In a world obsessed with moving faster, Zalando’s Head of Design Rachel Rosenson reveals why the real competitive advantage belongs to those who stop chasing the “next big thing” and start solving the right problems.

In the tech industry, we are currently shifting between two extremes: breathless excitement and paralyzing anxiety. With the rapid-fire release of new AI tools and “agentic” everything, there is a mounting pressure to move faster, vibe-code experiments, and pivot at the speed of a LinkedIn trend.

But as Rachel Rosenson, Head of Design at Zalando, shared in a recent SAP Design Talk, speed isn't a competitive advantage when the entire industry is accelerating at the same rate. When everyone has massive computational power at their fingertips, the real advantage doesn't go to who builds the fastest—it goes to who builds the right things.

The strategy triangle

Rosenson argues that teams feel frustrated when their work lacks one of three critical points. To move from “pixel pusher” to “strategic leader”, they should operate at the intersection of:

1. Imagination: Moving beyond quarterly delivery cycles to dream 3–5 years out.
2. Impact: Moving beyond “blue-sky” sci-fi concepts to prove how a design drives revenue or solves a bottom-line business problem.
3. Insight: Moving beyond "sticking AI on it" to understanding the deep, human root of a customer’s problem.

For this, Rosenson offered a healthy dose of skepticism toward current garment industry darlings to illustrate why a detox is necessary. For instance, Virtual Try-on looks impressive, but if the AI hallucinates fit or fabric details, it leads to higher return rates. Similarly, while some brands use GenAI content to cut costs, customers are increasingly craving authenticity and “real skin texture”, a digital fatigue that has helped fuel the $9.5B influencer economy. The lesson? Customers don't want the latest technology; they want the most reliable solution to their problem.

She also emphasizes that true strategic insight requires radical cross-functional collaboration. Instead of brainstorming in isolation or “just” other designers, design teams should actively integrate product managers, legal experts, and D&I teams into the process. By bringing these diverse perspectives together, an organization can more accurately identify and analyze the shifting trends across various categories that will ultimately define its future landscape.

Planning for chaos (not just growth)

A core tenet of the “Hype Detox” is moving away from the assumption that the future is always a linear progression of growth. Following, Rosenson introduces 5 methods that teams can adapt to prepare for an unpredictable reality:

1. Go wide: the STEEP analysis

The first step in a detox is admitting that technology doesn't exist in a vacuum. Rosenson and her team use the STEEP Analysis to gather diverse perspectives and brainstorm trends across five pillars:

• Social shifts: Examines evolving human behaviors and societal values. It looks beyond the interface to understand why people are shopping or working differently—whether driven by a desire for community, a reaction to digital fatigue, or changing lifestyle priorities.

• Technological transformation: Focuses on inventions that fundamentally alter industry standards. It moves beyond the hype of the moment to identify capabilities that create entirely new ways for customers to interact with a business.

• Economic abilities: Involves a rigorous assessment of future purchasing power. By monitoring market volatility, inflation, and shifting wealth distributions, companies can predict if their audience will have the means to engage with their products.

• Environmental impact: Tracks the changing relationship between business and natural resources. It requires planning for a future where organizations are held accountable for a product’s entire lifecycle, from raw material scarcity to recycling mandates.

• Political landscape: Monitors the regulatory frameworks and legal mandates that define market operations. It prepares the organization for shifts in legislation—such as data transparency or supply chain requirements—that can turn a standard practice into a liability overnight.

2. Plan chaos: the four futures

Since the first step intentionally casts a wide net, the second step requires narrowing the focus. It is a reminder that the world a company operates in is not a tech vacuum, but an unpredictable reality where relying solely on sunny-day scenarios is a significant risk.

To navigate this, Rosenson applies four distinct types of futures to categorize the trends established during the STEEP analysis: Growth, Collapse, Constraint, and Transformation. By sorting trends into these scenarios, a team can move away from being convinced of a single outcome and instead become prepared for all of them.

3. Target impact: the probability matrix

To avoid drifting into passion projects, teams must plot their STEEP trends on a matrix of business impact versus probability. To remove bias and subjective guessing, Rosenson defines high probability using a clear timeline: any trend likely to manifest between now and the next four years.

The goal is to ignore the noise. Because resources are finite, focus should be ruthlessly dedicated to the upper-right quadrant. This allows a company to prioritize high-impact trends arriving shortly while keeping speculative, low-probability concepts on the periphery.

4. Spark possibility: moving from basic to specific

Once the high-impact trends are identified, the temptation is to jump straight into high-fidelity, pixel-perfect designs. Rosenson advises against this, suggesting that storyboards and wireframes are far more effective for strategic alignment. Low-fidelity visuals keep the focus on the “why” and the narrative rather than the “how” of buttons or icons.

The real innovation happens when you combine multiple trends to find unique solutions that competitors might miss. Instead of designing for a single technology in a vacuum, teams should force edge-case scenarios by layering different environmental or economic factors:

• Layering trends: By intersecting a technological shift (like AI agents) with a socio-economic one (like inflation or digital fatigue), the solution moves from a generic feature to a specific, high-value service.

• Storyboarding the “why”: Using AI to help visualize customer journeys allows a team to align on the story they want to tell. It shifts the conversation from technical feasibility to whether the solution actually addresses the intersection of several global shifts.

• Beyond the surface: This approach prevents basic solutions—like a standard chatbot—and pushes the team toward more specific applications that solve for multiple real-world constraints simultaneously.

By using these combinations to spark imagination, a company can design experiences that are not just trendy but deeply integrated into the shifting reality of their users’ lives.

5. Define good: the honest conversation

The final step is an ethical “gut check” designed to reinforce quality, clarity, and responsibility. At this stage, teams explicitly define the boundaries of their project by examining it from three critical perspectives:

• The good: Identifying the most practical, valuable, and reliable version of the product—the one the team can confidently deliver.

• The groundbreaking: Imagining the most aspirational, delightful, and transformative user experience the technology could enable.

• The failure: Confronting, with honesty, what an unsuccessful or even embarrassing launch would look like, and why.

By creating space for these candid conversations—surfacing both the possibilities and the risks—teams are better equipped to recognize potential unintended harms and set clearer safeguards. This reflective process ensures that their innovations become not only impactful but also responsible and aligned with their values.

Together, these five methods help teams step back from hype and focus on what really matters. By looking beyond technology alone, preparing for different possible futures, choosing ideas that are both likely and meaningful, exploring them through simple stories, and having honest conversations about risks and values, teams can make better decisions. Instead of chasing the next shiny trend, they can build solutions that are realistic, responsible, and genuinely useful for both customers and the business.

Is the “next big thing” really better?

For a company like SAP, the stakes of the “Hype Detox” are arguably even higher. In the enterprise world, a distraction isn't just a failed app feature; it’s a potential disruption to global supply chains, HR systems, and financial cores that keep the global economy moving.

Rather than chasing every flashy trend, enterprise users look for a partner who filters out the noise to provide stable, insight-driven innovation. Designing for the enterprise means looking beyond the next big thing to find the next right thing built to survive the turbulence of a shifting global landscape. By adopting a strategy of imagination tempered by rigorous insight, organizations ensure that when the hype fades, the tangible value remains.

When designing for the enterprise, we aren't just building for today’s trends; we are building the responsible, resilient foundations for tomorrow.