ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While there are four names listed on the cover of this book, even that dramatically underplays the collective nature of its contents. Countless readers, clients, spotters, colleagues, and friends contributed to this book—knowingly and unknowingly, directly and indirectly—during both the recent months of focused writing and during the years of its longer gestation. A number of people deserve extra thanks, however:

First, the four authors are particularly indebted to Maria Isabel Reyes, who conceived and designed the quite brilliant layout. The quality, comprehension, and impact gap between our original Word documents and the final product is so great that it is nothing but convention keeping her name off the cover of this book. Our words and her design are, at the very least, equal contributors.

Next to Richard Narramore at Wiley, with whom we hatched this book on a summer's afternoon in Central Park, and to our ever-attentive editors Tiffany Colón and Christine Moore. Without your comments this book would have been significantly less well-structured and polished. Also to Lisa di Mona, our agent, who guided us through the world of offline publishing with the utmost care and attention.

Many people kindly gave up their time to speak to us and provided feedback on the drafts of the book, including: James Bidwell, Veronika Bassi, Jean Pierre Beleen, Malcolm Devoy, Sarah Dickinson, Kate Hammer, Nikolai Khlopov, Tom La Forge, Eimear Meredith Jones, Tim Morgan, Augustin Moro, Maria Mujica, Indy Neogy, Rachell Ornan, Alexander Osterwalder, Jeremiah Owyang, Philip Petersen, Jonathan Petrides, BV Pradeep, Jaspar Roos, Olivier Robert-Murphy, Kunitake Saso, Ana Segurado, Jose Miguel Sokoloff, Jody Turner, Cynthia Vandewall, Grietje Vermoortele, Bas Verhart, Richard Wilkinson, and Michell Zappa. A special mention here should go to Lisa Gansky and Jeffrey Hollender, who were especially generous when sharing their experiences gained during their lifetimes ahead of the trends.

To our TrendWatching colleagues—many of whom are authors in all but name having lived, breathed, and developed this methodology alongside us—thank you for being so patient with us and keeping the business on track while we've had our hands full. Vicki Loomes, Victoria Foster, and Daniel Barcza deserve extra credit for their many helpful contributions.

Our eternal thanks must also go to Reinier Evers, TrendWatching's founder, and still our most perceptive yet demanding trend spotter. He should also be recognized as perhaps the first (and certainly the most frequent) user of the emoticon in business publications, over a decade before it became common practice. :) Thank you for trusting and believing in us all.

Most of all, we would like to thank all our loved ones for their unstinting support. We didn't make things easy with a ludicrously ambitious deadline—through the Christmas “break,” an intercontinental relocation, two marriage preparations, and a newborn baby, all coordinated across three time zones. Anita, Baz, Louise, Markus, Meridith (and now Elodie!), we couldn't have done it without you, nor would we want to.

Henry, David, Max, Delia, Maria