Welcome to this 28th 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 in the summer..
You can subscribe to this weekly newsletter here to get it directly by mail.
This is what I noticed this week, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter to those who look into the future.
Competitive Intelligence
What our Spotify playlists reveal about the emotional nature of financial markets. A new workplace and culture benchmarking/competitive insight tool. OSINT resources in Canada. Detailed statistics on the growth dynamics of subscribers, likes, and video views TikTok. An extension for viewing cached web page version in 18 search engines and services. View someone old tweets.
A collection of competitive intelligence analysis techniques.
Strategic blindspots
Blindspots are biases that can lead companies to underestimate future risks or fail to take advantage of emerging opportunities. We highlight in this section illustrations of such emerging risks or opportunities ( or often both…)
Upstate Motels Make a Comeback, With an Aim to Captivate. Selfridges Is Now in the Wedding Business. Experts vs Elites. Meet the Freedom Phone, a Smartphone for Conservatives. Care by Volvo car subscription service enjoys exceptional first-year. At-home car repair is the latest on-demand service. Big Brands Are Coming for Your Ears. Apple secures first states to support digital driver’s licenses. Growing Uncertainty in the Central Valley. Taco Bell Testing Monthly Taco Subscription Feature.
About biases: Mind-bending optical illusion perplexes the internet.
Our future
Why Millennials Have a Weird Relationship with Water. Phytomining: The plant-based solution growing on the mining industry. Silicon Valley companies are hiring up all the fashion editors. An ‘Extreme Ultraviolet’ Microchip Machine Could Revive Moore’s Law. Animals ‘shapeshifting’ in response to climate crisis. Never-ending life. Everyone will be able to clone their voice in the future. The 20 fastest growing (and declining) jobs of the next decade. Norwegian company hopes bubble curtain technology can combat major hurricanes. 95% of Workers Thinking of Quitting Their Jobs. « À Quality Land, les humains traînent leur oisiveté dans des voitures autonomes où ils regardent des publicités ciblées » (in French, obviously).
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?
Bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Banknotes and what culture values. Bjarke Ingels designing Telosa city. A power cut-resilient incubator to protect babies in sub-Saharan Africa from hypothermia. Can AI be recognized as patent inventors? Great British Bake Off welcomes its first vegan contestant. Olay sends girls to coding camp to fight racial bias in search engines. Re-creating the Scent of Extinct Flowers. Revolt of the delivery workers. Breaking bulk: Why Amazon really built a new warehouse on the U.S.-Mexico border. The new status fridge.
On our radar
Each week, we spotlight here some of the projects we are working on.
We are working on a number of mandates with clients facing increased tension in their organization or their boards, and even significant open conflicts. This is one of the consequences of teams not having met face to face in 18 months. We are reading the work by . Five Signs that Workplace Conflict is Escalating. The impact of Covid on workplace conflict. The State of Workplace Conflict during the pandemia.
I am working on a new executive leadership training for McGill University. Philosophy is making its way into our business lives again: Sprinkle a little ancient philosophy into your daily routines. The Philosopher– Entrepreneur. Strategy and Ethics: Why Strategists Need Philosophical Back-Up .
Hodgepodge discovery
Articles for the curious mind …
Why are hyperlinks blue? The Sound Tracker. The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks. Tanton chairs. What Slime Knows. Global cultural evolutionary model of humpback whale song. In Japan’s Edo Period, impoverished peasants wrote their list of demands in a big circle.
I like to discover new words, this week, I read about avareh.
Feeling Good
Five minutes to love the trumpet. Name your village. What Does It Look Like When a City Returns to Its Senses? Do you speak GenZ? What the Romans Found Funny. The super tunnel simulators.
