Majorana fermions, polygenic scores, and chimeric contributions

Welcome to this 12th 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.

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter to those who look into our future.


Strategic Intelligence

We are focusing this week on a series of tools that competitive intelligence teams are using:

24 tools to help you harvest intelligence from your competitors’ Twitter platforms. Use the DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome. Learn how to use Beautiful Soup for web scraping with Python in 3 minutes. A guide for U.S. Private Companies research. Intelligence Reimagined: Don’t Forget the Human Dimension in the Pursuit of Technological Solutions.


Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks:

How Much the Eye Tells the Brain. Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving. Brute-force Creativity: testing random ideas is a robot’s way of being creative. And it can do so faster than any human. Forerunner Ventures’ KJ Sidberry on how the firm is rethinking the definition of consumer. New DNS vulnerabilities have the potential to impact millions of devices. Watch this company: Gojek and Tokopedia are finalizing USD 18 billion fusion to form GoTo. Minimizing risk: Our Brains Are Stuck in the Stone Age. Banks vs telcos in Nigeria. Not just chips: another Unlikely Pandemic Shortage: Boba Tea.

We now have a date for our next course “Strategic Blindspot” which will take place on the fall (in person- hybrid possible).

Our future

Pour prédire l’avenir, engagez des romanciers. Amazon’s private labels. Herman Miller’s new office line is the anti-cubicle. UPS Flight Forward adds innovative new aircraft, enhancing capabilities and network sustainability . AI-powered virtual assistants and the future of work. Is growth in China soaring or slowing? The answer depends on how you calculate growth. Chimeric contribution of human extended pluripotent stem cells to monkey embryos ex vivo. Future of Money (100 pages pdf download). The spinach that sends emails. Amazon One’s palm-scanning payments are coming to Whole Foods.

The EU is considering a ban on AI for mass surveillance and social credit scores.

“AI systems used to manipulate human behavior, exploit information about individuals or groups of individuals, used to carry out social scoring or for indiscriminate surveillance would all be banned in the EU


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 tarot is trending again. Introducing Substack Local, for a new generation of local news. Eyecam is a creepy webcam shaped like a human eye. Amazon’s new high-tech hair salon. Farmers Insurance Engages Carpe Data to Identify New Growth in Business Insurance Lines. This deli in New Jersey is trading at a $100 million market cap (they have one store and $35k in annual sales). The whitest-ever paint. UiPath — a US-based, Romania-founded software firm that automates repetitive tasks — went public. How much is children data worth. Polygenic scores: Orchid is offering the chance for couples planning a pregnancy to learn their odds of passing on risks for common conditions to their future child. Allbirds Is Giving Away Its Carbon Footprint Calculator to the Fashion Industry . The Bizarre Electric VW Beetle Knockoff.


On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This is what I worked on this week:

For one of the boards I serve on, I have been connecting dots this week to see how companies are reinventing how they contribute to society: Inside Brunello Cucinelli’s vision for ‘humanistic capitalism’. A fantastic initiative by a unique retailer: Decathlon- and an illustration of a truly purpose-led family business . The resurrection of MEC. illycaffè becomes B Corp.

I am preparing a discussion early May with the senior management team of an insurance company and this led me to look at alternative data for that industry: YieldNet: A Convolutional Neural Network for Simultaneous Corn and Soybean Yield Prediction Based on Remote Sensing Data. Payment Insights from Equifax leverages more alternative data. The alternative data footprint that is changing how insurance companies assess risk. Using Satellites to Make Index Insurance Scalable.

Our consulting engagements can be found here.

Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind which likes to cross over to new fields:

What the General Social Survey tell us about America. Why philanthropy needs to prepare itself for a world powered by AI. A philosophy of sound. The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life. Creativity Is Dead, Long Live Curation. The meaning of food. Quantum computing’s reproducibility crisis: Majorana fermions. This is your brain on Zoom. On managing interruptions. How Infectious Disease Shaped American Bathroom Design.

I like to discover new words: this week, I learnt about K-beauty.


Feeling Good

The Fear of the Dark Symphony. A virtual discovery map of Tokyo. Lots of us learned classical music from watching old cartoons, so I’m going to identify the pieces that frequently popped up. A 360° VR tour of a landmark exhibition of contemporary Māori art. Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year . Calculating how much your meetings are costing.

Sosumi, adaptogens and missed calls

Welcome to this 11th 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. We discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse.

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter to those who look at the future.


Strategic Intelligence

We are focusing this week on a series of tools that competitive intelligence teams are using:

It’s Time to Toss SWOT Analysis into the Ashbin of Strategy HistoryAmid the Pandemic, Hedge Funds Grapple With Investments in New Tech
and Alternative Data . US financial services firms lead UK in alternative data integration, study finds. US Intelligence Warns of Fractured Societies, Likelihood for Conflict ( the full report on Global Trends 2040 is here). The Competitive Intelligence Software Market, forecasts to 2026. Yet, Most business intelligence software isn’t getting used. 61% of businesses say competitive intelligence has made a direct impact on revenue. The Journalist and the Whistleblower.

We are collecting strategic analysis techniques on Pinterest. Here are 190 of them.

Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks

Opentable Has Opened Its First Brick-and-Mortar Restaurant. A booming industry based entirely on missed calls. Confusion over GDPR is blocking scientific progress, throwing up barriers with US researchers in particular. Sixty-Week Delay on Router Orders Shows Scale of Chip Crisis (see also Everything You Need to Know About the Great Semiconductor Shortage on the same theme). The global chip shortage could last until 2023 . Russian buildup in the Arctic has northern NATO members uneasy. Redefining what a map can be with new information and AI.

