Liquid trees, pickle ball, and the Akinator

April 21, 2023

Apr 21, 2023

Welcome to this 96th 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.

Competitive Intelligence

The Improbable Journey of a US Intelligence Leak. Search for insider trades to spot signals. Financial visualization. Google is looking to patent what it calls “page-based prediction of user intent”. Better discover and understand scientific articles. Is ChatGPT Good at Search?

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.

Functional fixedness: when we stick to what we know. The Future of Strategic Decision-Making. The firms that now get to decide how to balance risk and opportunity in this fast-moving field. Licensing content could be a gold mine for Netflix. The lost art of building risk matrices. Demand for cash has fallen to a two-decade low. Gen X Female Executives Are Leaving Their Jobs in Droves.

Our future

More specialty retailers are launching their own marketplaces. Some ideas for science fiction in the 2020s. Humans could soon live to 120 years old and beyond. Not your parent’s car. Liquid trees. Chinese Gaming Firm Appoints AI Robot As CEO. Character.AI lets you create Characters and talk to them. South Korea is paying 'lonely young people' $500 a month to re-enter society. Carbon Robotics Autonomous Weeder.

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?

Why Do People Love This Tiny Doll? Community gardens as a central place for communities. Being Sent Home To Wait To Find Out if You’ve Lost Your Job. Why pickleball is "the fastest growing sport in America". Volkswagen’s part no. 199 398 500 A” was a pack of sausages. Tupperware warns it may go out of business. Elon Musk starts a new AI company. Cities Sue Hyundai, Kia After Wave of Car Thefts. Baby Dove launches Black Doula Directory.

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 a 82-page prompt book.

On my radar

I have prepared this week my keynote for tonight, when I will be addressing 300+ executives, board members of Canadian sports associations as well as athletes on the next horizon for sports organizations: 10 stunning predictions about the future of sports. Coolest future sports. Fitness & Fandom & the Omniverse. Sports in 25 years.

I find it useful to compare these predictions to the presentation I gave with the same group 10 years ago at the Canadian Olympic Committee conference (pdf).

Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for curious minds and the polymaths

The Extraordinary Ways Rhythm Shapes Our Lives. A New, Safe Home for the Louvre’s Unseen Treasures. Researchers built sonar glasses that track facial movements for silent communication. Google AI Infrastructure Supremacy: Systems Matter More Than Microarchitecture. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s 2022 Letter to Shareholders. The data delusion. The hidden cost of cruises. The origins of creativity. Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen.

Numbers

89%- 89% of Parisians voted to remove e-scooters from the city in a referendum

912- Americans aged 50+ are spending more on tech than ever before — an average of $912 last year

43,000- There are about 43,000 mobile home communities in the United States, housing approximately 22 million people.

Feeling good

Your stellar neighborhood. Every noise at once. The Cooperative de Croque-Fruits. Europe by bike. Fictional Brands Archive.

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Weak signals and other trends