Dion Chang has built a career spotting the shifts that change how we live and work but one of the trends capturing his attention right now is less about machines and more about the animals waiting for us at home.
Johannesburg, South Africa (02 September 2026) – On this week’s Good Things with Brent Lindeque, I got to sit down with Dion Chang, one of South Africa’s best-known trend analysts and strategic thinkers, for a conversation about change, trends, artificial intelligence, business and, rather unexpectedly, pups.
Dion’s journey to becoming a futurist is fascinating in itself. His career began in fashion and media, taking him from studying fashion and further study in Paris to working as a stylist, journalist and editor at publications including Rooi Rose, True Love, Cosmopolitan and ELLE South Africa. Those years spent watching culture shift eventually became something much bigger… an ability to spot the signals hiding inside everyday behaviour and understand what they might mean for society and business.
In 2006, he founded Flux Trends, a consultancy built around the idea of “trends as business strategy”, and today he describes himself as a “professional cage rattler”, challenging organisations to look beyond what is happening right now and consider what might be coming next. He has written extensively about the future, contributed to executive foresight and innovation programmes and, alongside Bronwyn Williams and Faeeza Khan, co-authored The Future: More than 80 Key Trends for South Africa.
I went into our conversation expecting us to talk largely about trends, business, technology and AI, and we did. We unpacked how rapidly our relationship with technology is changing and how seemingly unrelated shifts in culture can tell us an enormous amount about where society is going.
But then we started talking about pups. Real ones… not like our little robot cover art.
One social trend Dion has been watching is the rise of the DINKWADs (Double Income, No Kids, With A Dog), reflecting a growing number of couples and families choosing pets instead of children, or treating their animals as deeply important members of their family. It opened up a much bigger conversation about companionship and the enormous role animals now play in our lives. And Dion understands that relationship from another perspective too. His work has evolved beyond trend analysis and he has trained as an end-of-life companion doula, including work around pet bereavement. We spoke about something many animal lovers will immediately understand… losing a pup can be one of the hardest experiences we face, because the relationship we have with them is often uncomplicated and filled with an extraordinary amount of love.
Dion watches technology, culture, economics and human behaviour and asks what all those signals might tell us about tomorrow. Our conversation reminded me that among all those signals, one of the most encouraging might simply be this: we are becoming increasingly intentional about where we put our love.
Watch the full conversation below.
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