Need an introduction to strategic blindspots? This article, published by Estelle Metayer for the World Economic Forum, demystifies what it means (also in Chinese: 快公司的安全驾驶) and in Italian.

Our future

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (pdf). Realizing the potential of synthetic biology. A South Korean Chatbot Shows Just How Sloppy Tech Companies Can Be With User Data. Call centre staff to be monitored via webcam for home-working ‘infractions’. The Most Important Scarce Resource is LegitimacyDecoding emojis and defining ‘support’: Facebook’s rules for content revealed. Mobileye and Udelv Ink Deal for Autonomous Delivery. Watch a fly-through of Mars city designed for quarter of a million people.The Pandemic Could Be an Opportunity to Remake Cities. Scientists can implant false memories — and reverse them.


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?

Meet Stack, the newest technology incubated by Google. Hint: it intends to index your life. Artist’s intent: AI recognizes emotions in visual art. Quintessential Canadian: sweet maple sap filled with the ecology of the forest, and infused with the queen and king of the medicinal mushroom ( it reminds me of Taika). Instacart and DoorDash Plan to Launch Their Own Credit Cards. Christie’s Will Offer 9 Multimillion-Dollar NFT CryptoPunks in Its May Evening Auction. Forget Traffic Jams! The Audi Neo-Bauhaus Concept Carries A Bicycle. The Therapy-App Fantasy. Archegos and the $6tn world of the family office ($). Why are young people imagining themselves as the protagonist in fictionalised versions of their lives? Working with smallholders. Impossible Foods’ First TV Commercial Will Challenge Meat Like Never Before. Single pixel of digital-only art sold for more than $1.7 million at Sotheby’s.


On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This is what I worked on this week:

Future of work: I will be keynoting in May for a client at their conference for their 2,200+ employees on what to expect when we return to the office: What more than 32,000 people think about the future of work. Retail as a New (Old) Third Place. Microsoft revealed the latest truths about working from home. Ministers urged to give UK home-workers a ‘right to disconnect’. “I Do Not Trust People in the Same Way and I Don’t Think I Ever Will Again”. Here’s 10,000 Hours. Don’t Spend It All in One Place. How COVID-19 and ‘work from anywhere’ can build the city of the future.

Sound:as I serve in the “kitchen cabinet” of LifeScore, I am sensitive to what is going on in the world of audio: Brands are upleveling bespoke audio assets into audio-first touchpoints and immersive soundscapes, for 360-degree multisensory engagement. The fascinating Story of Sosumi & the Mac Startup Sound. Design and music go hand in hand, and the ties that bind them are deeper than album packaging or gaming soundtracks. Coca-Cola: Try Not to Hear This by David. Disney applies for patent for generation of audio including emotionally expressive synthetized content.

B2B:I am building a one-day training program for the management of a large Canadian diversified industrial company: B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy: 5 Questions to Ask First. Bottom Up Pricing & Packaging: Let the User Journey Be Your Guide . Omnichannel in B2B sales: The new normal in a year that has been anything but.

Our speaking engagements can be found here.

Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind which likes to cross over to new fields:

Building an antilibrary: the power of unread books . Epinard, the community. Consistent routines make creative work possible. Instead of a code encrypted in the wiring of our neurons, could consciousness reside in the brain’s electromagnetic field? In 1990 8 nuns sold up their convent, bought a Mercedes, bet on racehorses and disappeared to the south of France. Massive Lego Kingdoms That Defy the Cultural Erasure of Africa’s Medieval Civilizations. Always Remember to Ignite Imagination When Creating Learning Experiences. Periodical Cicadas Will Overrun D.C. This Spring. Inside the Making of Facebook’s Supreme Court.

I like to discover new words: this week, I learnt about adaptogens (scroll down to the bottom of that newsletter).


Feeling Good

Calmly Writer: The Ultimate Distraction-Free Writing App. NASA shares breathtaking image of a wind-sculpted sea of blue dunes on Mars. Wikipedia around. A Cyclist on the English Landscape. Brick Twist.

Urbanist memes,dreamcore and DeFi

Welcome to this 10th 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. We discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse.

Competitive Intelligence

We are focusing this week on a series of tools that competitive intelligence teams are using:

LexisNexis to Provide Giant Database of Personal Information to ICE. Decoding emojis. Voice Assistant Recordings Could Reveal What Someone Nearby Is Typing. Rita, your data. It’s a scary world: Hidden Wiki is a dark web version of Wikipedia where you can find links to different websites on the dark web. Swisscows offers now a privacy-safe web-search. An incredibly detailed meta-search engine. BBC News rend son site disponible sur le dark web pour contrecarrer la censure. An academic search engine. A database of over 100,000 freely available journals online.

Our next course Going Digital: Social Media as a Source for Customer Insight and Competitive Intelligence”is here. Our next program will take place on April 19-20 and 22, 2021 ( 10am-12pm ).

Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks

The 10 most cited AI data sets are riddled with label errors according to a new study out of MIT,(pdf). Dark patterns. Smart toys, really? A leaked Amazon PDF from 2018 . Common Blind Spot that Can Derail Your Company’s Cybersecurity. All Tech Revolves Around This Disruptor. Clubhouse launches payments so creators can make money. This person does not exist. The cost of 11,000 lines of Java API code. Reforestation Is Great! But We’re Running Out of Seeds. How Much the Eye Tells the Brain.

About the blindspot spotter mindset: The joys of being an absolute beginner – for life

“additional research later showed that the only thing worse than hardly knowing anything was knowing a little bit more”


Need an introduction to strategic blindspots? This article, published by Estelle Metayer for the World Economic Forum, demystifies what it means (also in Chinese: 快公司的安全驾驶) and in Italian.

