The One Reason So Many Brand Pranks On April Fools Day Failed This Year
Why do some branded April Fools Day jokes work while others fall flat?
Books
The 2018 Non-Obvious Book Awards – Top 50 Business Books Of The Year
Every year my team and I read and review hundreds of books in the process of curating ideas to incorporate in our annual list of trends. Beyond using those books to inspire how we see the world, we also select our favorites each year to feature as part of the Non-Obvious Book Awards program. For … Read more
Most Online Content Is Crap. How Will We Decide What To Save?
This week the Library of Congress mapped out an ambitious vision to expand its collection of digital content and broaden access to all of it. On the surface, cataloging all of this data seems like the ultimate impossible task because of how exponentially it is growing. It’s hard to imagine how any one group will be able … Read more
Why Are Icelanders So Creative? Hint – It’s Not Their Environment
The power of empathy was a big theme this week, in stories from Amnesty International and a “robotherapy” chatbot. Both look at new and interesting ways for us to better understand one another and get help when we most need it. New Survey Reveals Multiple Reasons Why Icelanders Are So Creative A new published study … Read more
The Best Business Books Of 2017 | Non-Obvious Book Award Winners
What were the best business books of 2017? For my team, trying to answer this question is a year long obsession that takes us through several hundred books as part of our annual research into trends and new ideas to fuel the predictions in our own book that comes out every December all about trends. … Read more
What I Learned By Predicting Trends For 8 Years (And Almost Becoming A Futurist)
I have often resisted describing myself as a futurist. To me, a futurist was someone who offered an ambitious prediction of the far future — usually focusing on things like energy produced by bio luminescent bacteria or 3D printed houses. Instead, I have spent close to the past decade predicting the near future. Every year, … Read more
How Libraries Might Save Humanity’s Soul (Or At Least Preserve It)
We expect libraries to maintain an archive of humanity’s best thinking, but what if a library decided to put so-called “pulp fiction” on the shelves? The term refers to a category of cheaply printed books from the early 1900s about lust, sex, theft, betrayal and degradation that were so lowly regarded that most were “pulped” (destroyed) … Read more
Books Are Getting “Swearier” And This Is What It Means …
Apparently the shift towards swear words in book titles and content has not gone unnoticed by researchers. As Cory Doctorow notes in this article: “books are getting swearier and [researchers concluded] that this is a bellwether for a growth in the value of individualism.” I have definitely noticed this shift in non-fiction books (The Subtle … Read more
Brazilian Publisher Offers On-Demand Clever Captions For Your Selfies
Sometimes it is hard to pick the perfect caption for your selfie, but Brazilian publisher Leya has a solution to help … and introduce you to some of their newest authors in the process. The brand launched a chatbot that will ask you about your photo and then suggest a quote from one of their … Read more
The Future of Books, Publishing and Libraries
This week the entire US-based publishing industry is descending upon New York for a three day celebration of books known as the BookExpo. I’m here on behalf of my publishing company Ideapress, and so this week’s insights will focus on books. Below you will read about the bold new way that libraries are reinventing themselves … Read more
