Welcome to this 98th 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 me a note and introduce yourself, I love to understand who is reading.
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I am sending this newsletter this Friday from Geneva, Switzerland. This is what I noticed this week, thank you for sharing with those who look into the future.
Estelle.
Competitive Intelligence
Dive into this interactive visualisation of 21 million biomedical scientific papers. New Tool Shows if Your Car Might Be Tracking You, Selling Your Data. Guessing a password by its hash. Protecting your private data. Google’s new “AI snapshot” replaces links to third-party sites with a screen-filling generative response.
We have scheduled the dates for 2023 for our courses. “Advanced Search Techniques for Competitive and Customer Intelligence” will be offered on June 5, 2023. Registrations are now open.
Strategic blindspots
Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new business model opportunities while avoiding risks stemming from strategic blindspots.
Uber is seeking to patent tech that can forecast user requests. Carmakers raise concerns at Chinese dominance over connectivity patent. Social media is a threat to the world’s banks. Airbnb will push rooms as low-cost option to house rentals. How prioritizing growth doomed First Republic. IKEA Becomes First Retailer To Let Customers Pay Using Time. Decades of consolidation.
On decision: The ‘Sleeping Beauty Problem’ Is Keeping Mathematicians Awake.
Our future
IBM to Pause Hiring for Jobs That AI Could Do. Reimagining cities. Sellers’ inflation. Apocalyptic Infrastructures. Chiplets could help to kickstart the US’ chipmaking ambitions. Free rides for seniors in autonomous cars. Swiss startup edges closer to first-ever space trash collection. A.I. Drug Discovery Is a $50 Billion Opportunity for Big Pharma. Playing the future and this quote:
While technological advancement might be roughly forecastable, accompanying social change or economic or political innovation isn’t as easily anticipated. We rarely foresee the exact outcome of their collisions.
We keep you updated on those trends and more on Twitter.
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?
The inflation cookbook. In China, Young People Ditch Prestige Jobs for Manual Labor. Agree is an online tool that allows you to involve others in decisions. Lawn wars consume America's neighborhoods. New designs for the Billy bookcase reduced its price 29%. Why we will pay more for instant coffee. A beer for mature drinkers. Jack Ma, the cofounder of Alibaba, has taken up a teaching position in Japan, on sustainable agriculture and food production. The German Artist Who Threw A Party Where Everyone Saw Eye To Eye. Egg prices are returning to normal.
Down the rabbit hole
This section highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors: “A rabbit hole is not a distraction. A rabbit hole is your brain trying to tell you to pay attention to something you’re curious about. Ignore algorithmic rabbit holes” ( by are.na)
This week, I discovered Segment everything.
Hodgepodge discovery
Articles for curious minds and the polymaths
Your native language impacts how you perceive music. The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built. The Untold Story of the Boldest Supply-Chain Hack Ever. Why are beds flat? The age of average.
I like new words, and learned about propinquity this week while old neighborhoods in Venice. The implications to city design are striking, but also to interrelationships :
Propinquity can be more than just physical distance. Residents of an apartment building living near a stairway, for example, tend to have more friends from other floors than those living further from the stairway. The propinquity effect is usually explained by the mere exposure effect, which holds that the more exposure a stimulus gets, the more likeable it becomes.
Numbers
11.5%- Right now children under the age of 14 make up just 11.5 percent of the Japanese population, the lowest figure since the beginning of when comparable data was first available
70%- 70% of technical innovations can be attributed, either directly or indirectly, to advanced materials.
30%- IBM’s CEO states that 30% of the company’s non-customer-facing roles could be replaced by AI and automation over five years.
Feeling good
Inside the great pyramid. Moon view. Travel photography winners 2022. Wonders of streetview. Rules and razors. Search moments inside hours of videos by describing them.
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