Our future

Meta-human creators by RealEngine. 5 jobs from the space workforce of the future. Parody bot accounts, complete with deep fake avatars, publicly advocate for Amazon’s employment practices. FDA-approved gaming is already here, pointing to its therapeutic potential. What happens when two chatbots go on a date. Spot is a new platform dedicated entirely to walking meetings. Blocked In Real Life. Learning human–environment interactions using conformal tactile textilesIndustry clouds could be the next big thing. Here Come Hot Desks and Zoom Rooms. And Holograms? Verizon and Dreamscape to develop develop and market avatar-driven synthetic training and simulation experiences. The consumer demand recovery and lasting effects of COVID-19 .


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?

There’s a Better Way to Date Online—If You Like Trains and are a “New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teen”. Your Next Cool, New Job Could Be A Chief TikTok Officer. Are you #dreamcore ? New Dove kids care products are branded with positive affirmation. H&M and other Western brands gone from Apple Maps and other apps in China. Now Investors Are Buying Shares of Video Games. Siri will no longer be female by default. Makeup that’s safe to wear to bed. Things that Beep: A Brief History of Product Sound Design. Mom Charged in Deepfake Cheerleading Plot . Pedigree partnered with popular chat app Clubhouse to place 20 dogs into chatrooms last weekend to help them get adopted. USPS calls Nike a hypocrite over unofficial ‘Postal Service’ Air Force 1 shoe.


On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This is what I worked on this week:

I am hosting tomorrow Saturday April 10 a discussion on the future of retail on Clubhouse, with experts from all corners of the world: Future of retail: Everything on Amazon is an Ad. Louis Vuitton change sa boutique en librairie, le temps d’un confinement80K retail stores will close by 2026, claims report. Where Next for Kith’Hype Machine ($)? Welcome to democratized retail. It’s all about backchannels: How brands are using TikTok as a channel for customer service and product feedback. Gap designs fulfillment system to prioritize ‘most valuable‘ customers. Walmart hires Disney in-house agency leader as first chief creative officer. Amazon Explored Opening Home Goods, Electronics Discount Stores.


Our speaking engagements can be found here.

Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind which likes to cross over to new fields:

The Artificial Intelligence Database. Cooking with Kenji Miyazawa.Everything you need to know about the Global Technology Governance Summit. Physicists Learn to Superfreeze AntimatterFacebook Analytics is Going Away. Deliberate house-burning in the prehistory of Central and Eastern Europe (pdf). Subway stations re-design. This river in Canada is a legal person.

I like to discover new words: this week, I learnt about DeFi.


Feeling Good

Grove pizza. The infinite drum machine. Could you steer and navigate the Suez Canal: try this simulation. Art and math. A live stream of an eagle’s nest. Artist Creates Architectural Drawings That Look Like They’re Illuminated With Real Lights. The Louvre just made its entire art collection accessible on its website. How 2020 Remapped Your Worlds.

Hybrid hospices,xenobots and fandoms

Welcome to this 9th 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. We discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse.

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter to those who look at the future.


Competitive Intelligence

We are focusing this week on a series of tools that competitive intelligence teams are using:

Hexowatch , a powerful site surveillance tool to monitor any website for visual, content, source code, technology, availability, or price changes. Ricochet helps you complement the information you have about prospective B2B prospects. A reverse image searchFindings has been discontinued, it used to allow you to combine all your research in one place. Cars Have Your Location. This Spy Firm Wants to Sell It to the U.S. Military. Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google Search. The UK is secretly testing a controversial web snooping tool. The 450 pages report by The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. GCHQ releases ‘most difficult puzzle ever‘ in honour of Alan Turing .


Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks

Does your social media presence create a news’ blindspot? How to Run a Business in 2020. Amazon Live is becoming a destination for big product launches. The World’s First Programmable Organism. America’s Top Farmland Owner. The World’s Most Searched Consumer Brands. Billions in secretive derivatives ($). Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach “Catastrophic”. Morningstar unleashes robots to write fund research100 billions for chips.


Our future

AI Can Now Debate with Humans and Sometimes Convince Them, Too. Hybrid hospices: Could hotel, home and office soon be one space? Customer advisory boards. America’s long-ailing manufacturers are fired up. This noggin-reading gadget plays songs based on your brain waves. Chilean city installs cabins in park as offices for small businesses. Evidence of brand new physics at Cern. This AI Uses Your Brain Activity to Create Fake Faces It Knows You’ll Find Attractive. How the rise of ‘digital nomad’ visas will drive the global battle for talent. The rise of cyborg art dealers.


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 an hypothesis, expand our thinking, and challenge assumptions. How will you interpret those in your industry or field of expertise?

Sotheby’s Rakes in $176 Million in a Global, Five-Hour Franken-Sale. We are all that boat now. The Dark Web Is Teeming With Vaccine Listings Right Now. Coded Bias is the ‘Inconvenient Truth for Algorithms.’ and it’s coming to Netflix on Apr 15. Unfolding the math of origami. A new fashion trend: tops you can get vaccinated in. Shake Shack trials cutlery and straws made by microbes out of greenhouse gases. How you signal you’re single. Ex-Gap CEO Art Peck launches $200M SPAC, Cayman island located. Burger Restaurant Poses Food As Office Supplies So You Can Expense Your Lunch. Lil Nas X’s ‘Satan Shoe’ — made with one drop of human blood — sold out in under a minute. Stanford Scientists Reverse Engineer Moderna Vaccine, Post Code on Github. When bicycles and fryers meet ( in French)


On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This is what I worked on this week:

Governance in 2021 and beyond: I am finalizing a training curriculum for the large institutional shareholder for their nominee directors, and reviewed what will be on board’s agendas in 2021-2025: Solarwind creates a new cybersecurity-specific committee in the boardroom. The state of Enterprise Risk Management in Canada. Principles for Board Governance of Cyber Risk by the World Economic Forum.

