Olivier Parent has been working in foresight for 20 years. He shares his perspective on the profession and on the trends shaping the cosmetics industry and society more broadly.
CosmeticOBS: How would you define foresight?
Olivier Parent: Foresight isn’t about playing fortune-teller. That’s what being a futurist or futurologist is all about. It isn’t for us, from the present, to seek to impose our will on a future that is yet to be shaped. The shaping of the future is inherently indeterminate. The whole point of foresight is to identify what are known as ‘weak signals’ – the trends that foreshadow what is to come – and to see how our organisations can adapt to them. Foresight is rooted in reality. We never pull a white rabbit out of a magician’s hat. Everything we’re working on either exists, is currently being developed, or will exist very soon. We have all the building blocks; they’re there, at various stages of development. It is with these that the future is built.
CosmeticOBS: What major trends do you see in the beauty industry?
Olivier Parent: The cosmetics industry is not in a vacuum. It reflects human society. And we live in a society which, whether we like it or not, has been, is and will become increasingly consumerist. Even though we find ourselves in a social and …
