Our Thinking

How Black Swan Powers Nestlé’s Foresight Capability
Hugo Amos is joined by Ritanbara Mundrey, Global Head of Innovation & Insights at Nestlé Dairy to discuss how Black Swan is powering their foresight capabilities.
11 - Jul - 24
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02 - Apr - 20
A Beacon through the storm
Introducing our new COVID-19 Beacon reports. Earlier this week we officially launched our Beacon trend reports, the first of our COVID-19 related suite of products.
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26 - Mar - 20
Navigating the storm – objectivity in the COVID-19 crisis
When my fellow founder Hugo Amos suggested “Black Swan” as our company name, my first reaction was “that’s pretty bold mate, do you really think we can do that?”. Seven years later the world finds itself in the midst of the impact from an unprecedented Black Swan event; COVID-19.
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09 - Mar - 20
Careers
International Women’s Day | Pipeline Problems & Practical Tips
Supporting women earlier in their careers will fuel the pipeline for tomorrow. Discover Camilla Carson's practical tips to change the trajectory of your career, no matter the stage you're at.
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15 - Jan - 20
CES 2020 | Beyond the Robots
The biggest and boldest are sometimes overshadowed by the everyday delicate changes which make our busy lives that little bit easier.
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16 - Jul - 19
Beer and the Alcohol-Free Boom
While the name suggests zero percent alcohol, this isn't strictly true; the product term includes any beer with less than 0.5% alcohol content - so its effect is zero. The aim is to reproduce the taste of beer without its inebriating effects. Traditionally, an unvaried product type chiefly spanning lager, the ‘lo and no’ trend is now starting to impact other beer types, such as ales and wheat beers while improving non-alcoholic lager quality too.
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14 - Jul - 19
Cheers to Locally Sourced Beer
The Local Hype Today’s consumers are increasingly seeking out locally sourced products, regional foods and ingredients. Indeed for many, the ‘local’ label is a stronger pull than ‘organic’. Particularly within the craft beer and cider space, the influence of this trend is making an impact.
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14 - Jul - 19
Lactose - beer's latest unlikely ally?
Why has lactose beer become 'a thing'? For decades, lactose was largely on the periphery and only discussed in craft beer conversation, usually in relation to milk stouts. Now a shift is being seen and lactose is rising on the beer product agenda, with adoption in products previously considered unacceptable.
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08 - Jul - 19
Korean Beauty: Spotlight on Centella Asiatica
Centella Asiatica – also known as Asiatic Pennywort, Tiger Grass or Gotu Kol – is a herbaceous, perennial plant native to the wetlands in Asia. For centuries it’s been used in cooking and for medicinal purposes.
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08 - Jul - 19
Innovation
The rise of the anti-inflammatory trend
Traditionally we’d tend to think of anti-inflammatory as a type of medication, like aspirin or ibuprofen, for alleviation of physical ailments like sports injuries. As we’re seeing with so many other health-related trends, the conversation around anti-inflammatories is now significantly broadening - not only in application but category expansion too.
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08 - Jul - 19
Consumer Behaviour
What is Hallyu and why has it become such a big trend?
Hallyu, a term we may not be familiar with by name but certainly are by output, is a Chinese word literally translating as “Korean Wave”. It refers to the transcendence and increasing popularity of South Korean cultural exports, firstly picked up by countries such as China and Japan, and now more recognisably across Western countries too.
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28 - Jun - 19
Consumer Behaviour
Throwback to predicting a bonanza BBQ weekend for Tesco
The sun is out, so it's likely the barbecues will be too. Which got us thinking about one of our early projects for the UK’s biggest retailer Tesco.
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28 - Jun - 19
Data science
How we adapted our datasets to Turkish and Russian
Our unique trend prediction tool Trendscope ingests millions of Social data conversations from sources all over the world. And our datasets are constantly growing.
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