In 2019, Carhartt was asking that question ahead of its next strategic plan and asked our team to map the forces most likely to reshape its business. We found the answer forming well outside the workwear aisle. Small brands were cutting boots and work pants for women in the trades. Employers were relaxing uniform rules and using workwear to recruit. Younger workers wanted clothes that could go from the job site to dinner. Investors were backing specialist labels like Truewerk and FIGS that designed for one kind of worker at a time.
Taken together, the signals pointed to a change in what workwear meant. It was moving from something issued to something chosen: gear built for a specific body and job that also said something about the person wearing it.
For a 130-year-old brand, the growth question expanded beyond selling more workwear to deciding which hardworking people Carhartt could serve next. The work helped shape Carhartt's strategic plan and led to a follow-on strategy focused on growing its women's business. What began as scattered signals became a concrete growth priority, set while the specialist brands were still small.
A discipline built for growth decisions
At Upland, we define strategic foresight as the disciplined study of change: how the forces around a market are shifting, and what new needs and demand they could create.
It goes further than the trend reports and forecasts many companies already buy. Trend reports catalog what is happening. Forecasts extend historical patterns. Foresight explores how different forces could interact to change what people need and how markets operate, helping businesses recognize emerging opportunities and prepare for more than one possible outcome.
Foresight works alongside consumer research. Research shows what people value, why they behave as they do and which new ideas resonate. Foresight examines the emerging forces that could change those needs, redraw category lines and reshape the competitive set. Together, they let a business build for the demand that is forming as well as the demand it can already measure.
Why demand shifts catch good companies off guard
Most growth decisions play out over years. A new product platform can take two to three years to reach shelf, and a capability built today has to pay off in a market that will look different by the time it matures. Yet the data most companies plan from, such as sales, share and tracking studies, describes demand that already exists.
That gap is where companies get caught. Demand often starts changing outside the category, among small groups of people and small brands that conventional tracking does not follow. By the time a shift becomes visible in conventional market data, some of the most attractive positions may already be taken. Companies that read a shift early get to choose their response. Companies that wait for proof often end up reacting to the ones that moved first.
Foresight closes that gap with a different body of evidence. It identifies the plausible futures worth preparing for and what each would mean for the business, without pretending to certainty. Leaders can build conviction earlier, place smaller bets while options are still affordable, and scale the ones that prove out. The result is better choices about what to build, where to compete and how to grow.
How Upland turns scattered signals into growth decisions
Plenty of firms can produce a trend report. Our DisruptorID™ approach is built to answer a harder question: which emerging shifts are credible enough to act on, and what should a business do about them? It works in four stages.
1. Anchor the search to a real decision. We start with the growth choices on the table, then set the scope: the core category, the adjacent spaces where the same needs are met in other ways, and the frontier industries and markets where change tends to show up first. Beauty, fitness and health, for example, often signal shifts before food does.
2. Read four kinds of evidence beyond the category. Capital shows where investors are placing bets. Commerce shows what companies are launching, testing and abandoning. Consumers reveal new behaviors and workarounds, especially among leading-edge adopters. Context covers the demographic, economic, cultural, technological and regulatory forces that speed change up or slow it down. AI-enabled scanning lets us cover far more ground than a team could by hand.
3. Look for convergence, then try to break it. A shift earns attention when independent evidence points the same way. For Carhartt, a women's work boot, a relaxed uniform policy and a funding round for a scrubs brand meant little on their own. Together, they showed workwear becoming a personal choice. We test each hypothesis like that against experts, leading-edge consumers and counterevidence, then give it a confidence rating.
4. Rate the demand before the fit. Where the decision calls for it, original consumer research sizes the need. We judge how attractive the demand is before asking how well it fits today's business, so strong opportunities are not dismissed for sitting outside it. Each one lands on a clear path: pursue now, build toward, or monitor.
The outcome is a focused set of emerging demand opportunities, backed by evidence, that leaders can use to guide strategy and innovation investment.
Foresight in action: the GLP-1 household
As of May 2026, 21% of U.S. households included a GLP-1 user, up from 9% in January 2025. Much of the food industry has responded the same way, with smaller portions, added protein and "GLP-1 friendly" labels. But those responses address only the most immediate implications of the shift.
Foresight looks one step further, at what changing appetites do to the household. Our 2026 GLP-1 Intelligence Study surveyed 1,600 current, lapsed and prospective users. Among its 1,000 current users, two-thirds are cooking at home more and three in four are eating smaller portions more often. Yet 86% don't enjoy daily meal prep, and 81% already rely on shortcuts. In many of these homes, others at the table are not on the medication.
Put those signals together and a new tension emerges: one household, several appetites, and nobody wants to cook twice.
That changes the question a food company should be asking. "How do we sell smaller meals?" leads toward the products much of the category is already making. "How do we help households with different appetites keep eating together?" opens a much larger innovation platform, from how meals are designed and portioned to how they are packaged and sold. Frozen food, which already solves for portion and timing, could be well placed to lead.
The opportunity still needs validation: how large it is, who it serves best and which solutions win. Testing those hypotheses now could give food manufacturers a head start in developing solutions as demand evolves.
The moments that call for foresight
Foresight earns its place when a business is making decisions that will shape growth for years: building a new three-year strategy, deciding where to focus the innovation pipeline, weighing an adjacent category or acquisition, or responding to a major shift in how consumers live and buy.
In each case, the risk is the same: committing to long-term plans built on assumptions about demand that may no longer hold. Foresight helps leaders test those assumptions, find the opportunities forming around them and decide where to invest with a fuller view of how demand could change.
Markets will keep changing. The real question is whether the strategy you're building today accounts for how your market might change.
Upland helps brands identify emerging needs, evaluate growth opportunities and build strategies around where demand is heading.
