The secret weapon for seeing the future: weak signals (part 2)

What to do with weak signals?

Picture 1. Weak signals (observations of weird, new things)

So you have spotted a weak signal? Congratulations! The next big question is that what to do with weak signals?

One weak signal does not tell anything about future. It is just a casual observation. The secret is to collect as many weak signals as you can and then start to analyze these signals. It is like connecting the dots between weak signals and finding the bigger picture. With the mass of weak signals, ask the following questions:

• Are there many similar type of weak signals?
• Are there some similarities in the weak signals?
• Could there be an emerging bigger trend that the weak signals are evidence about?

Picture 2: When connecting the purple dots in picture 1. you get a letter T. Combining and connecting weak signals you can find emerging trends.

An imaginary example of observation of weak signals and a trend is, that you read in some media that someone has installed herself a tail (a weak signal). That is a weird thing, you think. Is she crazy, you might wonder.

Some months later you will observe some other cases of this (other weak signals) in some other news channel. This time it is some group of people that have installed themselves tails. Why? Just for fun or to differentiate themselves from the masses. When a time passes, you recognize that more and more people are installing themselves tails and you can actually buy a tail for yourself in the nearest Wallmart (many similar weak signals = a trend). In some companies all the workers get tails, because it improves their effectiveness. You can use a tail as your third hand.

Finally you decide that you need a tail yourself. You do not want to be old-fashioned! And actually, it is quite practical tool for using a mouse in your computer.

A person with a tail (modified picture of StockSnap/ Pixabay)

Well, of course we do not have tails (yet)! But there many stories in the near history where you see weak signals turning to a trend. Mobile phones (smart phones) are a good example of this.

This is a series of writings explaining the idea behind weak signals. The series contains following posts:

Post 1: What is a weak signal?

Post 2 (this post): What to do with weak signals?

Post 3 : Where to find weak signals?

Post 4 : How could organizations use and crowdsource weak signals?

Are you interested about my ideas? If so, you could book my webinar lectures and key-note speeches via my web page www.elinahiltunen.com