Why does progress need a cohesive vision?

Building on the 15-year legacy of Fjord Trends, This year’s trend report: Accenture Life Trends 2023, has identified emerging trends that will influence the power dynamic between brands and customers in the coming 12 months and beyond.

Mark Curtis is the Head of Innovation and Thought Leadership at Accenture Song and we spoke with Mark about what these trends matter and how the report has evolved over time.

The trends report is important because it helps our clients articulate something that is going on in their world that they didn’t have the words for. And that is really satisfying to me personally because I see the impact it has on people when we are called to present the trends or to dive deeper into a specific trend.

This is my eleventh year doing the trends report, and it’s always been about a way to frame for our clients what’s going on and why that matters. What shifts and forces affect what they think, what they design, and the experiences they deliver. That’s the constant.

Back in 2008 when we started, there were a lot of new consumer-focused innovations like the iPhone, the integration of GPS into phones, emergent social media channels, and sophisticated web platforms. The way consumers interacted with technology shifted very fast, making it incredibly difficult to stay on top of.

Our clients needed guidance to tread through the changing landscape.

Two things changed over time. The first one is that the hardware has stabilized. We get better photography and faster devices, but we see less radical changes in what a phone can do. And the second one is that about six or seven years ago, without really intending to first, we began to introduce more social issues and themes. We definitely began to perceive that the purpose of companies and the morality and ethics of what they do were becoming more important topics for consumers. Now, I think we have a good balance between technology and intention.

While the trends have changed, the process of processing and collecting them remained consistent for over a decade. Our idea of producing content that reflects the intersection between humans and technology and business hasn’t changed either.

Before Covid, we used to go to every studio and talk with people. Literally, the teams would present to us their thoughts and ideas face to face and that interaction was exciting because you can riff off other people’s ideas more easily than on teams. It was really energizing and inspiring to go to Stockholm and Sao Paulo in the same week, see the presentations, notice the differences, and really understand what was happening more generally.

But those days are gone. From a time perspective, or even from a sustainability perspective, flying all over the world couldn’t be justified anymore. The quality has not been affected;

Now, we are even more conscious of what it means to be globally relevant.

We are talking to people in China and India and Argentina as much as we are talking to people in London and Los Angeles. We have to be more culturally sensitive to a variety of different feelings and opinions, which I think has made the trends even more interesting and true to a larger audience.

For me personally, sustainability is a top interest area, followed closely by the metaverse and AI. But when you collect opinions from around the world, you see the wide breadth of ideas that spark innovation. Every year, I am always surprised by new technology, behavior, or ideas that spark my imagination. Long may it continue.

Follow Mark on Linkedin, and read the report.