At the end of last month, I was invited to give a conference and a case study/workshop to Sciencescom’s International Spring School for Masters Students.

The theme of  “Create Your Future” was chosen. One of my favourite workshops.

Teams of 8 students were chosen to work on this theme.

Firstly, I gave a presentation outlining the importance of tracking trends and imagining future scenarios for the development of new products and services, and in turn, new marketing communications.

Then the students were given a Trend dossier containing 4 current trends, together with a list of 10 local Nantaise companies.They had to choose one company and one trend to work with.

By pushing the trend into the future, they had to predict future headlines, then new future user/behavioural scenarios, then new products and services and finally new ways of communicating in the future.

All of this in one afternoon and one morning! When using the right tools and techniques you can be extremely efficient with developing ideas.

Some of the presentations were very creative and pushed the boundaries; others were very interesting in terms of new communication tools.

For example: one group took the winkly a pretty basic dating aid which uses a vibrating technology to let you know that someone within 20 metres is interested in you!

The Sciencescom team working on this project, pushed it way into the future incorporating mind-reading technologies and making the product an implant under the skin, rather than a gadget held in the pocket.

“Their strapline was I’ve got you under my skin!” The mind-reading technology was useful for really knowing if the other person was interested or not. For knowing if they were telling the truth about what they felt and also for knowing their bodily hormonal and biological levels.

So you see, by predicting the future, you can imagine many things…including how to get the man of your dreams!