If the last few years of pandemics, wars, trade disruptions and more have you lamenting the fact that you don’t have a crystal ball, the good news is you don’t need one. It turns out telling the future is not about prediction. It’s about anticipation, according to Marc Palatucci, growth & engagement director for the Future Today Strategy Group. By paying attention to subtle signals he says you can prepare for what comes next. Think about an approaching storm. If you’re tuned into your environment, you’ll know it’s going to rain long before the first drop falls by the way the air feels and smells and the color of the sky.
“The anticipation itself heightens your powers of perception, of awareness, and awareness translates to readiness,” Palatucci said.
In a presentation at the American Apparel & Footwear Association’s Executive Summit, Palatucci used the example of how a beam of light fans out of a flashlight. The bright, concentrated light closest to the bulb represents the strongest signals or probable outcomes, while the midsection of the beam that’s more diffused is plausible and the end of the cone where the light is weakest illustrates the possible futures.
“I see a signal as information and implications. It is not just the data point,” he said. “It’s me saying, why does this matter? What are the repercussions? What is this going to lead to?”
To notice signals before they become probable and essentially table stakes, Palatucci said you have to be purposeful about the information you’re consuming. This means throwing a wider net in terms of what you read or watch, seeking out experts and jettisoning any sources that may become questionable over time.
“You should be looking at patent filings. You should be following some folks who are deep in certain parts of the industry, who maybe publish on Substack. Look at what your media diet is and audit it,” he said. “Stress test those sources and be on the constant lookout for those signals.”
Below are excerpts from the speech in which he highlights a few probable, plausible and possible futures, each of which represent major changes for the apparel industry.
Probable futures
These are the futures that we can confidently say will come to pass, futures from which we are unlikely to stray based on the evidence that we’ve got before us. It’s essentially table stakes, and those preparations are low risk.
Example: Agentic AI. While an automated system is great for information like the recommendation engine on Netflix or Spotify, an agentic is great for implementation. They pursue goals. [For example] automated systems might enhance or replace steps in the customer journey, and in many cases, already have if you think about Chatgpt giving much more detailed, specific, organized product results in response to an inquiry versus Google results. Agentic systems, however, are poised to really reinvent the customer journey entirely.
It might look like this: awareness of a brand > discovery of a product > engagement with product information, with inventory > eventually, ideally, a transaction. The human customer is present throughout every step of that journey. With the introduction of agentic AI, that journey could look radically different. The customer might start by simply setting a goal, like buying a pair of new work shoes, then the entire journey could be delegated or outsourced to the customer’s agentic AI. And given permission, it could actually go through the entire process to the point of transaction. That pair of shoes may end up on the customer’s doorstep before the customer is even aware of your brand.
Also, not only will the customer have agentic AI, but your brand will also have an agent or a team of agents. Most likely between those sets of agents is where an increasing amount of commerce is going to take place.
Plausible futures
These are going to be less apparent to the average observer, which means paying attention to the plausible to give organizations a distinct strategic advantage, as long as they’re bold enough to prepare for the plausible.
Example: Synthetic biology, or synbio, is a developing interdisciplinary field that allows humans to engineer living matter with a level of control never before thought possible. In short, it renders living matter programmable. An example of synbio that’s already out in the world relates to malaria, which kills over half a million people a year and is carried by mosquitos. The vaccine efficacy rates are around 40% to 70%. In the absence of a better vaccine, scientists use synbio to program a mosquito variant with very low fertility rates, and they release into high-risk areas.
For your industry, synbio represents a completely new approach to developing and harvesting materials. The underlying fibers are arguably organic, but the means by which they’re grown is radically different. This means that a material like cotton or wool won’t come from plants or animals, but from a bioreactor. It is filled with a nutrient-rich broth in which scientists can brew molecular compounds and organic materials, and it is poised to be the single most disruptive piece of technology to the farming industry in our lifetime.
“[Synbio] has the power to do is take you from a supply chain that is vulnerable to collapse to one that is collapsible, both geographically and chronologically.”
—Marc Palatucci, Future Today Strategy Group
We know how many challenges are facing the apparel and footwear supply chain these days: an over reliance on China for inputs, restrictive environmental regulation and severe weather caused by the climate crisis. We need a supply chain in which production is not limited to one region. The material is sustainable. The production is insulated somewhat from climate factors. The material is cost effective and material versatile enough to serve our product line sounds impossible, right? That’s the beauty of synbio. It’s not just about recreating naturally occurring materials in an efficient way that alone might solve the geographic and climate limitations, but it also makes molecular science a sandbox in which you can play and create something entirely new.
Say you’re looking for a material with elasticity or durability, breathability, biodegradability, or even more out there qualities like a self-repairing functionality or any combination of these. For these potential functions or features, R&D sets that goal and agentic AI is able to iterate all possible molecular combinations, not just those occurring in nature, but going through the entire periodic table to discover what combinations might be viable. Then, using synbio, we create those materials and finally, R&D’s next step is to test in real life. What this has the power to do is take you from a supply chain that is vulnerable to collapse to one that is collapsible, both geographically and chronologically.
Possible futures
Just because possible futures are low probability doesn’t mean that they can be ignored. In fact, some of the most dangerous scenarios are low probability scenarios with potentially existential repercussions. They’re likely to go unconsidered, but their effects can be quite radical.
Example: Smart textiles and twins. Smart textiles have the ability for a garment to actually collect and hang onto data that’s actually woven into the textile. Digital twins, of course, are virtual facsimiles of physical products.
With a virtual wardrobe, where you’ve got digital twins for every piece and where data is actually being read, communicated from and stored in garments, you can extend that data chain to include the entirety of wear, care and repair. Garments can hang on to all of the data about problems and potentially add value over time versus deteriorating value over time. You also have a wealth of data about either end of life or secondary market value with regard to that.
