S7E02 Beyond Trend Stuffification with Louise Byg Kongsholm

“Your strategy might be to go global or become more innovative or become more competent at using AI, but AI cannot be a strategy."

Louise Byg Kongsholm explains in this episode that companies must navigate "trend stuffification" by distinguishing between short-term noise and long-term strategic patterns that address fundamental human needs. She advocates for life stage segmentation over traditional demographics and warns that AI should be treated as a tool rather than a business strategy to protect the essential human "creative spark". 

Louise Byg Kongsholm is CEO of pej gruppen – scandinavian trend institute, a company with more than 50 years of experience in decoding trends and making them actionable for Scandinavian companies.

She works as a trend researcher, author, speaker and advisor across Scandinavia. She is also editor-in-chief of three professional magazines and has written several books on topics such as trend sociology, the future of retail, life stage segmentation and creativity. She is known for translating complex societal and cultural shifts into clear strategic insight.

Her work centres on zeitgeist analysis, megatrends and consumer behaviour, with a strong focus on how uncertainty, values and cultural change shape markets and everyday decision-making. Rather than treating trends as isolated phenomena, she analyses patterns, signals and underlying drivers. From this perspective, color is not a discipline in itself, but a visible expression of deeper cultural moods and collective states of mind.