Trends
The course on trends and their effects on businesses have been helpful to me as a future manager. This is because I have learnt the importance of integrating these trends in business operations and strategy formulation. A key issue that has been highlighted in the course of this study is that most business managers do not know how to integrate information they already have on emerging trends into their managerial decisions. However, this behavior should be avoided as it can result in a business losing its competitive edge in the market.
Among the ways I have learnt that trends can be used in business decision making include three important approaches: infusing and augmenting, combining and transcending, and counteracting and reaffirming. Infusing and augmenting involves creation of new products that retain a majority of an older product’s attributes but incorporates some aspects of the emerging trends. Combining and transcending will involve a company combining aspects of a product’s attributes with those of emerging trends to come up with a new product. While counteracting and reaffirming involves maintaining attributes of a product that help consumers avoid negative aspects of a trend.
Trends are like the waves in an ocean, the captain of a ship may have decided to commandeer the vessel in a certain route but once the waves come, the captain has to either change the route or risk losing the vessel. Same thing happens with trends, they should be researched and decisions made based on information gotten about them. This course has equipped me with the knowledge required to become an effective manager in terms of analyzing emerging trends and incorporating information I acquire about them in my managerial decisions.
