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Futures · Explore

Trend impact assessment

Takes the list of trends everyone agrees are happening and works out which two actually touch your business. Most trend work fails by staying at the list.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
02 Explore
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Early startup → Large organisation
Time
Two hours, once you have a trend list

What it is

A filter applied to a list of trends to establish which ones actually affect a specific business and a specific decision. It exists because trend scanning is easy and produces long lists, while working out what any of it means is hard and usually skipped.

The trend
Stated as an observable change with a direction, not as a theme. "AI" is a theme; "customers increasingly research trade purchases on video before buying" is a trend.
Mechanism
How it reaches you: demand, price, cost, regulation, talent, channel or capital. If you cannot name the mechanism, it does not touch you.
Timing
When the effect becomes material. Rated separately from size, because the response to soon-and-small differs entirely from later-and-large.
Magnitude
How much it would move revenue, margin or risk if it played out. Estimated in your numbers rather than described as high or low.
Exposure
How much this particular business is affected relative to the sector, given its customers, geography and cost base.
Indicator
What you would watch to know it is arriving, and how often. Turns a trend into something monitored rather than something noted.
The mistake people makeProducing an impact score by multiplying likelihood, magnitude and timing collapses genuinely different situations into the same number. Keep timing separate — it is the axis that determines whether you act now or watch.
What it’s forYou have a list of trends and need to know which actually touch your business.
What it’s not forYou are trend-collecting rather than deciding. This tool needs a decision to serve.

How you run it

  1. Attach the assessment to a decisionTrend work without a decision to serve becomes an annual document. Name what this is meant to inform before you start.
  2. Translate the trend into a mechanismHow would this actually reach your P&L — through demand, cost, regulation, talent or channel? A trend with no mechanism is a headline.
  3. Rate timing separately from magnitudeA large effect in fifteen years and a modest one next year require completely different responses, and averaging them into an impact score hides that.
  4. Assess your specific exposureSector-level trends land unevenly. Your customer mix, geography and cost structure determine whether a sector trend is your trend.
  5. Give the survivors an indicatorFor the two that matter, what would you watch to know it is arriving? Everything else you can now stop thinking about, which is the point.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A list of candidate trends from a scan or report
  • A specific decision the assessment must serve
  • Data on your own exposure

You’ll end up with

  • Each trend rated for relevance, timing and magnitude
  • The two that would change a decision
  • A leading indicator for each

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAdjacency mapAnalysis planAnsoff matrix