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What If Smart Home Devices Sold What They Know About You?

If your smart robot vacuum cleaner created a map of your home in the process of cleaning it, that data could provide new insights to help tailor smart home products to your specific living conditions. That’s the bold assertion of Colin Angle, chief executive of Roomba maker iRobot Corp. It does raise some clear privacy … Read more

The Future of Elevators Could Go Sideways

What if elevators went sideways? They might soon thanks to a new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer ThyssenKrupp which aims to get rid of cables altogether and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China. The idea would allow people in a tall tower to … Read more

New Survey Finds Recent MBA Grads Don’t Want To Work On Wall Street

A new survey shows that jobs outside of Wall Street are increasingly being preferred by MBA graduates as just 19% of respondents selected Wall Street as their top employment choice – a drop of 7 percent from last year and the lowest level in the 8 year history of the survey. While the survey only … Read more

Have An Accent? It Might Help You Get Your Next Job

AI voice-assistants have long had difficulty understanding foreign accents, but now Amazon may be taking steps to address this frequent issue. In Australia, the brand is hiring “a linguist with Australian background” to join their team. The same may be happening in other places around the world as these linguists can listen to the language … Read more

Trend Watch – The Rise Of Media Escapism

Is it ever ok to take a break from your outrage and the 24-hour news cycle? We all should hope so. Yet taking this kind of break is leading to a widespread side effect: guilt. That time you spend watching The Bachelor or staying home from the latest angry protest march is time where you’re … Read more

Why Chief Marketing Officers Don’t Last

The tenure of most Chief Marketing Officers is woefully short, but this fact is often dismissed as a symptom of changing leadership or sometimes ineffective results. New research points to the fact that CMOs often suffer from vaguely defined job responsibilities and confusion between whether more strategic thinking or focus on commercialization (or a hybrid) … Read more

22,000 People Who Would Clean Toilets For WiFi Access

Do you actually read the terms and conditions for Wifi access before accepting it? If not, apparently you’re not alone in your lazy behavior. Wifi provider Purple hilariously added a clause into their terms for WiFi as a social experiment, and over 22,000 people blindly agreed to do everything from cleaning toilets to “manually relieving … Read more

MIT Shares Theory On Why Some Neighborhoods Evolve

Why do some neighborhoods evolve and gentrify while others don’t? This fascinating story is about a joint research program between MIT and Harvard to identify what causes urban change. Tested with five American cities, this system quantifies the physical improvement or deterioration of neighborhoods. The early results are already surprising: “Contrary to popular belief, raw … Read more

“Grandmakers” Teach Crafts To Millennials Eager For Digital Detox

To combat the loneliness that often comes with aging and living alone, a UK based retirement home created a festival to allow senior citizens to connect with millennials by asking them to teach a “heritage skill.” The resulting “Grandfest” (as the two month event is being called) aims to celebrate the abilities of older people … Read more

6 Awesome Ways Canada Is Celebrating Its 150th Anniversary

As we head into a time when both America and Canada celebrate their national birthdays – this week’s newsletter takes an inside look at some of the most significant ways that Canada is celebrating it’s 150th anniversary as a country. In contrast to the “melting pot” of America which has often been criticized for how … Read more

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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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