On trend : the business of forecasting the future

"Based on the largely unseen business of trends such as trend forecasting, cool hunting, professional futurism, and "design thinking," On Trends uncovers how rapid sociocultural transformations transformed from existential threat to business opportunity, as a class of professionals emerged to identify, anticipate, and marketize cultural change. Devon Powers uses dozens of interviews with trend and futurist professionals of the past and present around the world, archival research, participant observation at trend and futurology conferences, and in-depth engagement with both scholarly and business literatures to provide a historically-grounded account of how the trend became one of the most powerful forces in global consumer culture. In doing so, she supplies provocative new insight into some of the most pressing dynamics of our current age: the excitement and fear that accompany contemplating the future, the promise and perils of nonstop innovation, and our increasingly paradoxical relationship with cultural prediction"--