There’s some disagreement about what the term ‘weak signal’ represents in terms of emerging trends or scenario thinking, but I like to think of them as hidden or ambiguous signals of change. In my view weak signals generally represent a change of direction for existing attitudes or behaviour, but they can also represent early indications of totally new ideas or events.

The image above is silly but significant. To many people coins are a pain in the pocket. They are heavy and dirty and somewhat outdated in the digital age. There was even a report a while back that in the US it now costs more than one cent to make one cent due to the cost of the metal. I suspect small coins will be more or less dead in many parts of the world within ten years. Larger coins within twenty. However, I suspect that paper notes will endure far longer, partly for the same reasons that paper newspapers, paper books and paper itself have lasted so long.