Lesson Identifying Parts of a Whole

1 and Emerging Patterns in

Trends
It was the great Aristotle who first claimed that the whole is not equal to the
sum of the parts, and conversely, the sum of the parts is not equal to the whole. But
the proponent of the idea of atom, who is Democritus, somehow believed that the
parts are of great significance in understanding the essence of the whole. As a trend
was born because of an idea of an individual or groups of individuals, and these
become prevalent, growing and evolving in the course of time, it is but crucial for us
to trace the movement of these growth, expansions and evolutions of trends.

What’s In

Directions: What comes to your mind when you hear the words “emerging trends”?
Organize your thoughts using the concept map below. Write your answers on a
separate sheet of paper.

Emerging
Trends

3
 What’s New

Directions: Explain the following key terms and ideas using your own words. Write
your answers on a separate sheet of paper.

1. mobile age
________________________________________________________________________

2. crisis in water and food

________________________________________________________________________

3. technology race
________________________________________________________________________

4. competing BRIC and beyond (BRIC is a group acronym for Brazil, Russia,
India and China)
________________________________________________________________________

5. influence of me and we
________________________________________________________________________

6. rise of new power brokers

________________________________________________________________________

7. interdependence and competition across industries

________________________________________________________________________

8. own the new consumers

________________________________________________________________________

9. generation gap
________________________________________________________________________

10. tension of globalization and destruction

________________________________________________________________________

4
 What is It

Identifying Parts of a Whole

Trends as they grow and evolve tend to influence or give birth to other trends
and become interconnected and interrelated. It was mentioned in the previous
modules that trends are formed from the combination of things. Thus, a trend has
constituent parts of portions that are interrelated. Their influence, as well as how
the people adopt them, makes the trend viable, especially the megatrends and
gigatrends.

Take as example the Japanese animation (animé) trend that is associated with
several generations spanning decades. In retrospect, Urgel (2017) illustrated the
popularity of anime which was brought about by a number of developments such as
the ones shown below.

Manga (Japanese
Emergence of otaku Home video
Japanese pop music comics) and other
(enthusiasts) availability
adaptations

Artistic
Widespread
experimentation and
syndication
stylistic expansion

Information sharing
Movie Industry through the internet

Animé Development of
Electronic subtitling subcultures

Influences from Walt

Digital piracy
Disney films

Popularity of seiyuu Penetration of

(voice actors) international market

Animation technology Rise of Animation Cosplaying

English Dubbing
and innovation studios

5
 Visual culture is another example that we experience today. It was developed
from various trends─ digital camera, smartphone, internet, Wi-Fi technology, social
media, mobile apps, computer, fashion, art, photography, to name a few. Internet
memes, infographics, and sharable videos seemed to be a microtrend only, but they
eventually became a mainstay in disseminating information. Even large news
organizations and government websites use them. This visual culture trend which
can be considered a megatrend, has evolved further with the advent of the internet.
The smartphone and Wi-Fi access greatly helped the new form of visual culture which
is subscribed to by many social media users, if not all.

Remember that microtrends can become macrotrends if they affect more lives
and societies. Then, macrotrends can become a megatrend if it can affect a much
larger group for a longer period like a decade. Megatrends can become gigatrends if
they have everlasting effects and influences. Therefore, it is evident that the whole
which comprises the large part is made up of small things or parts. This can be
visualized below:
This was once a
microtrend which
Smart began as an idea of
Televisions connecting small
groups of people
via local area
network (LAN) and
eventually evolved
into an inter-
World network (internet)
which was
Cashless
Transactions Wide Productivity
Tools
popularly known
Web as the world-wide-
web. Now it was a
gigatrend.

Smartphone was Same is true with Social

also once a Media. It was once a
Smartphones
microtrend but microtrend and currently
then became a is in between being a
megatrend and megatrend and gigatrend
currently is iPhone considering the scope of
Android
already considered its influence and effects
a gigatrend. to people’s lives.

