Organic Trends

I was recently asked 'Who sets trends nowadays?' which immediately got me thinking 'Who? are you being serious!?' I laughed and laughed.

In a way, trends are simply recycled, particularly in fashion and music, because inherent in those categories is a universal element, with the force to reoccur. However, trends in technology, lifestyles and behaviours are arguably more future-focussed. They are organic, evolving and growing via innovation, creativity and differentiation as disruption, to appeal to, or are harnessed from, consumer need. Consumer need creates the seed and trends evolve to popularity and whether they are fleeting or otherwise, this happens organically, like evolutionary theory. For example, mini-discs appealed to the consumer need for mass portable music storage and playback and evolved to encompass static midi players and in-car devices, however, this trend tailed off. Survival of the fittest indeed! MP3 players disrupted the market to provide a better solution to the original consumer need and mini-discs were duly consigned to the history books.