Predict The Future
Want to know everything that's going to happen this year in your industry? Here's how.
The start of each year is full of such hope and promise.
After the Christmas break you get to slowly ease back into the working rhythm. Yes, yes, of course things will pick up again soon and the email onslaught will return, your calendar will overflow, and that list of to-dos will stack up. But for right now, let’s just enjoy the beginning of a fresh calendar year as much as we can.
One way to do this is by using some of the expanded headspace to plan, think, dream and strategise. Something I adore doing at the start of every year is trying to predict where the next twelve months are going to go. Some of this is based on hunch and history, but a lot is from data.
Every year a team of smart strategists around the world do something pretty awesome: they collect all the predictions from some of the world’s most switched-on companies and put them into one shared Google drive. Shout out and thanks to Amy Daroukakis, Iolanda Varvalho, Ci En Lee and Gonzalo Gregori.
If you’ve been reading OUTLET for a while you’ll know this was my Useful Thing at the start of 2024 and 2023 (in fact, it was the topic of the very first newsletter post I wrote!).
However this year we are going one step further as we now have powerful new tools to help us analyse this information better than we ever have. It’s absolutely wild to think these tools did not really exist just two years ago.
This month’s tool is one of my favourite and most useful things I love sharing every year, so here it is:
One Useful Thing for January 2025: Google Drive of 2025 Predictions
You can access the entire Google drive of over 200 trend reports here.
What I love so much about these reports is that no one ever gets access to this kind of information all in one place. If you’re lucky, you might see one or two of these presentations, but being able to have them all in one place really is a real intellectual gold mine.
These hundreds of trend reports come from companies like Accenture, Google, Spotify, PwC, Publicis, Nielsen, Microsoft, Meta, McKinsey, JP Morgan, Ipsos, Infosys, Hilton, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Adobe and more.
It also doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you can use this knowledge like a crystal ball to predict what’s going to happen in almost every industry imaginable. You just need to search through it to find a topic that interests you - from travel to social media, retail to technology - and read the insiders’ report.
If you really have time to dive deep into it, you can also look back at the historical folders of the 2023, 2022 or 2021 reports as well to see how some of the predictions have fared and evolved.
How to use this: If you want to get the most of this wealth of information, this is how I suggest you can best use it:
Go into the Google Drive and scroll until you find a topic or company that interests you (and with over 200 presentations, that shouldn’t be too hard).
View or download the presentations most relevant to you.
Find some quiet time to read through them without any distractions, takings notes and absorbing the information.
Once you’ve read through your favourites, upload a small number into your an AI program to gain even more useful insights from it. For this I like to use NotebookLM, the extremely powerful tool by Google that I wrote about here.
To give you an example, I downloaded around a dozen of the reports that were most relevant to me, and uploaded them to my own Notebook. I was then able to interrogate and ask questions about all of the content collectively. I asked it - based on the sources I uploaded - what the 5 biggest trends for 2025 for me? This is what it said:
AI Everywhere: AI is becoming deeply embedded in all aspects of life, operating invisibly in the background to optimise experiences and drive efficiency
Yearning for Authenticity: As a counterbalance to increasing digitalisation, there's a powerful drive towards genuine human connection and real-world experiences.
The "Slow" Movement: Individuals are pushing back against the "hustle culture" mentality, embracing a "slow" approach to life that prioritises wellbeing, mindful living, and work-life balance
Fragmentation & Fluidity: The concept of a unified global village is fading, replaced by a more fragmented and fluid landscape.
Co-creation & Cultural Currency: Brands are increasingly engaging in co-creation, collaborating with consumers, creators, and communities to develop products and experiences.
Not bad, huh?
Note that getting AI to pull out trends and summarise the content shouldn’t stop you from still reading it yourself. Instead it can help you better navigate your way around the content, but you should always look at the sources themselves for deeper information. The ability to be able to have an interactive conversation with the content you choose is phenomenal, but it’s only as good as the source material you feed it.
A note of caution too: please remember that sometimes predictions and trend forecasting can be very self-serving. Keep in mind hidden or self-motivated agendas and read them with a curious but aware mind.
These 200+ presentations are a real treasure trove of insights and I seriously hope you and your team get lost in it for days. It’s one of the most useful tools you can have for the year ahead.
I’m currently in London in the middle of my UK Book Tour. Last week I visited the UK regions of Birmingham, Manchester and Milton Keynes, and this week am hitting up three different dates across London with x+why. You can follow along on my Instagram here.
It is definitely cold here in January - however there’s also something kinda romantic about the snow, the gloves, the jackets and beanies. But then, that’s easy to say when I’m just visiting…
After this I’m meeting my husband in Thailand to heat up again on our slow journey back to Australia for a few weeks next month.
I hope you have an excellent start to the year, and thank you for being part of the OUTLET community. Please share this newsletter with friends or colleagues you think would enjoy getting One Useful Thing share with them each month.
Until next time,
Tim
Another great edition Tim. Will definitely be diving deeper into this. I’m also a big fan of the Slow movement.