Social media awakensI am updating our course “Social Media for Competitive Intelligence” and have tracked this week many new announcement and new functionalities: Dickie Bush unveils hidden Twitter functionalities. LinkedIn adds “a Creator Mode. Slack is getting new audio features. LinkedIn confirms it’s working on a Clubhouse rival, too. So is Discord.


Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind which likes to cross over to new fields:

The Royal Charter Gale and the world’s first National Forecasting Service. The largest collection of passion economy resources . The Strange Reason You’ll Always Weigh Less in Canada Than Anywhere Else. Microsoft PowerPoint can now coach you – and help you practice presentations almost anywhere — no humans required. What happens to our cognition in the darkest depths of winter? Listen to Wikipedia. Mapping World Literature with Mapbox.

I like new words. I read this week about fandoms.

Feeling good

Is that ship still stuck?Welsh rabbits serve up prehistoric finds on tiny Skokholm Island. The infinite drum machine. Addicted to clickclickclick. Build poemas from the NYT timeline. Where is that boat?

Brand flippers, connectomes and the doorway effect

Welcome to this 8th 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. We also have a club on Clubhouse and discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST .

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter to those who look at the future.

Share Weak signals and other trends

Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks

‘Sometimes the answer is to do nothing’: unflashy French duo take architecture’s top prize. Amazon becomes the top clothing retailer in the U.S., outselling Walmart, Target, Gap and others. Seafood fraud happening on a vast global scale. Synthetic Media — What it is and why it’s important. SpaceX moves to beam Starlink internet into trucks, boats, and aircraft. How Will The Explosion of Social Audio Impact B2B Influencer Marketing? Nordstrom launches livestream selling.

Not familiar with the notion of strategic blindspots? Here is an article we wrote about blindspots for the World Economic Forum.

Our future

The rise of private wireless explained. Autonomous Delivery Robots Are Now ‘Pedestrians’ in Pennsylvania. Your Face Is Not Your Own. Why SPACs Are the New IPO. The next generation of everything. Am I my connectome? Scientists developed a clever way to detect Deepfakes by analyzing light reflections in the eyes. The start-up that believes planes should fly themselves. Summers could last half the year by the end of this century. New Theoretical Warp Engine Brings Us Closer To Travel At The Speed Of Light. What Covid has told us about remote work. Garmin Embeds Alexa Custom Assistant in Car Infotainment System. France Becomes The First Country to Ban All Five Pesticides Linked to Bee Deaths. This AI Uses Your Brain Activity to Create Fake Faces It Knows You’ll Find Attractive. Amazon Expands Effort to ‘Gamify’ Warehouse Work.

We keep you informed as we spot other disruptive trends 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?

Brand flippers: Thrasio, which recently raised $750 million in financing is one among dozens of firms snapping up successful Amazon brands for millions of dollars. The Top Consumer Marketplaces have changed during Covid: two new categories for ticketing and childcare market places. The mushroom economy takes off. Charmin Debuts Toilet Paper NFTs. Facebook Is Building An Instagram For Kids Under The Age Of 13. Hunting for a PS5 has become an entire subculture. Artist Krista Kim sells “first NFT digital house in the world” for over $500,000.

Join us on Clubhouse at 9AM EST tomorrow to discuss how to interpret some of those weak signals.For those who missed it, we will have this 60mns morning discussion each Saturday at 9am EST ( look for @competia or follow our club “Trends! And weak signals”). Here is a summary of our conversation last week.

On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This is what happened this week:

Building scenarios: most companies are revamping their strategic plans to incorporate the current uncertainty and move away from forecasts. Here are some tools I have scouted for them: A futures scenario builder. Disruption decade. The World Economic Forum interactive risk mapGapminder’s interactive map to chart pretty much any macro-economic data.

Map your network: I am finalizing a training program for a client on how to develop primary sources of information to collect or confirm strategic intelligence: How we used to be able to visualize our network on LinkedIn. Analyze your network in social media. How To Visualize Your Facebook Friend Network. Hack and download the Linkedin API for Python. An app to modelize your social network connections.


Hodgepodge discovery

Sparkling coffee. The first computer. What falling robots reveal about the absurdity of human trust. Age of Invention: Where Be Dragons? Weet is an asynchronous video communication for remote teams. Why retro-looking games are getting so much love . This company reportedly lost $3.2B in 2020 and is working toward going public in a SPAC deal at a $9B valuation- what could go wrong? We like the “Lego Stories”.

The Weird ‘Doorway Effect‘:

“If the brain thinks it is in a different context, then those memories belong in a different network of information”

I also like to track new words and this week, I discovered blobs: This Brainless, Single-Celled Blob Can Make Complex ‘Decisions’.


Feeling good

Take a walk around a bunch of different cities, pick the radio station, the mode of transport, and the time of day. “World’s first full-scale ship tunnel” gets go ahead to be built in Norway and it’s beautiful.

Techno-optimists, rug pulls, and hype-biscus

Welcome to this 7th 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. We discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse.

You can subscribe to this newsletter here to get it directly by mail:Subscribe

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing the word.

Share Weak signals and other trends


Blindspots

Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new opportunities and avoid missing emerging risks

The Surging Demand for Digital Collectibles Could Offer a Lifeline for Cash-Strapped Museums. Zoom quietly launches “Real Experiences” , competing with AirBnb. The fallacy of “what gets measured gets managed”. Geekplus automates picking and flow in the warehouse. Fin-fluencers. Snapchat’s AR capabilities are boosting its commerce efforts.

Not familiar with the notion of strategic blindspots? Here is an article we wrote about blindspots for the World Economic Forum.

Our future

Up close with transhumanists. All futurism is Afrofuturism. First space hotel set to open in 2027. Google Working On ‘Wolverine’ Project, A Device That Enables ‘superhuman Hearing’. Robots and labour in the service sector. Helping robots handle uncertainty. The 10 most innovative companies in robotics. How will Generation C ( Covid) shape up? Beyond Hygge. Shopping will be dominated by a few but enriched by many. Paving the way for smart clothing. Facebook is betting on the wrist. A Hacker Got All Your Texts for $16. Scientists coax cells to mimic earliest human embryo stage. Flexiform architecture.

Check also this treasure trove of trends reports by the Future Today Institute.

We keep you informed as we spot other disruptive trends 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?

For the First Time Ever, the Rijksmuseum Will Hang Works by Female Dutch Masters in Its Most Prestigious Gallery. Lego is looking to hire a kid to be creative director for a new all-kids digital content studio. What’s a “rug Pull”: Kenny Schachter’s Handy Glossary of NFT Terms for Newbie Crypto-Art Converts. Hype-biscus: a sign “happy” flavors will get us out of the pandemia-gloom? Algorithm helps artificial intelligence systems dodge “adversarial” inputs. a New Show Invites You to Sniff the Odors of Art History Anyway. The dawn of quaranzine.

Join us on Clubhouse at 9AM EST tomorrow to discuss how to interpret some of those weak signals.For those who missed it, we will have this 60mns morning discussion each Saturday at 9am EST ( look for @competia or follow our club “Trends! And weak signals”). Here is a summary of our conversation two weeks ago.

On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This week:

Digital for B2B: I am working with a number of B2B companies looking at digital transformation and wondering how relevant it really is for themOmnichannel in B2B. how brands are navigating a year of rapid transformation and preparing for the year ahead. B2B’s Digital Shift Is Permanent and Incomplete. Clubhouse: What’s in it for B2B Brands? Eight charts to understand how COVID-19 has changed B2B sales forever. Add more rich media to your content strategy.


Hodgepodge discovery

Are you ready to be a techno-optimist again? How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you. Eight of Literature’s Most Powerful Inventions—and the Neuroscience Behind How They Work. Fostering Casual Collisions — and Creativity — in a Virtual World. Playmobil’s plan to infiltrate your workspace – and compete with Lego Serious Play. Starbucks implements tech for blind and low-vision customers to aid in-store navigation and more. Why are so many people in Taiwan changing their names to “salmon”?


Du coté des francophones

We’ve had many new subscribers come in last week from France thanks to the outstanding reference to our newsletter in the amazing 15Marches. I decided to include here as a result a few references in French. Donc pour tous les bruitistes…

L’an 2000 imaginé en 1900. Comment choisir un logiciel de veille stratégique. TikTok, générateur de tendances culinaires en pandémie. On aime beaucoup aussi la publication hebdomadaire de l’Intimiste. Abandonner les chiffres romains pour se faire comprendre. Les tendances de consommation touristique.


Feeling good

On the Tokyo metro. Playing it cool: these artists make music with iceCow cuddling has become a thing for lonely hearts in the pandemic. The adventure so far. So Canadian, so 2021: snowshoe yoga. Create your own rejection letters and they are hilarious. Just chilling

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Share Weak signals and other trends

And do not miss the next issue:Subscribe

Hit me up at https://twitter.com/competia with feedback, pitches, or ideas for what to write about! Thank you for reading.

Distance-less, learning of cohorts, and hearing colors

Welcome to this 6th 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. We discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse.

Je souhaite la bienvenue à tous nos abonnés francophones qui nous ont rejoint en grand nombre cette semaine… je vais sans doute ajouter dans les prochains numéros une section francophone!

You can subscribe to this newsletter here to get it directly by mail:Subscribe

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing the word.


Business disrupted

Illustrations and examples that show our industries and business models are changing…

Musk is about to disrupt completely yet another industry: launching satellites into orbit, and promising to deliver high-speed broadband internet to as many users as possible. A global blindspot unfolds as the world ran out of a critical technology that powers our cars, phones, and more. Walmart’s Fintech Ambition: A Super App, Not The ‘Bank Of Walmart’.


We keep you informed as we spot other disruptive trends on Twitter.

Our Future

Illustrations and examples that show our industries are changing…some trends are tech related, others not so much.

What you need to know about Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). The New Era of Social Media Isn’t About Feeds and products like Clubhouse and Twitter’s “Super Follows” offer a new kind of engagement. The invisible warning signs that predict your future health. China’s ‘Sharp Eyes’ Program Aims to Surveil 100% of Public SpaceCommunal living for urban communities. Algorythm auditing. The distance-less future, and you. You are what you sweat. The ‘megascale’ structures that humans could one day build. Where might autonomous trucking be available first, and how would it proliferate? Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free.


Competitive Intelligence

Military Unit That Conducts Drone Strikes Bought Location Data From Ordinary Apps. A new ad-free, private search engine, Neeva. Beneath the Surface: Monitoring the Deep and Dark Web. An AI-Powered Competitive Intelligence tool for the automotive industry. A masterclass to understand how to test new ideas. 20+ SWOT Analysis Templates, Examples & Best Practices.

