpretations and consensus.

What is a trend radar?

A radar is a tool that assists with these processes by allowing you to view trends and technologies using specific criteria. This method uses pre-defined indicators that enable quick and easy understanding and decision-making. Being able to visualize trend and emerging technology data in a manner that allows specific views, filtering, linking, and relating of different data to each other provides a helpful perspective on opportunity spaces. 

Why is trend management important?

Trend management refers to systems, tools, and techniques that collect the correct data, organize it in a structured and helpful manner, enable the straightforward processing of data, and allow for collaboration to gain intelligence. 

Organizing and structuring trend data in a manner that allows your organization to garner intelligence is crucial. A lack of proper organization might leave teams confused and unable to take impactful action. For Trend and Emerging Technology data to be helpful, analysis, filtering, and clustering should result in being able to develop scenarios so that organizations are best equipped to prepare for all eventualities. If not, the data remains interesting but ineffective for innovation. Structured, methodical, and continuous trend management is required to support environmental scanning activities. 

Moving from intelligence to action requires evaluation processes, discussion, and opportunity space identification. Demand-driven trend evaluation is purposeful in many cases, but if no regular intervals for evaluation are defined, there is a risk that opportunities and threats might be missed. The continuous evaluation of trends can be hindered by ineffective management tools and processes and may lead to unnecessary manual labor demands.

How to create a trend radar

A trend radar should be set up with pre-defined categorization criteria that help you visualize thematic segmentation, relationships, ratios, potential value, impact, and/or maturity levels. Defining your criteria should relate to the trends in question, as well as to your individual, organizational variables. These contextual clustering criteria should help translate complex data into easily digestible intelligent insights that enable better decision-making by filtering information from internal and external experts and sources. 

Consider both the segments of your trend radar and the distance from the center that allows for a comparative analysis perspective. The ITONICS Trend Radar provides dynamic views that can be configured and reconfigured quickly and easily to give you a variety of views using different evaluation criteria.

Teams across geographies and organizational divisions can easily use digital trend radar tools to view information in ways that pertain specifically to them. Collaborative efforts and the communication of intelligence are practical and useful across organizations through the use of trend radars.  

Also see: How to Create Your Trend and Technology Radar in 5 Minutes

How to navigate the pre-rated ITONICS Trend Radar

The ITONICS Showroom contains 94 trends curated and pre-analyzed by our analyst team. The Trend Radar uses STEEP segmentation to indicate where the most signals for the trend are coming from. Each trend can be viewed according to various metrics, including:

• Potential Impact
• Scope
• Adoption Stage
• Business Relevance
• Need for Action
• Status
• Strategic Fit
• Time to Market Impact

These criteria can be set using the configuration options found under settings and allow various information clusters to be viewed instantly. 

Also see: 10 Factors to Help You Evaluate a New Trend

Selecting an individual trend from the radar will provide in-depth information within an element card, including rating options and linked signals. The trends in the ITONICS Showroom contain ITONICS Ratings that indicate penetration, scope, and adoption metrics. 

Our team of analysts uses advanced query and the ITONICS Insights tool to garner the relevant information alongside our research and statistically derive the Ratings from quantifiable historical and present data. Each trend is rated on Scope, Potential Impact, Time to Market Impact, and Adoption Stage. The remainder of the ratings provide the opportunity for organizations to rate and evaluate trends measured against tailored organizational variables. 

You will also be able to view all the connections for a particular trend to other trends that are related through similar or associated tags. This allows you to view all trends on the radar connected through similar themes and relevance filters. 

FAQs:

How to use the ITONICS Radar?
How to create a Radar Visualization of Industry Trends?
How to configure my Radar Views?
What is a Radar View?

How to navigate the pre-rated ITONICS Technology Radar

The ITONICS Showroom consists of 81 pre-analyzed technologies. The Emerging Technology Radar uses industry segmentation to indicate where the most signals for the technology are coming from. Each technology can be viewed according to various metrics, including:

• Technology Readiness Level
• Need for Action
• Internal Know-How
• Technology Attractiveness
• Complexity
• Potential Impact
• Scope
• Status 

These criteria can be set using the configuration options found under settings and allow various information clusters to be viewed instantly. 

Also see: 10 Factors to Help You Evaluate a New Technology

Selecting an individual emerging technology from the radar will provide in-depth information within an element card, including rating options and linked signals. The emerging technologies in the ITONICS Showroom contain ITONICS Ratings that indicate how widely technologies have been developed, how the developments could influence industries, and the current appetite for the solution the technology provides. 

Our team of analysts uses advanced queries and the ITONICS Insights tool to garner the relevant information alongside our research and statistically derive the ratings from quantifiable historical and present data. Each technology is rated on Scope, Potential Impact, Complexity, and Technology Readiness Level (TRL). The remainder of the ratings provides the opportunity for organizations to rate and evaluate technologies measured against tailored organizational variables and capabilities. 

You will also be able to view all the connections for a particular technology to other technologies that are related through similar or associated tags. This allows you to view all technologies on the radar that are connected through similar themes and relevance filters. 

To learn more about ITONICS Radar and how our innovation management software can streamline your processes, get a free demo.