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This Journalist Tried to Make a New Friend in 30 Days and It Went … Badly

This Journalist Tried To Make A New Friend In 30 Days And It Went … Badly

What if you set out to make a new friend and gave yourself 30 days to make it happen? That’s the intriguing challenge that forms the backdrop for an article from this month’s issue of Esquire magazine where journalist Kelly Stout tries everything from taking a mommy and me swimming class to signing onto the “Bumble for … Read more

Porto and the Importance of City Branding

Porto 900x600

As I write this, I’m just off the stage here in Portugal at one of the largest business conferences of the year in Europe at the QSP Summit in the city of Porto. Aside from its picturesque location on the Northern coast, the country’s second largest city also enjoys a reputation as an award-winning destination due to a combination … Read more

The Truth About Fox News: It Isn’t Fake.

Calling Fox News fake is a common theme among the people in my social media circles, but I have long been curious about their reporting and why so many people seem so deeply influenced by it. I’m a frequent reader of their stories and consistently have it as part of my overall media diet even … Read more

5 Non-Obvious Megatrends Changing Our World In 2020

For the past ten years I have gone through an annual ritual of publishing a book about trends that describe our shifting culture and business environment. Over the past decade, my team and I have identified and written about well over 100 trends covering everything from the rise of the #metoo movement (a trend we … Read more

Digital Undertakers, On-Demand Grandkids And Other Jobs Of The Future

One of the most consistent signs of our shifting future is how quickly new jobs and industries are emerging. Even as some fear technology making certain jobs obsolete, there are sci-fi sounding sectors like asteroid mining that are actually becoming reality. What I find more interesting, though, are the jobs which will be created as … Read more

Why We Should Stop Trusting Viral Videos

Last week one of the inescapable stories in the United States was a controversial video showing a group of Catholic students appearing to clash with Native Americans. They were widely condemned and the video was endlessly dissected in opinion stories shared online and one of the students even went on television to defend himself. Over the course of … Read more

Can Hyperlocal Apps Actually Make Us Interact With Our Neighbors?

The idea that neighbors might want the food you won’t eat might seem far fetched depending on where you live. Yet the hyperlocal food sharing app called Olio just picked up another $6 million in funding and has already expanded to over 40 countries with rapid growth. More than 400,000 food items have been shared since the app started … Read more

How To Sue A Robot And What The TED Conference Is Really Like

conradmaldives

Should technology be a source for hope or fear? That was the question that seemed to emerge this week as I read several stories offering a recap from the TED Global conference as well as new initiatives in natural language search from Google and a legal debate about how and if people should be able … Read more

Black Mirror Predicting Reality, Coke Uses Blockchain And Spotify Tries To Be The Netflix Of Music

If you are a fan of the Netflix sci-fi series Black Mirror, this was a surreal week. Walmart patented autonomous robot bees (which get hacked to kill people in one episode) and China introduced a social rating system that gives citizens scores based on “good behaviors” (a plot line that leads to chaos in another episode). … Read more

The Disruption Issue: Norway’s Olympic Curling Pants, Saudi Solar And Soap Fetishes

norway curling

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

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#1 WSJ & USA Today Bestselling Author

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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