Welcome to this 31st 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.

Share Weak signals and other trends

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Strategic Intelligence

Tools and methodologies competitive intelligence professionals are using:

Never forget what you learn. Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder. Dormant data. A browser extension that shows you discussions and websites mentioning the page you are on and interesting pages on the same domain. Simple Mathematical Law Predicts Movement in Cities around the World.

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Strategic blindspots

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

Is America experiencing an unofficial general strike? Hidden workers. Why do the dots disappear? Air & Space Travel Was Once Called Vain and Wasteful Too. Will DAOs replace corporations? Community group buying. Fast fashion getting faster for influencers. Second-Order Thinking. Apple Studying Potential of AirPods as Health Device.

En francais, l’immeuble inversé.

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Our future

‘Grandmillennials‘ Spend up to $150,000 on Grandma-Style Home Decor. The way-forward machine. Reinventing the receptionist role. Workplace re-entry. Networked Planetary Governance. The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times as powerful as the Hubble. Barry Callebaut’s chocolate company Launch Of Functional Beverage Targets Booming Consumer Interest In Food As Medicine. Time millionaires. How climate change could drown landmarks around the world. Egocentric 4D Perception. Brands help consumers along in the process of hosting. Items used by consumers on a daily basis are being made antibacterial.

We provide in-house training to executive teams and board to feed their strategic planning process and investigate future scenarios. More here.

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Weak signals and tiny patterns

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?

An accessible games database. If you need to hire a bio-liquidator. Americans check their smartphones 96 times a day. A survey of monuments shows many mermaids, but few women elected officials. Most of the World’s Bread Clips Are Made by a Single Company. China’s noisy ‘dancing grannies’ silenced by device that disables speakers. Dolls replace former residents in a remote, depopulating Japanese village. Micro-startups for sale. Household cleaning items using .solutions inspired by enchanting witch rituals. Millennials want their babies to have unique domain names. Polarized Full-Face Sunglasses. Twitter’s red flag trend. After video game ban, Chinese kids turn to livestreaming gamers. Taco Bell Customers Will Soon Be Able To Order A Chalupa And EV Charge.

Join us to discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse. We have a panel of futurists that illustrate what those signals might mean, and an enlightened group of curious minds in the room.

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Down the rabbit hole

This is a new section. It highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors.

This week, I went into an exploration of Stripe’s press.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind …

Experts decode seven pages of a 700-year-old manuscript telling the story of Camelot. The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination‘. Our movies and offices are engineered to sound natural based on what rang false in the theatres of 18th-century Paris. Dogs can ‘catch’ their owners’ emotions. Inside fulfillment center. Living ‘Bee Fences‘. Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse – 99% Invisible. Primate memory.

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Feeling Good

Time traveling with Ikea catalogues. Can you dock that spaceship? Switzerland at its best. Strav-art. Free-diving. All emotions: The Joy And Pain Of Boston Marathon Runners. Mixed-use post office in Zhejiang

Welcome to this 30th 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.

Share Weak signals and other trends

---

Competitive Intelligence

Tools and methodologies competitive intelligence professionals are using:

There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data. DeepMind’s AI predicts almost exactly when and where it’s going to rain. Using archive.org to track private data. Radio analytics. New data trove: syndicated scientific consumer research. Alternative ESG Data. Intelligence on changes in companies across sectors, both public and private.

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Strategic blindspots

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

How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator. Free Knowledge and Innovation. Importing Knowledge. Adjacent knowledge. How peak demand caused an electric guitar shortage. Sunk costs: business failures from the Titanic to Evergrande. By A Thousand Cuts. The Counterintuitive Mechanics of Peloton Addiction. The workers who keep global supply chains moving are warning of a ‘system collapse’. Silicon Soars after power curbs in China. One product, three prices (in French). Google’s plan to cut pay for remote workers will backfire. The price of electricity.

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Our future

Honda Wants Conquer the ‘4th Dimension‘. The city transformer. The real stakes of Apple’s battle over remote work. Digitising Small Retailers In Indonesia. ‘Streetcare’ and Upcycled Vintage: 6 Trends Shaping Conscious Fashion. Airbnb Report on Travel & Living. Taking stock with teens. The rise of “third workplaces“. How the nervous system senses temperature and touch. Obesity and diabetes: the slow-motion disaster. The pandemic will spur the worldwide growth of private tutoring. How digital therapeutics can go mainstream.

We provide in-house training to executive teams and board to feed their strategic planning process and investigate future scenarios. More here.

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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?

Dune Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict. Supermarket Jumbo designates 200 cash registers for checkout chats. Turn yourself into and NFT to become eternal. TikTok vs Science. Chinese steampunk: The art of reviving dead insects. The act of smelling. MiamiCoin’ has made the city $7 million so far. Attack of the snack apps. Burner emails. Are Charm Necklaces the New Ties? Meet the Fearless Women of this Mower Racing Association. The Frustration with Productivity Culture. Tiny office on a bike. Cell-Based Caviar. This company exchanges your pants as your weight changes ( in French). Venice, Overwhelmed by Tourists, Tries Tracking Them. S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge. Hair color. Squid game.

Join us to discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse. We have a panel of futurists that illustrate what those signals might mean, and an enlightened group of curious minds in the room.

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Down the rabbit hole

This is a new section. It highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors.

Browse American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: voices from the inside, but also a unique window into human minds.

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On our radar

We discussed loneliness last Saturday during our Clubhouse chat: “Lying flat is my sophistic movement,”. Being alone with your thoughts is a skill you can practise. How to Pace in an IKEA Parking Lot.

“For me, extended time in parking lots has always signified an emergency, precise moments of narrative dissolution: one version of the good life has come apart irretrievably, and you must, humbly, construct another. Outside hospitals and motels, breakups and breakdowns. I paced because pacing feels like the good, primal thing to do when a body is penned in. It’s what lions and tigers do in their zoo enclosures. Back and forth, up and around, prowl, prowl, repeat.”

I am preparing a new course for McGill University on leadership skills: Free Knowledge and Innovation. Importing Knowledge. Adjacent knowledge. Why proximity matters: who you know. Empathy as a key leadership skill. Mad skills vs soft skills. Trust in organizations, linking organizational forms, managerial philosophies and opportunity costs of controls. How to collaborate when you don’t have consensus by the inimitable Adam Kahane ( I also recommend Collaborating with the Enemy). The strength of weak signals.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind …

India’s nostalgic passion for old typewriters. Enduring memory. The impossible map. Mermaids and Tritons in the Age of Reason. All about mustard. How to merge Excel and Word. The casual archivist. Physicists capture first imageof Wigner crystals. Confessions of a Michelin Inspector. A visual guide to decentralization. Burners, Pollution, Control & Privacy . Leeks, tropicalizers, and cutting the soap: a guide to global startup slang. The Haier Way to innovate. Searching for MrX.

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Feeling Good

Surreal scenes and broken dreams: 2021’s best street photography. The Humanity score. A dry walling festival. Open source emojis. Inside the hurricane. Paper planes design. Dive into one destination.

Welcome to this 30th 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 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.

Share Weak signals and other trends

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Search Techniques

Open source intelligence. Investigate domain names with this meta-search tool. Formulas to search Facebook. Googling for invisible words. Amazon’s Astro Robot Tracks Everything You Do. Google is redesigning Search ( and it will provide context for websites). Boolean search for LinkedIn. Dressed NOT for Success. Search IoT or other online devices. MIT built a Google search to spot the most important tech innovations.

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Business disrupted

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

Tesla applies to become an energy supplier in Texas. Amazon Struts Its Fashion Sense. America desperately needs 1 million more construction workers. Lithium and the great raw material disconnect. TikTokers Are Trading Stocks By Copying What Members Of Congress Do. Evergrande and the ripple effect. Ready for the solar storm ? How a housing downturn could wreck China’s growth model. The dollar store is officially dead.

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Our future

Further apart. Probable futures. Sailcoop aims to connect those underused boats with people looking for alternatives to air travel. The speed of efficiency has had consequence on the rest of society. Winged Microchips Glide like Tree Seeds. Bain’s annual tech trends report.  Climate Change Could Force 216 Million People to Migrate Within Their Own Countries by 2050. Samsung and Harvard hope to ‘copy-paste’ brain onto a memory chip. Melding humans and machines.

We provide in-house training to executive teams and board to feed their strategic planning process and investigate future scenarios. More here.

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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?

Remote photo shooting. Mind games and plotters. The Oysters That Knew What Time It Was. The SkyArcher Handheld Drone Inhibitor. The students who did not know how to use folders. Transfer Files via Sound ID. SWISS partners with Too Good To Go for inflight sales of leftover food. China’s Hot New Rental Service: Men Who Actually Listen. National Guard To Mitigate A School Bus Driver Shortage. The countries’ biggest public companies. An Aston Martin for children. Love hotels are blossoming in India. 7-Eleven is hosting a “social media influencer training camp”. Tinder partners with Spotify to generate custom dating playlists. Heinz Creates ‘Plantable’ Ketchup Labels. PlantLife grows a social network for plant parents.

Join us to discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse. We have a panel of futurists that illustrate what those signals might mean, and an enlightened group of curious minds in the room.

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Down the rabbit hole

This is a new section. It highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors.

Try Marginalia, a serendipity search ( I typed “food” and ended up reading about Provisions the Queen allows each Sea-man).

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind …

The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. The geriatric millennial. The resignation syndrome. The Offensive Language Summary 2021. Tracking stolen crypto. The Endless Life Cycle of Book Cover Trends. Brands labelling of shades creates biases. The housing theory of everything. Synthetic biology.

The Myth and Magic of Generating New Ideas, and this quote:

An initial period of concentration—conscious, directed attention—needs to be followed by some amount of unconscious processing. Mathematicians will often speak of the first phase of this process as “worrying” about a problem or idea. It’s a good word, because it evokes anxiety and upset while also conjuring an image of productivity: a dog worrying a bone, chewing at it to get to the marrow—the rich, meaty part of the problem that will lead to its solution.

I like to discover new words, this week, I read about Whorfianism ( here with the effect on color cognition).

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Feeling Good

Extract vocals and instrumentals from any song. Spot the language. Improbable research. Street Complete finds incomplete and extendable data in your vicinity and displays it on a map as markers. A visual database of all wind turbines in the US and I think it is beautiful. The world’s greatest freediver. She’s an 98 year-old Ethiopian nun making genre-defying music.

Welcome to this 29th 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.

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.

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Business disrupted

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

Your reality is out of date. Why digital retailers are now betting on stores. Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s. Why Do American Grocery Stores Still Have an Ethnic Aisle? Alitalia shuts down. UPS is set to acquire Roadie, in deal with an eye on the last mile. The Great Shortage. Live events are the next subscription frontier. Tree as a service. Facebook introduces portable Portal Go.

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Our future

Project Taara laser tech beamed 700TB of data across nearly 5km. Sci-fi agriculture in the here and now. The Form and Function of Science Fiction. The Future of Human Augmentation. NASA’s Sneak Peek at the Future of Space Travel. Developers Offer Mobility Services to Lure Car-Free Renters. The futuristic gondola. The Futuristic Farms That Will Feed the World.

A few trends reports spotted this week: The Meta Trending Trends for 2021. A database/list of trends ( check 2050 directly).

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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?

US spending on melatonin exploded by 42%. Or fast-headline veneer of pop culture. Vaporwave. Proof of travel. An AirBnB home for Disney. Collins Aerospace (a subsidiary of Raytheon) bought FlightAware, a real-time aviation tracking platform. Amazon Is Lobbying the Federal Government to Legalize Weed. Van Rams Into Toy Store In Dramatic Pokémon and Lego Heist. Our Digital Bodies Are Healing: Virtual Freedom. Bakeries as a source of insight. Advocacy academies. Defeating Censorship with User-Generated Content. Build your own tail. Can a tiny Swiss clothing company force the shipping industry to clean up its act?

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On our radar

Each week, we spotlight here some of the projects we are working on.

In last’ week’s Clubhouse chat, we discussed the prospects of life-long education: I went down the rabbit hole and found a number of apps that allow you to learn, everyday, as you browse: Learn a new language while you browse. Hijack your feed: replaces Twitter ads with your todos. Replace web ads with visual essays by artists. Browser plugin replacing ads with art. Replacing ads with facts.

Holidays are over, but many families decided not to come back. Some strong signals emerging about the nomadic family: The first nomadic country on Internet. AirBnB new patent for nomadic families optimizing education. A private network of digital nomad. When Chance Encounters at the Water Cooler Are Most Useful. How an artificial language from 1887 is finding new life online.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind …

The Twitter meme of the moment is all about accountability. The Magical Number Seven: Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information. A Comparison of Several Manufactured Blades. Phantom islands. Italy’s book doctor. The surprising power of daily rituals. Rewilding Your Attention. Researchers complete first-ever detailed map of global coral. Route Setters of the Tokyo Olympics. Technology is revolutionizing food, but how can it be explained to consumers? The Woman Behind That Amtrak Map.

I like to discover new words, this week, I read about Deeptok.

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Feeling Good

Watching tiny nature patterns. Miniature dioramas. Learn a new language while you browse. Oldies playing in another room and it’s raining ( more dreamscapes here). Click for visuals. My 90s TV. A timelapse or the Europe Stadium Tour. The Sound of Subways Around the World. Christo’s last wrapping, of course.

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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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 .

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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.

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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.

Welcome to this 27th 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.

Share Weak signals and other trends

---

Competitive Intelligence

Apple’s Double Agent. Determining the approximate sleeping time of a user based on analysis of the timing of a tweet. I search from allows you to customize the country, language, device, city when searching on Google. 2lingual.com to google search in two languages simultaneously in one window. A digital archive of documents created by industries which influence public health (tobacco, chemical, drug, fossil fuel) . Search for trends in Pinterest.

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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…)

Draining the Risk Pool. Why Are 2 Million People Still Getting Netflix DVDs by Mail? Digital media companies disagree over future as SPAC market falters. Jack Dorsey’s Square Moves Closer to a Bitcoin Exchange. China tightens scrutiny on $9.3 trillion fund industry. Louer son jardin (in French , naturally). Amazon will soon be launching Amazon-branded TVs in the United States . The end of phone calls. Cars spend ~95% of their existence parked. Amazon quietly building live audio business. Apple secures first states to support digital driver’s licenses.

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Our future

What will the 2056 Olympics look like? Wind Catching Systems designs giant floating wind farm. To Learn More Quickly, Brain Cells Break Their DNA. A Good Psilocybin Guide is Hard to Find. These 4 tech breakthroughs could help end aging. An ‘Ultra-Large’ $2.3 Million Megaship That Is Miles Long. The room that charges devices. World’s first crewless, zero emissions cargo ship will set sail in Norway.

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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 are people paying for coaches to get better at video games? Covid Has Created a Virtual Renaissance for Life Drawing. So Everything Is “Crushable” Now? China Bans Effeminate Men and Abnormal Esthetics From TV. Tech elites’ supposed indifference to fashion. Amazon’s new ‘adaptive volume’ will make Alexa speak louder when it’s noisy. Google, Facebook and Microsoft face pressure over January 6th subpoenas. Tree desks. United Talent Agency Signs NFT Art Projects CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs.

Join us to discuss those trends and signals every Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse. We have a panel of futurists that illustrate what those signals might mean, and an enlightened group of curious minds in the room.

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On our radar

I am working on a training session about privacy for the executive team of a client: Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores . The risk of unintentional consanguinity: There’s No Such Thing as Family Secrets in the Age of 23andMe. Check if you data has been leaked.

I have been following for a while now the supply chain disruption, looking for more signals to understand how the pattern develops: Supply studies. Black Friday and holiday shopping season will be full of supply chain delays. Vermont Offers People $7,500 to Relocate There. Texas Winter Deep Freeze Broke Refining, Petrochemical Supply Chains. Flight Simulators for Management Education. A Bot Tracking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind …

World’s Busiest Control Tower conversations.Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. The evidence for mushroom intelligence. A map of the theory of everything. Early-career setback and future career impact. The strange race to track down a missing billion years. Why the selfish genes metaphor remains a powerful thinking too. The mysterious disappearance of the world’s longest shrubbery. Who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies (podcast)? The Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pager.

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Feeling Good

The drone over Angle Falls. The secrets of Neapolitan Street Food. ‘Einstein Ring’ Magnifying The Depths of The Universe. Random restaurants. 木漏れ日 Komorebi . Sad Topographies.

Welcome to this 26th 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 other  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.

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Competitive Analysis

How Strategy Games Teach Valuable Business Skills. Show Me the Data! To listen well, get curious. Data Brokers Know Where You Are—and Want to Sell That Intel. Apple’s Double Agent. Where is that executive team flying? Tracking that container in the midst of supply chain disruptions. Find people in LinkedIn without registration. New domains registered in the past 24 hours.

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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…)

Why Florida’s Covid Surge Is Screwing With the Water Supply. A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an ‘Internet Apocalypse’. A deep geographical fracture’ is opening across Europe. Samsung to invest $206 bln by 2023 for post-pandemic growth.

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Our future

Travel company Pura Aventura adds carbon labels to trip descriptions. Scientists Develop “Metafabric” To Help us Survive Extreme Heat. 10K AI-generated collectibles levitating on ETH blockchain. Insurtech takes off. The Altered States Economy. The Big Business of Brain Tech. The Promise and Perils of the New Fertility Entrepreneurs. A GIANT leap for decentralized research . Lost in headspace: the rise of the home temple. 2021 Workplace Learning Report. The end of phone calls: why young people have silenced their ringtones.

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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?

With explosive new result, laser-powered fusion effort nears ‘ignition’. Beyond Meat files trademark application for ‘Beyond Milk‘. What food isn’t worth the effort to be home made? Booktok: how TikTok and Gen Z re-invented the book club. The Fierce Legal Battle at the Heart of the Fight Over Reclining Airline Seats. The Garmin Hack Was a Warning. Linkin Park T-Shirts . New Belgium Releases Carbon Neutral Toolkit For Brewers. The fantastical, earnest world of haunted dolls on eBay. Would you sell a skateboard tainted your own blood? Unicode drama is over an endangered Indian script. Livestreaming sales stars should speak Mandarin, and dress well. China’s ‘imperfect’ virtual influencer challenges traditional beauty standards. Corgi racing.

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On our radar

I adore Japan, and walking through the streets of Tokyo is an endless source of inspiration for weak signals. I could not go back this fall, so decided to go down the Japanese rabbit hole this week: Japan’s Gen-Z Men Spend 20 Percent More on Makeup. Small vehicles of Tokyo. Japanese Typewriters. Spherical Restroom Controlled By Voice.

I call it flagshipping, to illustrate how online retailers go physical: Amazon’s department-store plans are less surprising than they appear. Netflix Opens Brick and Mortar Movie Theater. Re-engineering the fashion retail experience. Contender eSports creates brick-and-mortar presence. Ubisoft Won’t Give Up On Its Theme Park Dreams.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind as you like to cross over to new fields:

Geofoam. Markov chains. YouTube’s rituals for hypergrowth. A MasterClass in Gen Z Marketing. Mathematics (and cognitive distortions) for gamblers. Responsible tech playbook. Rebranding Chernobyl. The story of the supermarket trolley. On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking. Replicating Our Sense of Smell Is One of the Hardest Problems in Tech. Display unit for Apollo Guidance computer.

Each week, we spotlight a newsletter: this week, we suggest icymi , the personal newsletter by Reid Hoffman.

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Feeling Good

ShlinkedIn’s content generator. A collection of streetside musings from around China. A game to burn your start-up runway. Museum of Failure’s Collection. This Twitter bot that puts three colors together and invents names for them. Mesmerizing footage of microscopic animals in a termite’s gut . Uninterrupted soundscapes of the Australian wilderness. The world’s deepest pool.

Welcome to this 25th 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 other  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.

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Competitive Intelligence

A tool used by private investigators to create an audit trail for your online investigations. Mapping your decision making process. Here’s how to save Internet history. Ironically, tax authorities use Google maps to check your tax return (in French). Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on information. Checking for usernames across platforms. Google outlines future of its search engine.

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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…)

What if Highways Were Electric? Facebook Is Getting Into the Real Estate Business. The Parking Garage of the Future. Hospitals Still Use Pneumatic Tubes that can be hacked. Pearson’s new textbook subscription service could save students a fortune. Japan’s Gen-Z Men Spend 20 Percent More on Makeup. Hotels are learning from airlines. Forget Gender-Neutral Fashion. Chinese Men Want Women’s Clothes. Pre-order retail: Farfetch Launches New Conscious Pre-Order System.

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Our future

Molecular Farming Means the Next Vaccine Could Be Edible and Grown in a Plant.. Plant-based Foods Market to Hit $162 Billion in Next Decade ( read also the Fungi Renaissance Is Here). How Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend. Reset the clocks for burned out consumers. 100-Teen Poll: What Is Actually Cool to Buy in 2021? How the pandemic mainstreamed VTubers, Japan’s fictional YouTube celebrities. Forget the suburbs. Good bye cottagecore, welcome cabincore. Crypto platform asks hacker to become security advisor. Gen Alpha brands are reaching kids. Is the future of coffee in your freezer? SaksWorks Turns Your Favorite Department Store Into a Co-working Space. Facebook’s Metaverse Starts With Virtual reality Meetings.

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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?

Camels banned from beauty contest over Botox. They Ditched the Office for the Farm. And Stayed. Grey Market Apps. KFC pop-up hotel includes ‘press for chicken’ button. he Latest TikTok Trend Is… Vietnamese Music About the Countryside? R.V. Life. Dark sky tourism is on the rise. Get your dog’s DNA profile. Why So Many Millennials Are Obsessed With Dogs. Young China surgery boom. CyberLandrs to Turn Tesla Cybertrucks Into Tiny Homes. Wendy’s to open 700 ghost kitchens. Blue Origin sues US government over NASA’s decision to award SpaceX lunar lander contract. Ghosts writer. The Strategy Behind Salesforce’s New Streaming Service, Salesforce+. South Korea to end its controversial gaming curfew.

Hodgepodge discovery

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

Why Spanish colonial officials feared the power of clothing. The secret code of sea shells. A method to image black holes. Construction, Efficiency, and Production Systems. The largest vocabulary in hip hop. Screenshots Tell the Real Stories About Who We Are. Fontfaces. A weekly explanation in a sketch. A directory of B-corps. A pigment collection (podcast). Animals can count.

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Feeling Good

Matching music to your typing. A mesmerizing way to step into art. Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist. Paint like Pollock. First You Make the Maps. The Berg at the airport. A website dedicated to fictional movies. Creative set-ups.

Welcome to this 24th 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 other  Saturday at 9am EST on Clubhouse (we’re on this week!).

You can subscribe to this newsletter here to get it directly by mail. As we all need to recharge batteries, this newsletter will move to a bi-monthly frequency starting in July and for the rest of the summer. We will move back to the weekly version next week…

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

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Competitive Intelligence

A new tool by Google to analyze trends. Also by Google, trending searches. MIT built a Google search to spot the most important tech innovations of the future. The promise of open-source intelligence. New artificial intelligence tool helps forecast Amazon deforestation.

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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…) as well as the emergence of non traditional competitors and their business model:

TikTok Opens Pop-Up Experience in London. Netflix to open first physical store as it expands retail offering. Amazon reveals massive insurance partnership. Luxury and co-working collaborate. Robots are coming for the lawyers. Sicily hits nearly 120 degrees, may have set Europe’s all-time heat record. The office cliques created by hybrid working could trigger major company culture issues . Postal Service Presses Forward With Plan To Slow Mail Delivery. Target has launched 48 private brands. Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes. Tesla Could Become A Subscription Company.

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Our future

The psychological toll of tornado forecasting. Amazon opens its $1.5 billion air hub. From Spider Silk to Solarpunk: a Guide to the Future of Materials. SpaceX and Geometric Energy Corporation plan to shoot ads into orbit. Some Google employees could face a pay cut of up to 25% if they work from home permanently. Streaming space tourism is the new reality TV. The big tech quest to find the metals needed for the energy overhaul. A review of the European start-up landscape. On Snapchat, retailers are testing the efficacy of mini apps.

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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?

Job alert: ‘Spaceport Mixologist’.There’s a Crypto Bubble In Hip-Hop. To fight obesity, researchers develop world-first weight loss device. Mad Scientists Revive 100-Million-Year-Old Microbes. Losing my revolution. Virtual fireplaces ( in French). American SUVs are now bigger than the TANKS that fought in World War II. Japanese parents send relatives rice to hug in lieu of newborns. Bike camping. A book made specifically for Instagram. Target expands adaptive clothing and products for people with special needs. Pringles Joins NFT Craze With ‘CryptoCrisp’ Virtual Flavor. Ikea Releases Limited-Edition Candle That Smells Like Its Famous Swedish Meatballs. A garbage diving influencer. How healthcare workers in India fought a surveillance regime and won. The Cutthroat World of $10 Ice Cream. Lufthansa Sleeper’s Row. Nando’s shuts restaurants as it runs short of supplies.

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On our radar

I am preparing for the fall an update on a series of workshops on competitive intelligence and privacy: Private Espionage Is Booming. