From weak signal to novum

A weak signal scan is not about collecting as many emerging trends as possible. Nor is it about spotting the next miracle technology, the next announced catastrophe or the next story that will take over everywhere. A weak signal is often local, partial and ambiguous. It can appear in a piece of research, a public decision, an experiment, a publication, a professional practice or a local initiative. Its value does not lie only in its novelty.

A signal becomes interesting when it can be linked to other facts, interpreted in a context and set against a real situation. Being surprising is not enough. We still need to understand what it shifts, what it makes possible, what it weakens and which responsibilities it redistributes. This is where the notion of the novum interests me.

When a divergence becomes another system

The novum is the “new thing” in a narrative validated by cognitive logic. It does not refer to a vague promise, a trend to comment on or an innovation to celebrate. It refers to a transformation consistent enough with reality to be thought through, yet far enough removed from it to reveal that another system could emerge. The novum is not necessarily a break that comes out of nowhere. It is often a divergence. Something already present in reality is amplified. A slider is pushed. An existing logic is extended beyond its usual boundaries. Change then lies not only in the arrival of a new solution: it lies in the moment that solution transforms the rules, relationships, rights, responsibilities or values that organise a system.

An AI model can assist foresight. But what happens if it starts selecting the futures that should guide present decisions? An index can rate how repairable a product is. But what happens when repairability becomes a criterion for an organisation, a public service or a policy? A coordination practice can be distributed. But what happens when an entire organisation no longer has an identifiable centre?

This is the point where the signal becomes a novum.

Five sliders, five tipping points

The examples that follow come from the Novum Trigger, a horizon scan I have been running for two years. It gathers research, publications, experiments, organisational practices, public decisions and spaces for debate. They are not predictions. They are exercises in projection. Each example starts from something real and already documented, then pushes one of its logics to the moment it changes the very nature of the system. The aim is not to say that these futures will happen. It is to make them open to debate now, while we can still act on where they are heading.

1. AI becomes the strategist

Real-world basis: AI in Strategic Foresight (2025)

AI is already used to support foresight work: horizon scanning, detecting emerging signals, analysing and clustering trends, building scenarios, simulating policies or predictive modelling. It increases the ability to go through large bodies of material, draw connections and explore more hypotheses. But its integration already raises questions of ethics, governance and alignment with human-centred foresight.

Slider pushed: delegating anticipation

The novum appears if we push this delegation further. AI no longer just provides material for reflection: it assesses scenarios, ranks risks, weighs opportunities and recommends the futures to which an organisation should commit its resources.

What if AI no longer just explored futures, but decided which futures deserve to guide the present?

The tipping point is therefore not about imagining an AI that predicts the future perfectly. It is about imagining an AI that takes part in defining what is considered desirable, a priority or acceptable.

The tension revealed then concerns the governance of hypotheses. Who chooses the data, the indicators and the criteria of desirability? Which futures are made visible, and which are set aside because they do not fit the available categories? And how can a space for debate be kept open when the selection of futures appears to be made objective by an algorithmic recommendation?

2. Everything becomes repairable

Real-world basis: from the repairability index to the durability index (2025, in French)

Since early 2025, televisions and washing machines sold in French shops must display a durability index. For these two categories of appliance, it replaces the repairability index and widens the way their lifespan is assessed. The question is no longer only whether an appliance can be repaired; it is also about making visible its ability to last over time. This kind of label turns a design property into public information. It lets buyers compare products, while giving manufacturers a clearer signal about which criteria are becoming important. The first effects can already be measured: ADEME, the French environment agency, reports a 12% rise in the average repairability score of smartphones between January 2021 and December 2022, along with rises of 4% for front-loading washing machines and 9% for televisions. The real-world movement is therefore already under way: a quality long left to manufacturers’ discretion is becoming visible, comparable and able to influence design, consumption and regulation.

Slider pushed: extending repairability

The novum appears when this principle is pushed beyond objects.

What if the repairability index no longer applied only to appliances, but also to buildings, public services, organisations and political decisions?

Repairability would then no longer be a technical quality reserved for objects. It would become an institutional property: a system’s capacity to remain transformable, reversible and accountable for its effects. The tipping point here is not simply about adding new indicators. It is about shifting the evaluation criterion. Today, we mainly judge systems by their performance: their speed, reliability, profitability, compliance, productivity or capacity for growth. In a repairable system, these criteria do not disappear, but they are no longer enough. The question also becomes: what happens when this system fails, excludes, degrades, blocks or causes harm? Can it be corrected without being replaced entirely? Can it account for its effects? Can it be rolled back? Can it restore what it has damaged, and give the people affected a real say in that repair?

3. The organisation guided by its traces

Real-world basis: stigmergy as indirect coordination (2019, in French)

Stigmergy refers to a form of coordination in which actions transform a shared environment and leave traces that guide the actions that follow. This mechanism, often explained through social insects, is also studied as a way to design organisations that are more open, distributed and able to act in complex environments. In a human organisation, these traces can take many forms: a task made visible, an unmet need, a documented decision, a prototype, an incident, a contribution, a shared resource or a question left open. The point is not for everyone to do as they please. It is for the working environment to make visible the actions under way, emerging priorities, dependencies and opportunities to contribute. Essential tasks cannot be left to emergence alone; who takes care of them has to be organised explicitly.

