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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
The truth can seem hard to find these days. One of my biggest challenges in putting this weekly email together to share with you is finding some perspective, particularly when it comes to Trump. As you might expect, many of the news sources that I subscribe to and use to compile this report are far … Read more
This week the father of Amy Winehouse announced a world tour in 2019 featuring a “hologram” of his daughter on stage. A digital avatar of Winehouse, who died in 2011 from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, will “perform” some of her most popular songs in a concert accompanied by a live band, real backup … Read more
About a year and a half ago, a Japanese company called Gatebox released a depressing preview video of a new AI powered “Holographic Wife” that would offer lonely young Japanese salarymen companionship at home. The character is based on anime and stand about 8 inches tall inside a glass box. This week the company finally released their actual … Read more
The Washington Post story this week revealing the “previously unreported ratings system” used by Facebook to rate the trustworthiness of users on a scale of zero to 1 has all the usual components of an outrage-worthy announcement. How dare Facebook think they can rate all of us? What if they abuse this system or someone hacks it? … Read more
Facebook is fond of running experiments, even though in the past this hasn’t gone so well. Yet these missteps haven’t stopped them from trying. Over the past several weeks, there has been reports of several new innovative features that they are testing which may soon have a significant impact on your online life and behavior. … Read more
Domino’s just started fixing potholes on roads, to help your pizza get delivered undisturbed. In response to news stories of kids getting fined by overzealous city officials for running lemonade stands without permits, Country Time Lemonade created a fund to pay their legal fees. Both are stunts from brands taking a short lived Brand Stand … Read more
This week Crayola branched out in a new direction by launching its own line of colorful beauty products. In the same week, Blackberry continued their own quest to maintain relevance and resurrect their fading brand by announcing the KEY2 (a new phone featuring a full keyboard) and Kodak showed off the first photos taken on … Read more
I spent the early part of this week at SXSW and one of the themes of my talk (see slides here) was our shifting relationship to the truth. I believe we must choose to venture beyond our own media bubbles and seek out information from unfamiliar sources. This week the largest ever study of fake news found … Read more
This week disruption was the theme in multiple stories featuring everything from new ASMR videos, to rocket launches to more than one story warning about the downside of technology. The stories remind us that regardless of whether we call these changes disruption or evolution, most of them don’t help everyone equally. There are winners and … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my latest book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - relesaed 10/01/2024.
Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and the 3-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten books.
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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.
