Book Alert / Microtrends

Microtrends -- The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark J. Penn, Twelve '07, $25.99, 425 pages, ISBN #0-446-58096-1. Index, sources, graphics sprinkled through text.

Twenty years ago, John Naisbitt introduced us to ten overarching trends that were about to transform our lives, such as the advent of the information age, a globalized economy and the replacement of hierarchies in decision making with networking. But, argues Mark J. Penn, a trend followed by only one per cent of the people (three million people in America's case) can be large enough to have a transforming effect.

In his new book, Penn examines more than 70 microtrends in fields ranging from religion to politics. Penn, a veteran pollster and adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, targets such phenomena as people retiring but continuing to work, women driving technology, and men becoming dads at an older age and spending more time with their children.

Penn's chapters are typically three to five pages and filled with the kind of statistics you'd expect a pollster to have at his beck and call. Some trends have already gained labels in the marketplace, like "cougars," women who date younger men. And while the rule against office dating was axiomatic a generation ago (remember "Don't get your meat where you get your bread and butter?"), Penn reports that today, nearly 60 per cent of employees have been office romancers.

The microtrend of "extreme commuters," those who commute more than an hour to work, reflects America's population sprawl. Of the 10 million people in this category in 2000, more than three million joined their ranks within the previous decade. The shattering of the glass ceiling in such fields as communication, Penn writes, has allowed women to marry their natural ability to use words with management power, resulting in the fact that 57 per cent of TV news anchors are women.

A few other microtrends: The disproportionate success of Jews has made them hot marriage prospects, the number of interracial families has increased, and there are more Protestant Hispanics and Moderate Muslims. Chapters can be digested in 10 minutes or so at bedtime, and their lessons are fun to ponder as you drift off to dreamland.