Next Gen Futures — Asking What if?
What if every few years you replaced your organs like you do your phone?
What if social media demanded personal exclusivity?
What if you learnt a foreign language in a VR world?
What ifs have been long-established in design, creativity and innovation spaces, the question which becomes a tool for the curious, a tool for transformation and discovery.
I thought I’d write a short article exploring the power of what ifs in my Trend Forecasting process. Whether a platitude or not, I thought it would be worth giving them a mention on what they mean to me.
I’ll start off by saying I never begin an article with a quote, but for some reason today I thought what if I did?
“Beware of unearned wisdom, Karl Jung”
Ah very cringe, just remembered that’s the reason I don’t.
The quote however illustrates a powerful point for me, once a What if is asked, it’s hard to ignore. It’s like a song you get stuck in your head, or a funny comment that makes you laugh whenever you think of it. It has the power to be emotionally sticky in your subconscious.
In fact for me, every What-if can become a powerful trigger, a trigger which has the potential to cheat understanding.
Why? Because a good What if’s is designed to make you uncomfortable, it’s designed to accelerate you through what you know into what you don’t, almost like a portal into a territory of knowledge you don’t truly understand. Yet.
This is why what ifs can cheat understanding, because they can combine complex concepts and theories together, laying a mental path for you to go and work out how you can solve the what if you just asked.
The powerful paradox of knowledge is painfully obvious, you can only know as much as you know. At any given time, no more, no less. So you can only really ask a What ifs at the boundaries of your knowledge…what fun would a what if be if you already knew the answer.
So everyday I try to think of 2–3 what if’s, an exercise using the words I read, the podcasts I listen to, the things other people say to try and cheat myself into greater understanding. I almost ‘flash’ the phrase in tandem with every new piece of knowledge I come across in case it triggers something.
This applies a lot to the way I think about trends, you can have knowledge of a trend, the way it’s travelling, the speed of adoption, the impact in data to tell the story, but this doesn’t always push you further.
So with every one of the innovations and weak signals I spot in culture, I pair with multiple what if’s to push my understanding of them further, jumping into the deep-end embarrassingly out of my depth.
A discovery about the concept of Human IPO’s and crypto tokenization flashes what ifs in brand sponsored education, the future of modern slavery, post-life insurance, fan to brand relationships, tokenising babies futures and NFT pets just to name a few…
And for Brands and businesses, using What-ifs when appropriate is the chance to create something truly innovative and engaging, it’s understanding the adoption of trends and how a brands consumers sits on the curve of innovation, that allows you to time what if’s and lead the conversation.
Take the stats that ‘62% of people furloughed have said they’re ready to start a new business’ and ‘63% (of Gen Z) say they want to be, or are already their own boss’… (Spotify 2020)
These stats signal trends like GenZtrepeneurs and instantpreneurs, and by asking what if’s, you can trigger a portal into near futures instantly.
What if a telecom brand stepped in and connected every GenZtreprenuer on the planet?
What if it gave free data and phones to young entrepreneurs to document their journey?
What if they created a sponsored entrepreneur hype house? Just like the TikTok Hype houses? (This last one has been popping up all over America for 18–24 year olds since I wrote a version 1 of this piece)
What would that campaign look like? Who would be the face of it? How would they launch it?
It’s these questions which can be the building blocks for opportunities and powerful campaigns.
So back to Karl Jung’s quote at the beginning ‘Beware of unearned wisdom’… Maybe What if’s are the portal to that unearned wisdom and understanding, a way to accelerate down a path to answering the what if, even if you don’t know how to get there…yet.
You can see the What if’s I’m asking here.
