3
Our trends report this year is inspired by one of the world’s favorite poems,
“The Road Not Taken”. It’s a poem about choices and the power of storytelling to
make sense of our choices.
As we look forward we see a world where multiple possible futures coexist.
Where the future is not wrien, where it is up to each of us—brands, businesses, and
individuals—to design, innovate, and strive for the future we want to see.
It’s often said that hope is not a strategy; and as we look at the world
around us it is hard sometimes to maintain our optimism about the future.
Nevertheless, our report embraces hope as a conscious choice in a world where
we no longer have time for cynicism.
‘The Futures Less Traveled’ is about the surprising power of small moments
of joy and optimism as acts of faith, rebellion, and resistance.
It is about soft power, and about creativity as a superpower. About what
happens when a generation who have grown up skilled in the art of world building
meet a suite of technologies that make it easier than ever to visualize extraordinary
possible futures. Indeed all the imagery in the report—aside from case studies—
has been created using Generative AI.
Most of all, it is a call to design for the future we want to see. To realize that
it is not wrien and that we are the generations holding the pen.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
ROBERT FROST, THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
