Where do you currently go to predict the future?
Trend reports, events, conferences, labs, brainstorming away days, certain trusted writers, bloggers and Influencers? Are you finding that these sources are not so much full of dependable predictions but are acting more like shareable content that enables you to be just enough in the know. Just enough in the know for you to be able to spin a plausible future narrative from it?
Perhaps the very notion of ‘the future’ is now out of date. In itself a linear based construct that might belong to a different time? Perhaps the best we can do is work out how to ‘let the uncertainty of the outside in’. In the creative sector there broadly seems to currently be 3 paths to do just that:
– Identify and acquire the talent from the without – like opening up to and engaging with Start Ups
– Build and the innovate the capacity from the within – like building your own labs and think tank
– Attract and hire Influencers on the outside – to help you stimulate your target audience and demographics
We now believe that there is now an additional new path which is to identify and engage ‘Propellers’? Propellers are unique types of Thought Leaders who are daily spending their lives practically experimenting, absorbing, iterating, challenging, risking in the “Almost Now” of whatever the sector they are engaged and expert in. What further defines a Propeller is that they are finely attuned to and deeply understand at least 3 out of the 4 fundamental characteristics of the Almost Now which are:
– Unquestioned Truisms: the assumptions within the present day focus, trends and fascinations that are currently not getting examined or questioned
– Uncharted Territories: the places, spaces and concepts that have yet to hit the mainstream awareness that the Propeller has already observed and to a degree is fluent and fluid in
– Unpredictable Turbulence: the dynamics and forces that lie round the corner that could divert the Almost Now of a disrupted sector into another direction
– Unknown Tectonics: The currently unknowable that might radically alter and re-frame the very foundations in which to navigate the sector
Whatever the Path you choose, you want a variety of Propellers creating a new space for the Almost Now where these Unquestioned Truisms, Uncharted Territories, Unpredictable Turbulence and Unknown Tectonics of the Almost Now are at least considered before you go ahead and engage with the uncertainty of the future
In that sense, Propellers can be viewed and engaged with, to de-risk future uncertainty. Like canaries in their particular coal mines, who not just sniff but utilise the wind and can communicate this back to you, before you have invested too much around the trajectory or direction of your future planning and strategy.
In short Propellers, if correctly identified and recruited, increase the probabilities of success and may just be the new emerging category of Influencers essential to any business now trying to navigate the uncertainty of a disrupted sector.
If you would like to talk to us particularly about how you can use The Almost Now to identify engage with Propellers please visit The Almost Now