Why firms fail to leverage trends

This month’s HBR has an article titled: “Trends that could shake up your business.”

The commentary that interested me was that explaining why companies fail to leverage trends – like sticking their sand in sand and hoping the population ageing will go away.

The authors site three reasons.

1. Ignoring trends that originate outside their markets – the “it doesn’t affect us” argument
2. Respond to a trend in a superficial way – something I see every day of the week as companies launch countless ‘projects’ when they should be taking a roots and branch view of their strategy
3. Waiting too long – this is the “there is always something more important to do” argument

These reasons are spot on and go a long way to explaining the idiotic lack of urgency that businesses have towards population ageing.

Good grief, if only demographics was as sexy as climate change we would have made so much more progress by now. When you think that the outcomes of demographic change are an order of magnitude more certain than those of climate change it makes you want to weep. Dick Stroud