Trend Analysis and Future Scenario Framework

Produces a structured STEEP trend analysis with three scenarios and strategic decision guidance.

Best For

•A corporate strategy director building a 3-year planning deck needs to separate slow-moving structural forces from short-term noise before presenting to the board.
•A startup founder deciding where to invest product roadmap resources needs a scenario view of best-case, worst-case, and wildcard outcomes for their industry.
•An innovation team lead needs early warning indicators to monitor quarterly, so the company doesn't get blindsided by a shift it should have seen coming.

Prompt Template

Conduct a trend analysis for [INDUSTRY/TOPIC] over the [TIMEFRAME, next 1 / 3 / 5 years]. Context: [YOUR ROLE OR ORGANIZATION AND WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU]. Analyze using the STEEP framework, Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political trends: (1) For each STEEP category, identify 2–3 key trends and describe their direction, speed, and certainty level (High/Medium/Low), (2) Identify the 3 'megatrends', the most powerful forces that will shape everything else, (3) Build 3 future scenarios: Optimistic (things go well), Pessimistic (key risks materialize), and Wild Card (a low-probability, high-impact event that changes everything), (4) Strategic implications: what decisions should [YOUR ORGANIZATION] make now, hedge against, or monitor? (5) 5 early warning indicators to track that signal which scenario is unfolding. Ground the analysis in real evidence and name specific signals you're already seeing.

Pro Tip

Push back if the model returns trends with no stated certainty level, since STEEP analyses lose most of their strategic value when every trend is treated as equally likely to materialize.

Example Output

A sample of what this prompt produces once you fill in the placeholders.

Technological trend: on-device AI processing, direction upward, speed fast, certainty High. Megatrend: shift of computing from cloud to edge, reshaping data privacy expectations across all STEEP categories. Optimistic scenario: adoption accelerates as hardware costs drop, opening new product categories. Wild Card: a major data breach triggers regulation that mandates edge processing for sensitive data within 18 months. Early warning indicator: watch chip vendor announcements for consumer-grade neural processing units.