Slider pushed: traces become the organisation’s main interface

What if the working environment became the organisation’s main interface, with every action leaving a trace legible enough to guide the next action, without any central command?

Priorities no longer always wait for a top-down instruction to become visible. They emerge from the activity itself. A decision produces its dependencies. An incident reveals a weakness. A prototype calls for critique. An unfinished task becomes an invitation to contribute. The organisation no longer coordinates only through the flow of instructions; it learns to read its own state in the marks it leaves. The tipping point is not simply a shift from hierarchy to autonomy. It is a shift from the organisation as a chain of command to the organisation as a medium of coordination.

4. Every consequence becomes tradeable

Real-world basis: creating social good becomes tokenisable

The Impact Token Project starts from an explicit ambition: to better capture and monetise the creation of social good. The project sits within an already rich ecosystem of methods for measuring, assessing and comparing impact. The movement is already significant. A social or environmental consequence is no longer seen only as a side effect, positive or negative, of an economic activity. It can become something to document, attribute, make visible and link to a form of value. At this stage, the aim is not yet to make every impact tradeable. It is to make the production of social good identifiable enough to be recognised, compared and, in the project’s hypothesis, monetised.

Slider pushed: the convertibility of impact

What if every social or environmental consequence of a decision automatically produced a tradeable unit of value?

The novum appears when this principle extends beyond a few projects, indicators or investment schemes. A company would no longer sell only products or services. Each of its decisions would simultaneously generate a portfolio of effects converted into units of biodiversity, mental health, social cohesion, trust, relational quality, accessibility or material sufficiency. An urban project could produce units of urban cooling, perceived safety or social connection. A digital service could accumulate or destroy units of trust, autonomy or inclusion. A public decision could be assessed not only by its budgetary cost or its effectiveness, but also by the tradeable value of its consequences for people, territories and ecosystems.

The tipping point lies in making impact convertible. When an effect becomes an attributable, traceable and tradeable unit, it stops being merely an externality to limit or a goal to pursue. It enters a system of calculation, incentive, ownership and transaction. It can be held, sold, bought, offset, accumulated or used to gain other advantages.

5. Infrastructure becomes justiciable

Real-world basis: safe roads as a fundamental right (2025)

A judgment of the Bombay High Court, reported in 2025, recognises the right to reasonably maintained roads as part of the fundamental right to life protected by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The case began with proceedings brought in 2013 over the poor state of roads in Mumbai, but its implications go beyond road maintenance: failing infrastructure can be understood as an infringement of safety, dignity and effective access to essential services. This shifts the road from the register of service quality to that of public obligation. A dangerous road is no longer just a matter of budget trade-offs, missed maintenance or administrative dysfunction. It can engage the responsibility of the State, even when several actors are involved in designing, building or maintaining the infrastructure. The source stresses in particular chains of accountability, audits, citizen reporting mechanisms, long-term maintenance and the need to make roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Slider pushed: turning quality of use into a legal matter

What if any infrastructure whose failure concretely compromised safety, dignity or access to rights automatically constituted a violation of fundamental rights?

The novum appears when this logic is extended. In this hypothesis, it would no longer be enough to say that a service is badly designed, that a building falls short of the expected experience or that a digital interface is not accessible enough. The question would become: does this failure prevent a person from actually exercising a right?

The tipping point is not about making every design flaw justiciable. It is about recognising that certain qualities of use are neither options nor mere promises of experience. Safety, accessibility, the ability to get around, to access information, to complete an essential procedure or to live in acceptable material conditions can become effective conditions of citizenship.

Conclusion

These five examples differ in origin, in how far they have materialised and in their degree of systemic impact. Some of these movements are already built into concrete schemes. Others still belong to research, methodological frameworks, emerging projects or organisational principles being tried out. Some produce local effects; others may reshape the very conditions in which organisations, markets or institutions make their decisions. They cannot, then, be compared point by point.

But they have one thing in common: each contains a movement of transformation already present in reality. The novum appears when we do not stop at the observed signal. It appears when we identify the slider already in motion (delegation, extension, decentralisation, convertibility or legalisation), then push it to the point where it transforms the nature of the system. The novum is therefore not a prediction.

This is the moment when exploration becomes useful.

Once the tipping point has been identified, it becomes worthwhile to explore the tensions it brings out. Who gains a capacity to act? Who loses power, autonomy or visibility? What becomes measurable, repairable, tradeable or enforceable? What forms of accountability emerge, and which risk disappearing instead? But that step will come later.

In the next publication, I will present Novum’s first three tools: Le capteur de possibles (roughly, “the catcher of possibles”), to spot and connect signals; the Game of possibles, to put them up for discussion in a real situation; and the Manifesto, to keep a critical direction in the face of the futures we help to produce.