Many successful companies have been founded on the back of a new social trend so trend-watching should be part of any aspiring entrepreneur's remit. The Trendwatcher of the Year award (TWOTY09) in Amsterdam, organized by Andrea Wiegman of Second Sights, gave an insight into what trendwatchers think will be the next big thing.  Kees Elands and Renee Maas of TrendsActive outlined some of their predictions for future developments in the online world.

• Social Networking: They expect social networking to collapse into many niche social networking groups, possibly based around particular interests, and closed networks (See SoundCloud for an example of a closed network industry-specific social network).


• Less is more: Many people are currently using online tools like Twitter simply because the tools are there. In the future they will become more selective in how they spend time on various services and will expect them to serve a clearly useful purpose. Stricter criteria will lead to a higher demand for filters of information, word-of-mouth being the filter currently in vogue for Internet-based businesses.


• Internet generations: Baby boomers will start spending much more time online but most social networking sites are not set up with them in mind. So there could be some serious money to be made in services which cater to them.

The upcoming talent award winner Anna Sulimma’s top trend is the changing role of men and women in the workplace and the home. She thinks that people want to have a home again, not just a career. This will lead to men (and women) working less and spending more time on childcare. In Germany 3.8 million men are expected to be involved in childcare by 2020. In general there will be more emphasis on working flexibly in order to have a life as well as a job.

Irene Koel of Bloei, which won the trend implementation agency of the year, make extensive drawings and illustrations of trends. Being an entrepreneur herself (Bloei creates its own products as well as developing concepts for other companies) and works with many startups. She finds startups great fun to work with but they often have trouble seeing beyond the minutiae of the product and are not used to thinking big. Her own team is a mix of creatives and operational staff since you need both in order to get things done. The same is probably true of successful startup teams.

Her advice to any new entrepreneur is to initially work from home, possibly hanging on to a day job of some kind, and spend very little money until you are sure that your concept will work. She recalls how, for the first nine months of her company’s existence, they had meetings in hotel lobbies in order to avoid inviting clients to Bloei's (then non-existent) office.