NEW ORLEANS — The hottest new trend is already around, it just hasn't gotten hot yet.

Boiled down, that was the message delivered at the Oct. 19 general session by keynote speaker Peter Sheahan during the Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit, here.

Sheahan, who has written extensively about capitalizing on trends, is a best-selling author and the chief executive officer of ChangeLabs. He and his team have researched many different change trends in business and have determined that when companies are caught by surprise it is typically because they made false assumptions about emerging trends. It was not that the trends weren't evident.

For example, Henry Ford is credited with changing the world in 1908 when he began mass producing automobiles. But Ford did not invent the automobile. Sheahan said that by 1901, there were 78,000 cars on the road. What Ford did was make an assumption about a trend better than anyone else.

"Change is actually really slow -- until it is not," Sheahan said.

He and his team have looked at many different revolutionary changes and discovered that by and large, they evolved very slowly until they took off. He said that is undoubtedly what is going to happen with the next big thing. It's already out there in the fringes somewhere. Someone has figured it out. At some point, the adoption rate will be tremendous and some companies will be left behind.

Sheahan said a successful leader is someone who can look at what is already going on and get ahead of the curve. It is not necessarily the person who invents the newest thing.

He listed many different examples, including computers, iPads and cell phones. It took someone to take an existing product and turn it into a marketable item that people just couldn't live without. Tablet computers, he said, were around for years before Apple created the iPad and sold millions of units almost overnight.

"Change is actually really slow -- until it is not," he repeated.

Sheahan said the key to this kind of thinking is to question assumptions. And he said the best time to do that is when your company or product is riding a wave, because there is almost certainly something on the fringe that is going to eventually knock your product from the top rung.

The ChangeLabs executive said one of the keys to creating the right thinking within a company is collaboration. He used Sony as an example of a firm that was perfectly situated to capitalize when the listening of music transitioned from a physical disc to a small machine, such as an MP3 or an iTouch, that could play thousands of hours of music without a disc.

Sony had a great brand. The firm's researchers had tested the MP3-type technology and knew it would work. They had the licenses for a lot of music and were experts in video technology. But instead of introducing a technologically advanced MP3 player, Sony put its eggs in the mini-disc basket. That was a tremendous miscalculation that cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sony's chief executive later blamed miscommunication for the company missing that great opportunity. All the pieces were there to produce a great product, but there was no collaboration between divisions -- and apparently no leader with the foresight to steer the boat in the right direction.

Sheahan best illustrated his viewpoint with a story about 16-time world chess champion Gary Kasparov, who said his most difficult matches came during his run toward the third title. The first time he won was by introducing a new strategy and being aggressive. The second time competitors had still not caught up with his genius and he won with more of the same strategy.

By the third year, Kasparov knew he had to not only create a new strategy but also unlearn his own strategy. And most importantly, when things weren't going well, he had to trust his intellect and stay true to his new course. He did so and came out on top once again.

Sheahan calls the desire to abandon new ideas and stick with what got you there the "gravity of success." He believes this "visceral pull to go back" to previous successes prevents many companies from seeing trends and changing with the times.