Drip, Wordle and Yunbanbao

January 7, 2022

Jan 07, 2022

Welcome to this 39th issue of our newsletter “Weak Signals and other Trends”. Each week, I sift through hundreds of sources of inspiration to track where we’re heading. If you are a new subscriber to this newsletter, take the time to send us a note an introduce yourself.

Join us on Clubhouse to discuss how to interpret some of those trends and weak signals most Saturday at 9am EST (we’re on tomorrow).

You can subscribe to this weekly newsletter here to get it directly by mail.

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for sharing this newsletter to those who look into the future.

Share Weak signals and other trends

Strategic blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new business model opportunities while avoiding risks stemming from strategic blindspots.

Edible Hemp-Infused Transit Tickets. DAOs are the new SPACs. Bundling food deliveries, the new business model for restaurants? How Should a Business Self-Cannibalize During Digital Transformation? The $900 Billion Cash Pile Inflating Startup Valuations. Instant Delivery Startups Test a New Tactic: Slower Delivery. Quick-delivery startup Gopuff is planning to sell more than a dozen of its own private-label goods. PayPal, Square and Shopify planning to offer loans to small businesses. Daniel Kahneman’s Approach For Making Better Decisions.

We have scheduled the dates for 2022 for our “Strategic Blindspots”course . Our next cohort which will take place in Montreal, Canada, on April 26-27, 2022. Registrations are open.

Our future

Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy. The Everyspace Plaza. Observing Product Touch: The Vicarious Haptic Effect in Digital Marketing and Virtual Reality. Amazon - sentiment aware voice interface. Drip is the new drop. Flash forward. With Ivy demo, BlackBerry envisions a car that anticipates your next move.

The Great Offline and this quote:

“As concepts, “wilderness” and “the offline” are deeply enmeshed. Both offer mythologies of ahistoricity and unaccountability, an escape clause from the dilemmas of a globalized world. They cloak themselves in the language of embodiment (the wind in your hair, the sand under your feet), while offering up the fantasy of moving through the world without a digital or ecological footprint,”

We keep you updated on those trends and more on Twitter.

Privacy

Google Map : suivi à la trace ! Employers are spying on Americans at home with ‘tattleware”. A deep dive into an NSO zero-click iMessage exploit. Singapore’s tech-utopia. The iPhone Feature to Turn On Before You Die. Why hackers love old domains. Your anti-virus software now connects to harvest crypto.

Weak signals

Weak signals are indicators of a change, a trend or an emerging risk that might become significant for the future. They allow us to run hypothesis, expand our thinking, and challenge assumptions. How will you interpret those in your industry or field of expertise?

This Chinese City Is Building a Dating Database for Its Singles. Simple hacks for the UPS driver. A very powerful 1Hz Minecraft CPU (video). Babyland’s general hospital. Laundry strips. Selling companies in auctions. The World’s Best Rice. Diversified illustrations. Letter know you love her.

Join us to discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse ( we start back on January 8). We have a panel of futurists that illustrate what those signals might mean, and a fantastic group of curious minds in the room.

Down the rabbit hole

This is a new section. It highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors.

This week, I went down the rabbit hole into the future of traveling when I read the answers to Brian Chesky ( CEO of AirBnb) ‘s question: “If Airbnb could launch anything in 2022, what would it be?”. What a fantastic way to solicit ideas.

Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for curious minds and the polymaths …

Space for personality. The Cybersecurity Stories We Were Jealous of in 2021. The Brain ‘Rotates’ Memories to Save Them From New Sensations. How Languages Spread 10,000 Years Ago. The scribes. A Brief History of Tamagotchi. What we know about designing graphs. Ninety-Nine Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2021.How the Maya kept time.

I will suggest here each week a newsletter: today, I recommend The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker , about creativity and building attention muscles.

Feeling Good

Walking and photography. Eleven ways to smell a tree. The Bicycle Handlebar Database. Time Lapse of a Boat Navigating Dutch Canals. The Ultimate Run in my beloved Switzerland.

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