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"In today&amp;#039;s market, a trend can be born overnight, making it particularly challenging for experts to make predictions. Many, however, rely on data and focus groups as a source of information for calculating the next big product on the market. In a recent interview at Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2013 in Nashville, Bryan Kramer, the CEO and President of Purematter, spoke with &amp;lt;a target=&amp;quot;_blank&amp;quot; href=&amp;quot;http://www.jeremygutsche.com/&amp;quot;&amp;gt;innovation keynote speaker&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; and trends expert Jeremy Gutsche on the best methods for predicting trends. Gutsche starts off the interview by recognizing a very important difference between what is &amp;quot;popular&amp;quot; and what is &amp;quot;cool.&amp;quot; According to him, popular is mainstream, but &amp;quot;cool is something unique and cutting-edge and something people are talking about.&amp;quot; While many major businesses and market research firms rely on crowdsourcing and focus groups to identify what will be &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; tomorrow, Gutsche believes that these methods will not product accurate results. He sees &amp;quot;[looking] for all the pockets of opportunity&amp;quot; across industries that other people aren&amp;#039;t necessarily looking for as an effective way for finding new viral trends. He believes that too many companies are &amp;quot;micro-comparing&amp;quot; themselves to competitors, and as a result, the market is riddled with duplicate products and services.  &amp;lt;b&amp;gt;Watch the full interview at &amp;lt;a target=&amp;quot;_blank&amp;quot;  href=&amp;quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2BgUrFdkwo&amp;quot;&amp;gt;IBM Smarter Commerce&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/b&amp;gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/ibm-smarter-commerce-jeremy-gutsche>