Our next course on Advanced Search Techniques for Customer Insight and Competitive Intelligence is here. Our next program will take place on April 26-27 and 28, 2021 (10am-12pm EST).

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?

view of how creators will run their business. Qoves is a “facial aesthetics consultancy” that promises to look at images of your face to tell you how beautiful you are—or aren’t—and then tell you what you can do about it. We miss touch so much, that an artist Transforms Famous Paintings Into Realistic 3D Furry Artworks . Google has invented a tool which allows you to hear colour. Chipotle Partners E.L.F. Cosmetics To Launch Vegan Makeup Collection. Unilever drops word ‘normal’ from beauty products.

Challenging assumptions: World’s first circular tennis ball hits courts this month. New Zealand growers create new brand for apples damaged by hailstorm. A ship hovering high above sea off Cornwall or how our senses can fail us.

Join us on Clubhouse at 9AM EST tomorrow to discuss how to interpret some of those weak signals.For those who missed it, we will have this 60mns morning discussion each Saturday at 9am EST ( look for @competia or follow our club “Trends! And weak signals”). Here is a summary of last week’s conversation.

On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This week:

Post-covid leadershipa number of our clients are trying to figure our how management will change with a remote workforce and in a post-pandemia environmentThe role of experimentation. The career optimism index. The Future of Team Leadership Is Multimodal. The covid-19 leadership guide. The future of work after COVID-19 .

Lawtech: professional firms, and particularly law firms, are finally realizing that digital transformation will be key to their growth, if not survival. For a client this week, I dove into #lawtech: Comparing the Performance of Artificial Intelligence to Human Lawyers in the Review of Standard Business Contracts. Changing the lawyer-client relationship. Using machine learning to predict decisions of the European Court of Human Rights ($).


Hodgepodge discovery

IKEA launched Live Lagom, and ‘lagom’ is a Swedish way of living that revolves around only taking what you need. Persuading the Unpersuadable . Burger King social media crisis around Women’s Day. A fantastic curation of francophone newsletters. Hyper-accurate positioning is rolling out worldwide. Gentryfying: burning man is planning a sustainable, permanent space called fly ranch. Virginia’s privacy law is an insight into the future. Science is studying conversations. Social media: Twitter is testing an ‘undo send’ feature for paid users.


Feeling good

Create your own jazz. Bucketlist: a map of world heritage sites by Mapstr ( we use that app to log places to visit on our retail discovery tours). Flow chart fun. I knew it: Observing nature in your backyard is not dull but radically significant. Magical Photos of Fireflies Lighting Up a Forest in Japan. Search images in films.

Did you learn something today? Share your favorite issues of the newsletter, or send friends – or random strangers:

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Animate materials, earth’s digital twin, and eternal avatars

Welcome to this 5th 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. Your comments are welcome, here, or on our site www.competia.com.

You can subscribe hereSubscribe

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading.


Our Future

Illustrations and examples that show our industries are changing…some trends are tech related, others not so much.

SciFab: Science Fiction-Inspired Prototyping. Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet. Scientists are honing and applying brain organoid researchVans became a broadcaster for local communities with the launch of their new digital live-stream Channel 66 ( many brands are building streaming channels to connect with customers…). Goodbye to parking spaces, hello to meeting places. The new weapon in the fight against crime. Meet the Ghost Franchises. Grocery Store on Wheels to Disrupt Food Retail in Canada. The essential fly. The link between brain research and artificial intelligence. Microsoft’s Mesh powers shared experiences in mixed reality.


Competitive Intelligence

How Competitive Intelligence increased the understanding of competitor production levelsOwletter Captures, Stores & Analyzes Your Competitors’ Emails. A tool that tracks – stalks – bio changes and what they mean. Use Right Relevance, part of Cronycle, to find groups of highly authoritative Tweeters of niche topics ( I was happy to see our twitter account @competia ranked as the number 1 source for “competitive intelligence”) . We are testing Visualmaping, a tool that monitors website changes. Talkwalker monitors what your customers are saying. Modeling and forecasting: 4 methods. Quake technology helps quant firm time entry and exit points – and buck trend-following trend.

Our next course on Advanced Analysis for Competitive Intelligence research techniques is here. Our next program will take place on March 29-30, 31, 2021 ( 10am-12pm ).

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?

LinkedIn is building a freelancer market place ( always thought Uber would own that space with Uber Works). The face of the NFT art market. Animate materials. Programmable Synthetic Hallucinations. Raw and real: the new photo app Dispo, and what it means. Superstar musician Shawn Mendes has partnered with Genies — the world’s leading avatar company — to sell digital goods of himself, with proceeds going to charity. Technical sportswear as the new luxury. China’s crackdown on divorce ($). Lego’s bouquet. Mood-altering sunglasses. Unable to travel, strangers mail each other tastes of home.

Join us on Clubhouse at 9AM EST tomorrow to discuss how to interpret some of those weak signals.For those who missed it, we will have this 30mns morning discussion each Saturday at 9am EST ( look for @competia). Here is a summary of our last week’s conversation.

On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This week:

Longevity: start-ups and scientists are exploring a series of technologies for those longer to stay with their loved ones longer, Creepy for some, hopeful for others, it is just a sign of whats to come: AI chatbots to give people life after death. Eternime is a network of Artificial Intelligent avatars that preserve for eternity their owners. Keeping your best friend forever. Replicka to create a best friend. Microsoft Patent Reaches Beyond Death to Pseudo-Reincarnation. Time for an ethical framework? Time for a legal framework? From organ donors to data donors? ‘Deep Nostalgia’ Can Turn Old Photos of Your Relatives Into Moving Videos. Meanwhile, Granfluencers are taking over.

