The Flywheel / Research / 01 Trends

01Research · the first step

Trends

Find the signal in the noise: what people in your spaces increasingly want, rising or falling.

The Compass: cover

The tool for this step

The Compass

Find the signal in the noise. See which trends are rising or falling in the spaces you care about, who is driving them, and which way to go.

How to use The Compass →
Download the CompassPDF · 3 pages: cover, board, how to use it

What it is

You listen. Trends finds the signal in the noise: in the spaces the owner chooses, it watches where people talk, what is written about them, and the data, every day or at whatever rhythm the owner sets.

What you are listening for is a fluid trend: something people in one vertical increasingly want, before it is obvious. Garages want predictive maintenance. People want analogue experiences, and snail-mail clubs are growing. A trend is always driven by humans, and it is always heading somewhere: rising or falling, in how much people talk about it and in how they feel about it.

The filter is simple and strict: behaviour, never opinions. “I would totally pay for that” is noise. “I have been doing this by hand every week” is signal.

How to run it

Step 1Choose the spacesThe owner decides what to look at, and how often to update. Everything else follows from that.
Step 2Find where they talkSubreddits, Substacks, Telegram channels, forums, newsletters, news and data: start from a default list, keep adding, and rate each source for how useful it has been.
Step 3Climb from events to trendsAn event is one thing that happened. Events that say the same thing are a pattern. A pattern that keeps repeating is a signal. A signal that keeps repeating is a trend.
Step 4Recommend a directionIn this vertical, people want this. The owner says follow it, or not yet, and can tweak anything.

Keep as many trends as the owner wants, each with its heading, its early adopters, their own words, and what would change your mind.

What you produce

The Compass: find the signal in the noise. See which trends are rising or falling in the spaces you care about, who is driving them, and which way to go.

Examples

A

Four hobbies, one current

Snail-mail clubs, sticker collecting, paper journaling and vinyl look like four unrelated hobbies. Clustered, they point at one want: analogue experiences in a digital world. Talk about it was rising, and the feeling was warm. That became the direction.

Where it goes wrong

  • Opinions instead of behaviourWhat people say they would do is noise. What they already do, again and again, is signal.
  • Calling an event a trendOne post is an anecdote. Only a pattern that keeps repeating, from more than one source, is a trend.
  • Watching the wrong placesIf you only read what your own industry reads, you hear what everyone hears. Go where these people actually talk.
  • Falling in love with a trendWrite what would change your mind before the evidence arrives, or you will bend the evidence to fit.

What it hands on

Trends never leave the Compass; they keep moving there. The Storyboard watches them from the moment one starts to form, and finds the people driving it.