Comments on: Links in a chain: How it all fits together http://www.connectioneconomy.com/2007/02/15/links-in-a-chain-how-it-all-fits-together/ Blogging about Tomorrow's world Today Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:41:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: dneville http://www.connectioneconomy.com/2007/02/15/links-in-a-chain-how-it-all-fits-together/comment-page-1/#comment-20547 dneville Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:09:49 +0000 http://www.tmtd.biz/2007/02/15/links-in-a-chain-how-it-all-fits-together/#comment-20547 Thanks Graeme - A really interesting and challenging thought. One aspect I would like to pick up from your blog is the concept of identifying and watching societal trends. I am really interested to see where such trends come from - are we as South Africans recipients of trends coming out of the US? This appears to be the case on some fronts, like the entertainment media and music. On the other hand some of the issues arising in Europe impact the prevalent ideas in Southern Africa. An example here is the recent Pew Research Centre report (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/278/a-portrait-of-generation-next) on 18-25 year olds which revealed that more and more young people are living at home until a later age. This seems to be the same scenario for Southern Africa, which poses some challenging questions for us. If young people are living at home for longer, then they are getting married and having children at a later age. What impact will this have on schooling and parenting over the coming years. I would be interested to hear from you how you follow societal trends - what do you measure. In a discussion with author and trend-spotter Lennard Sweet recently, I asked him how he identified coming trends. His response was that he would walk into a bookstore or newsagent and randomly pick ten magazines which he would then read and study. He would then look for commonalities between what these magazines are covering. An interesting idea ... Do you know of any organization doing qualitative or quantitative research on societal trends in Africa? Thanks Graeme – A really interesting and challenging thought. One aspect I would like to pick up from your blog is the concept of identifying and watching societal trends. I am really interested to see where such trends come from – are we as South Africans recipients of trends coming out of the US? This appears to be the case on some fronts, like the entertainment media and music. On the other hand some of the issues arising in Europe impact the prevalent ideas in Southern Africa. An example here is the recent Pew Research Centre report (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/278/a-portrait-of-generation-next) on 18-25 year olds which revealed that more and more young people are living at home until a later age. This seems to be the same scenario for Southern Africa, which poses some challenging questions for us. If young people are living at home for longer, then they are getting married and having children at a later age. What impact will this have on schooling and parenting over the coming years.

I would be interested to hear from you how you follow societal trends – what do you measure. In a discussion with author and trend-spotter Lennard Sweet recently, I asked him how he identified coming trends. His response was that he would walk into a bookstore or newsagent and randomly pick ten magazines which he would then read and study. He would then look for commonalities between what these magazines are covering. An interesting idea … Do you know of any organization doing qualitative or quantitative research on societal trends in Africa?

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