Clubhouse: I have spent time exploring Clubhouse this week as the platform is shaping up. Nothing introduces Clubhouse as well as this article on Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity and this quote we love:

Creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before, and that we create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible new creations.

We had proof during our weekly chat on CH ( every Saturday at 9AM EST).

Clubhouse’s ecosystem is structuring with new apps to manage your presence: Build your bioClubhouse Glow will create the circle around your photo ( or try Chpic ). Direcon will provide the analytics for your room. A ranking of the most popular users, rooms and events on Clubhouse. Not supposed to be recorded but… Clubhype generates a user-friendly link. Clubpad will create reaction sounds in your room. AskClubhouse allows your listeners to ask written questions, so you pick them and answer them live on stage. Managing RSVPs with Comet. Record , Upload and Share your Clubhouse Podcast.


Hodgepodge discovery

Trees As Infrastructure. The new rules of competition in the technology industry. McDonald’s joy of packagingModular keyboards for daily creators. An archive of pandemics signs. Ikea offers ‘disassembly instructions’ to encourage customers to extend product life. Ad tech companies are building work-around solutions to allow advertisers to continue to target people on the web using other types of individual identifier technologies. The Chernobyl’s logo. What you should know about Google’s FLOC.


Feeling good

Beautiful visualization of every paper published at Nature. Ferran Adria’s new book. Travel remotely and listen to the local radio. How will your iceberg float?

Did you learn something today? Share your favorite issues of the newsletter, or send friends – or random strangers:

New math, touching the future and NFTs

Welcome to this 4th issue of our newsletter “Weak Signals and other Trends”. I am sending this one on a Saturday, let me know if you prefer this schedule to a Friday. Each week, I sift through hundreds of sources of inspiration to track where we’re heading. Your comments are welcome.

This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading.


Business disrupted

Illustrations and examples that show our industries and business models are changing…

Amazon acquires Selz, a Shopify competitor, an e-shopfront and omni-channel becomes the next battlefield. The Emperor’s New Paintings, or how art is getting bankatized ( we wrote about this in our first issue – will this lead to Art-SPACs?). Automating the psychologist. Grocery Store on Wheels is a Food Retail disruptor in Canada aiming for a Spring 2021 Launch. Fortnite is hosting its own festival – another indicator that gaming and esports will take market share from entertainment companies.

The gig economy is getting organized: TikTok Stars and Social Media Creators Can Now Join Hollywood’s Top Union. Uber drivers are workers not self-employed, Supreme Court rules.


Our Future

Illustrations and examples that show our industries are changing…some trends are tech related, some not.

Machines Are Inventing New Math like we’ve never seen before. Status as a service. Ruth, the cookie coach by Nestle. A concept, this privacy ring is like an Incognito Mode for real life. Four disruptive, uncomfortable, yet inevitable martech trends. Netflix Forced A Bot To Make A Romantic Comedy – Netflix By Bots (YouTube). You’ve had your head under a pillow if you did not notice of the surge of discussions around NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens) , so here is a primer. 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021 by MIT. Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets. Why the ‘experience of things’ lies at the heart of digital transformation.

Touching the future( a long-read article, well worth your time to reflect).

AI is part of our cultural fabric. It is also part of a set of increasingly complicated systems – it is not one AI so much as many – and these systems encompass everything from the electrical grid and railway lines to mine sites, lift shafts and food-­supply chains


Competitive Intelligence

Sources: Digital Rights Archive, a treasure trove of essential research and analysis for digital policy-makers. We adore how this tool allows the user to search for images with similar energy: we think we could use it for moodboards. We already spoke about image searching, so here is DescartesLab a service for searching and locating landmarks ( bundle that with a good analytics software and you can guess oil reserves worldwide – also here). Access, download and analyze commodities worldwide from their shipment data to anticipate macro-economic trends.

Tools: since Flash was discontinued we lost the amazing newsreader Newsmap, but now it is back as an HTML5 web application. Nuzzel has pivoted and now offers a very friendly news-letter builder. Hyper-accurate positioning is rolling out worldwide. On forecasts & prediction error.

Our next course on Competitive Intelligence research techniques is here. We have a cohort starting in February ( 10am-12pm on March 29-30-31).

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? This week, we’re looking at the world with alien eyes and counter-intuitive facts

An illustration of looking at objects with an alien eye, this one spotted in a pub. Americans are consuming more foreign content than ever. Burger King hands out bags of potatoes to help French farmers (consequences of the shift from restaurants to at-home consumption, triggering a huge crisis for farmers). How Erewhon Became L.A.’s Hottest Hangout, particularly for influencers (supermarkets were among the few places where people could still see and be seen). A New Artificial Intelligence Makes Mistakes—on Purpose. A Literal Marketplace of Ideas (it reminds me of a social capital stockmarket Empire). Kids are turning to side hustles. The rise of digital books festivals.

We have been researching databases of weak signals, to give you a head start and here are a few pointers: We spotted an interactive map of weak signals ( in Finnish!). A database by Good Morning April.

Join us on Clubhouse at 9AM EST today to discuss how to interpret some of those weak signals.For those who missed it, we will have this 30mns morning discussion each Saturday at 9am EST ( look for @competia) .

On our radar

In this section, I will share some of the content I come across as I work on specific mandates for our clients. This week:

Analytical: I am preparing a keynote presentation for a client on what it means to build an analytical company: J.B. Hunt Enlists Google to Match Carriers With Shippers. How Harley-Davidson Used Artificial Intelligence to Increase New York Sales Leads by 2,930% . Uncovering the Potential of Advanced Analytics in International Price Management. How to build a data analytics dream team.

