TrendBaby - my favorite AI tool for innovation

I had the pleasure to interview Reinier Evers, founder and CEO of TrendWatching (one of the world’s leading trend firms), on what is fast becoming my favorite AI tool for ideation and innovation for B2C clients.

Q: The first time I felt genuinely excited about generative AI was during TrendWatching's recent webinar and announcement of TrendBaby - please can you share the premise of this new innovation tool along with why consumer brands should get excited about this?!

A: So happy to hear that!

Our mission is to empower business professionals and B2C brands with the trend intelligence they need to inspire meaningful innovation - We also believe that transforming that inspiration into actionable ideation is crucial. One of the most exciting applications of AI we observed last year was its ability to generate new ideas by taking information about a company, its goals, and the audience it wants to innovate for, combined with an understanding of trend intelligence. So that really hit home for us! 

We realised that to effectively leverage this capability, strong prompting skills are essential. Many people are not yet accustomed to this process, so we identified two key ways to assist. First, we developed a user-friendly front-end interface for ChatGPT. This interface guides users through structured questions about their business, their customers, and the values and specifics of their target audience. It also asks which trends they are interested in exploring.

Second, we integrate this input with our proprietary trend data. The collected information and our content is then integrated into a detailed prompt, enhanced with role-playing elements that position the AI as a world-renowned innovator familiar with advanced innovation processes. This prompt is processed via OpenAI’s API, generating tailored innovation ideas for the user.

So now, by combining a front-end for the right inputs, and with our trend insights added, lwe can help businesses develop truly impactful innovations.

Q: I've used TrendWatching for clients in the past and I'm a big fan of your brand - how does TrendBaby build on / evolve your current product offering?

A: Thank you! Great question! Trendbaby is our first tool in a planned series designed to help companies turn insights into actionable ideas and innovations. While TrendBaby focuses on generating new products around an existing trend, another tool, set to launch in a few weeks, will do the same but then for on-trend for marketing campaigns, helping brands and agencies create campaigns centered around specific trends and target audiences. This tool, like Trendbaby, will incorporate our proprietary content into the ChatGPT prompts.

We are also developing a third tool, tentatively named "SCENARIOOOH", aimed at ideating larger market opportunities for companies. It will use our ‘mega’ consumer trends and detailed company inputs to generate future new market opportunities, projecting 5, 10, or even 20 years ahead. 

And then from there we would like to launch another dozen or so tools, always leveraging our vast database of 200 trends and 31,000 innovations to fuel ideation, innovation, and scenario planning.

We see this as a significant expansion of our trend platform features, obviously 

This approach aligns perfectly with our mission: trends only matter when they are put into action and lead to meaningful innovations that, ideally, make the world a better place. We’re excited about this hands-on expansion of our platform, which enables us to creatively explore new possibilities. In fact, we’re using ChatGPT to help brainstorm the next tools we should develop, kinda like TrendBaby for Trendbaby;) We’re thrilled to see where this journey will take us.

Q: How does TrendBaby differ from anything else already on the market?

A: We haven’t seen many similar tools in the market yet. While some consulting firms are definitely developing or using them for their clients, these are typically exclusive and not accessible to the broader public. One of our core values is democratizing access to important intelligence and tools, which is why we always offer a free component to our services. So our tools remain free touse, but if you want to use the PRO version of a tool you need to be a member of our Trend Intelligence Platform Amplify. Which itself is affordable.

Also, currently, many companies are focusing on using AI internally for automation and efficiency. We believe the next phase will be centered around innovation, ideation, scenario planning, and strategy development. As large language models continue to improve, incorporating more sophisticated reasoning capabilities, the potential for these tools will expand significantly.

We’re preparing for this evolution by developing tools that leverage not only our proprietary content and advanced prompting techniques but also the ever-improving capabilities of AI models. We see this as a rapidly growing field, and we aim to be a key player in it.

Q: Finally, which are some of the top features of TrendBaby?

A: Currently, we're at version 0.1 for Trendbaby. It’s a basic version that provides the user with a few initial ideas to explore, but it still has limited functionality. For example, you can’t store or share your ideas easily, which is why it’s labeled 0.1. But we’re obviously already working on future features to enhance the tool: one upcoming feature for TrendBaby PRO users is the integration of relevant existing innovations from our database. Alongside the five ideas generated by Trendbaby, you'll see five related innovations from other brands already leveraging the same trend. This serves both as a wake-up call and additional inspiration, showing how others are innovating in the space.

Another feature we're developing is the ability for PRO users to store and share ideas within their teams, granting colleagues access to the most promising concepts. We’re also working on a feature that allows you to turn your favorite ideas into a visually appealing pitch deck. This will help you present the ideation process, suggested products, or services in a compelling way, perfect for internal presentations to decision makers or clients.

In future updates, we’re looking to introduce features like testing ideas against synthetic users representing your target audience to gauge their reactions. We also plan to generate roll-out plans, covering suggested branding, marketing, business strategy, and distribution for a generated product. Essentially, we aim to integrate more stages of the ideation journey into TrendBaby and other future tools - anything that helps turning trends into actionable innovations!!