Trend scanning. Horizon scanning. Environmental scanning. Signal collection. This foresight activity goes by many names. But whatever you call it, it is foundational to any innovation project.
The activity involves monitoring public information sources—including news publishers, industry journals, scientific papers, corporate newsrooms, subject matter expert blogs, etc.—to collect insights hinting at emerging trends that may reveal potential business opportunities or risks worth investigating.
Weak vs. Strong signals
For strategic foresight professionals, the goal of this ongoing scanning activity is to collect weak and strong signals.
Weak signals refer to early indicators of potential changes or developments that may have an impact in the future. These can include:
- New products or services entering a noncompetitive market, or evidence of existing things becoming obsolete or novel things emerging.
- Recently uncovered problems or current situations that do not directly affect a specific business, but could potentially have an impact in the future.
- Small innovations or technological advancements that have the potential to grow and mature.
Strong signals refer to more established and significant indicators of potential changes or developments that are likely to have a greater impact. These can include:
- New products or services entering a competitive market, and factors that challenge current beliefs or assumptions and have the potential to grow or mature quickly.
- Early warning indicators that provide a clear indication of a potential change or development on the horizon.
- Significant innovations or technological advancements that are maturing.
Quantumrun signal scanning formats
When done properly, trend scanning is a labor-intensive process. Even with automated Google news feeds, an organization needs one or more team members to regularly curate forward-looking insights from the daily news feeds.
Fortunately, Quantumrun Foresight’s research economies of scale can affordably support your organization’s trend scanning needs. After our analysts understand your core trend-sensing needs, they can deliver research packages in a variety of formats to suit your organization’s budget and research priorities. Some options to consider:
- Review global trend insights by investing in a Business subscription to the Quantumrun Foresight Platform.
- Receive one written trend report and five curated news links each weekday that is customized to your organization’s research priorities by investing in an Enterprise subscription to the Quantumrun Foresight Platform.
- Receive a custom volume of curated research links each week or month made available in an excel spreadsheet or as a custom list on the Quantumrun Foresight Platform.
- Receive a custom volume of curated research each week or month, made available in an excel spreadsheet, that contains custom summaries and metadata columns customized to your organization’s data processing needs.
Where does Quantumrun collect its signals?
Quantumrun Foresight utilizes a sizeable (and growing) database of news publishers, industry journals, scientific papers, corporate newsrooms, subject matter expert blogs that includes both global, regional, and national sources.
Quantumrun analysts work to review each of these sources once a month to harvest worthwhile signals (webpage URLs) that hint at emerging trends that are relevant to the research priorities of Quantumrun clients.
Signal collection training
Collecting signals is not an exact science, and the process is often customized based on specific client needs. However, over many years of doing this work on behalf of clients, Quantumrun analysts have been trained to develop an instinct for discerning impactful signals from ephemeral news. The weak vs. strong signal summary noted above is how teams should ideally organize their signal research internally.
However, for those professionals who are new to signal collection, the Quantumrun team codified some training guidelines below that you and your team can adopt to develop your internal signal curation skillsets.
Original source — Ensure the signal links collected are from the original source. For example, if you find a news article summarizing a major new innovation, find the link to the original announcement that was published in a corporate blog, university page, scientific journal, etc. The only time using the news source is worthwhile is if it adds meaningful and ORIGINAL commentary or insight regarding said innovation.
Impact — When researching signals from different sources, ask yourself the following questions when deciding which links to collect into the Quantumrun platform (or excel document, for clients); Will the news or idea discussed in the article/report:
- Impact or change how the industry/sector operates for years to come, not just in the short term?
- Impact or change how the government (at various levels) and/or the legal system operates for years to come, not just in the short term?
- Impact or change public opinion about a certain topic, sector, cultural practice, or aspect of society at large, for years to come, not just in the short term?
- Impact or change the development of a particular STEM field or even the scientific consensus about a given theory/topic.
- Lead to companies in a given sector hiring more people or changing the way people are hired or who is hired?
- Lead to companies in a given sector firing or laying off people?
- Create new types of jobs or industries?
- Reduce or destroy current jobs or industries?
- Change what people are forced to learn about in school or at work?
- (An exception to the bullets above is if you find a link that is a resource that contains high-quality data (or entire databases) that can be used to build/write trend forecasts within the sector.)
Avoid low-quality signals — When researching signals from different sources, AVOID signal links that:
- Will become old news within one or two weeks? (i.e., quarterly profit announcements; political promises instead of actual passed laws; etc.)
- Discuss weekly, monthly general news about the economy instead of news/trends about a specific sector or group of companies;
- Are overly focused on a single company, unless the company is among the top 1-3 companies in its sector, AND it is doing something interesting, newsworthy, new, that impacts the entire sector/industry it is a part of;
- Feature an individual instead of news/trends related to the sector you are covering;
- Focus on a tiny town instead of a large city or state;
- Avoid links about stock performance;
- Are advice articles or “listicals” instead of news/trends articles;
- Are only two paragraphs long (these articles/reports don’t have enough context to be useful);
- Originates from a low-quality, overtly controversial, obscene, or spam website;
- Is a job ad;
- Was a google results page instead of an article link.