Social media crisis: I am always on the lookout for the next mishap or crisis in social media (I teach a class for the Institute of Canadian Directors on Boards Oversight of Social Media). Here is what I spotted this week: Structube and garbage can. Further, as I meet the board of a professional firm for a private training next week to discuss crisis response plans, one can’t miss McKinsey’s opioid – and more generally culture crisis splashed all over social media – fast becoming a business caseWhistleblowing is hitting social media — what is a company’s responsibility? (we will do an entire section about this next week).


Hodgepodge discovery

I am not sure why yet, but I feel like putting this new thermal imaging tech in my Xmas list. A 900 million backoffice error. LinkedIn is the latest tech giant to launch a creator program. Addicted to Clubhouse? These apps will make it even better. A study on reality and living in a market without IRL (pdf). Kids games that only use audio. This report reveals recent, current, and future cybersecurity issues impacting the globe, by Blackberry. If smiles are so easy to fake, why do we trust them? .


Feeling good

Generating fantasy maps. In case you are missing the urban vibe.

Hit me up at https://twitter.com/competia with feedback, pitches, or ideas for what to write about! Thank you for reading.

Did you learn something today? Share your favorite issues of the newsletter, or send friends:

Terrapy,meta-humans and the end of credit cards

Business disrupted

Illustrations and examples that show our industries and business models are changing…

Luxury’s Involvement in Resell. Nori, a crypto-currency for farmers. Carta launches an exchange to help employees and investors sell stock in private startups.
Inside The Billion-Dollar Plan To Kill Credit Cards. Paypal wants to be a super app. A sustainable ecommerce.

A perfect example of how innovation can be simple, and comes from challenging simple , yet unchallenged assumptions: Credit Card Design Is Going Vertical With Tap-to-Pay Booming ($).


Our Future

Terrapy, the new trend identified by Trendwatching. A micro SaaS meta trend: Videopeel. Inside China’s Warring Online Fan Groups (I draw a parallel here to what happened with Gamestop). Can a robot pray? Does an AI have a soul? Machines Are Inventing New Math We’ve Never Seen. The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men ( you might want to follow-up this article with this one on the therapist chatbot). Microsoft patent shows plans to revive dead loved ones as chatbotsNasdaq Decodes: Tech Trends 2021. A sneak peek at MetaHuman Creator. The tattoo-like skin patch tracks blood pressure and heart rate while monitoring alcohol and caffeine levels. U.S. Navy Has Patents on Tech It Says Will ‘Engineer the Fabric of Reality’. Researchers Levitated a Small Tray Using Nothing but Light.


Competitive Intelligence

Sources: a new search engine to search ideas ( I love the structure described in the manifesto and can’t wait for the beta to happen). This ragtag crew are shaking up the world of earthquake prediction by analyzing orthogonal data such as ambient noises. Contify Launches a Competitive Intelligence Solution for B2B Marketers with Advanced Website Change Tracking. We are exploring this week thousands of relevant data sets. A good summary here about the retailer’s guide to marketing data, from zero-party to thrid-party.

Analysis techniques: Reporting Hacks for Your Next Competitive Analysis. How Cognitive Bias Can Explain Post-Truth. Alternative Data Adoption in Investment Management .

We also read with interest the 2020 State of Competitive Intelligence survey results by Crayon ( pdf to download here).

We have three spots left in the next cohort for our course “Advanced Analysis Techniques for Competitive and Market Intelligence” taking place on March 29-30-31, 2021. Details here.

Weak signals

Wood can easily be turned transparent to make energy-saving windows. TikTok Influencers Can Now Be Covered by a Union Agreement (I covered this theme of freelancers’ rights during a session on the future of work in a 2015 panel at the Women’s Forum). Microsoft supports a “links tax” in Australia. Facebook Plans Smartwatch With Focus on Messaging, Health. Churches digital divide.

We are launching in April a two-day training class on strategic blindspots where we explore weak signals analysis spotting techniques. Details here.

On our radar

It’s all about voice: as we hosted our first room discussion on Clubhouse to review weak signals, we discussed the surge of voice and the impact on industries, i.e. healthcare. This prompt me to dig into the subject: Why won’t brands stop talking to us? The future of augmented reality is earbuds, not eyeglasses. The therapist chatbot. Microsoft patent shows plans to revive dead loved ones as chatbots. New A.I. can identify the song you’re listening to by reading your brain waves.

Reputation building for direct-to-consumer brands: I am working on a training program early March for the board of a large Canadian direct-to-consumer brand to understand how to protect the company’s reputation and anticipate potential crisis emerging. This lead me to the following : Why Athletic Apparel Brands Are Ahead Of The Pack In DTC. We like Thingtesting weekly newsletter. Social Media’s Role in Crisis Management viewed from the legal department. 8 DTC trends to watch in 2021 . How 2020 killed the Instagram brand. Canadian furniture chain apologizes.


Hodgepodge discovery

What tools are businesses using? If like me, you love what fonts mean, this is for you. The warrior watch study. Optimize your Clubhouse event organization links. Aesthetics Wiki is Internet’s one-stop shop for figuring our whether your vibe is more “cactuscore” or “synthwave”. The Future of Team Leadership Is Multimodal. Aromas evoking journeys not yet taken ($). The state of battery report. Check if your Flickr photos were used to build face recognition .


Feeling good

Starlings in flight. A Journey Around Earth in Real Time. The art of doodling. A cultural teleportation: every green dot on the planet is a radio station you can listen to. And on the same theme as we all miss traveling, a game that catapult you some place on earth, and you have to guess where you are. Addictive…