What's Your Future Normal

CareerCast - Life-long Career Development

Henry Coutinho-MasonMany people feel a future normal isn’t going to happen anytime soon. For those who believe that a future normal is possible, their vision is filled with pessimism, darkness, and hopelessness. Henry Coutinho-Mason, one of the world's leading authorities on consumer trends, Managing Director of TrendWatching, and author of The Future Normal, has a different perspective. He believes there are plenty of reasons to be profoundly hopeful about the way the world is changing. In this CareerCast, Henry shared his insights on how you can build a happier, more successful, and more expansive future.

Aired January 18, 2024


Henry Coutinho-Mason is obsessed with answering the biggest question in business: "what will people want next?"

Henry is one of the world’s leading authorities on consumer trends, having spent a decade as the managing director of TrendWatching. He is the author of Trend- Driven Innovation , which lays out a simple, accessible approach to anticipating customer expectations. It forms the basis of TrendWatching’s research, content & product that is used by 100,000 B2C professionals at hundreds of the world’s leading brands.

Henry’s latest book The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work, and Thrive In The Next Decade, is a handbook for visionaries featuring the thirty biggest ideas and instigators that will shape humanity’s next decade. It was launched at SXSW in March 2023.

As a speaker, Henry has given more than 100 inspiring and actionable keynotes & workshops in 30+ countries – with multiple repeat bookings from global leadership teams at J&J, Calvin Klein, Mastercard, the Tata Group, and many more. He is also a guest lecturer at HEC business school in Paris.

Based in London, his work with clients is on consumer trend & innovation strategy, typically around “The Future of X” (retail, work, digital, cities, travel, etc).

Henry has been quoted as a trend expert in The Guardian, the FT, HBR, AdMap, The New York Times and The Economist, and has appeared on television networks such as CNBC, the BBC and Brazil's Globo News.

💡 Fun fact: he was also included in GQ's Most Connected Men in Britain list for 2016.

As co-founder of 3Space, Henry is also an award-winning social entrepreneur. With its innovative solution to generating social value from empty commercial property, 3Space was commended in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas and won the European section of the FT/Citi Urban Ingenuity Awards.

The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work and Thrive in the Next Decade by Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason (2023)

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar (2023)

Creativity Without Frontiers: How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future by Roy Sharples (2021)

The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time by Jim McKelvey (2020)

Influencers and Revolutionaries: How Innovative Trailblazers, Trends and Catalysts Are Transforming Business by Sean Pillot de Chenecey (2020)

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley (2020)

Superhuman Innovation by Chris Duffey (2019)

Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation by David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder (2019)

Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age by Greg Satell (2017)

Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs by Larry Keeley, Helen Walters, Ryan Pikkel, and Brian Quinn (2013)

The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble (2020)

Innovation is Everybody’s Business: How to Make Yourself Indispensable in Today’s Hypercompetitive World by Robert B. Tucker (2010)

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin (2010)

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky (2010)

Rework by Jason Fried (2010)

Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change by Jeremy Gutsche (2009)

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007)

Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking by Tim Hurson (2007)

The Future Normal book cover

Read an excerpt from The Future Normal by Henry Coutinho-Mason.

Read the Excerpt