Twitter

Mobile Apps
Productivity and Games
(Word, Excel etc)

Facebook
Social Instagram
Media
Games

My
Space
6
Identifying Emerging Patterns

By simply looking at the previous diagram, you will somehow have an idea on
identifying emerging patterns of a trend. Urgel (2017) defined pattern as a design,
shape, form or configuration that emerges from repetitious appearance of lines,
curves, and behavior. According to him, in the study of trends, repetitive behavior
that gives rise to an emerging pattern is the main interest.
In order to follow and observe if a pattern emerges out of various events and
phenomena, one should have the tools necessary to detect it. According to Rehn and
Lindkvist (2013), the tools that a trend spotter should find handy to use are
categorized into four activities which are as follows:

1. Documentation means being able to record your observations which you consider
related to any trend. The primary tools for documentation, however simple, are
notebook and pen. Some opt to use note-taking features or apps on a smartphone or
tablet. The camera has also become necessary in providing visuals. Others bring a
voice recorder which is best for saving audio. Whatever tool one uses, the important
thing in documentation is the ability to physically keep information and data
wherever and whenever you may be.

Notebook and pen are basic in documentation.

2. Archive or Memory is used to easily retrieve any documentation you have kept.
Notes can be scanned or converted to a portable document format (PDF) while digital
pictures can be easily saved. Physical archiving can, of course, still be used. There
are various digital archiving systems that are available, too. Tagging and cross-
indexing are helpful in labeling files.

3. Analysis is the stage where examination and combination happen. Looking for
patterns on prospective trends can be achieved through these methods:
brainstorming, grouping, and crafting combinations. In brainstorming, you decide
which from your data is important and which can be discarded. Here, you can
confirm emerging patterns like events becoming more frequent and things following
a cycle. In grouping, you create headings where observations and data can fall under
several categories. In crafting combinations, you begin to link one thing to another
and think what could happen if these are taken step further, more like imagining or
generating new ideas. The above diagram presenting the evolutionary aspect of a
trend is an example for this analysis.

7
4. Presentation is representing your findings for easy understanding as a way of
analysis. You can represent your findings through, among others, a mood board and
a storyboard. A mood board is a collage of images, text, and object samples. This is
used to capture your intuition and stimulate creative discussions about trends. A
storyboard presents a narrative of possible scenarios. It functions to connect trends
to a timeline and to different contexts, something that can enable you and others to
see interesting new things. A slideshow is also another option. Sometimes, new
trends are labeled with new names or terms in the hope of popularizing a
phenomenon. Again, the sample diagram presented above is an example of this
consisting of the linkages of the influences of the root trend to the development of
new trends within the link plus the explanatory analysis.

Identifying emerging patterns can be used to introduce to individuals,

organizations, and communities change, improvement, transformation and new
opportunities.
Once patterns are identified, trends are given rational explanations for their
emergence or existence and are provided with a better understanding of their cultural
origins.

Differentiating Relationships between Causes and Consequences

A cause refers to an agent that brings about a result or a consequence. A

consequence is always traceable to a cause which can be a person, thing, principle,
motive, act, or event. There is no cause without a consequence and vice versa. (Urgel,
2017)
Let us try to look at some of the popular fashion trends among the teenagers
these days ranging from hairstyles, clothing, and music preferences to mention a
few. Clearly a number of them, if one will try to observe, were patterned from a
dominant and prevailing trend. To date, Korean fashion trends is quite widespread
in the country. In fact, you can watch from the news almost every beginning of the
year in a certain portion of those news about the fashion trend for the year. In other
words, these news in the media somehow sets these so – called fashion trends which
will then be the baseline of fashion sales of the business sectors in the market. People
then especially the young and those who wanted to “fit in” to these popularized trends
would eventually patronize them. For almost a number of years already, Korean
culture became popular in the country especially among the young. With this, if we
will look around us, it resulted to the establishments of Korean restaurants, Korean
mini marts which boosted the small – scale entrepreneurship business. In terms of
travel, Korea became one of the popular lists for Filipino tourists.
This cause and consequential aspect of a trend does not only cover the
example mentioned above, in fact, it covers all types of trends in all categories such
as in ideologies, politics, beliefs, lifestyle, social life and many others. One simply
need to identify the emerging patterns and look at the causal and consequential
relations of these patterns in order to understand these trends.

8
 The string of events characterizing a trend can exemplify the cause-
consequence relationship where one event may lead to another and so on. A cause
brings about one or more consequences which may be either positive or negative.
Whatever the results of a cause, the events that are noted in each result will help
produce a picture of a trend which is studied to be adopted in many life applications.
The relationship between cause and consequence is salient to strategic thinking and
analysis.

What’s More

Directions: Answer the following questions:

1. What do you think are the parts that gave way to selfie phenomenon? Explain
each part briefly.

2. Why is it useful to identify emerging patterns in looking for a trend? Cite two
examples and explain your answer concisely.

3. How will you face the new challenges brought about by global and emerging
trends in the 21st century? Please support your answer.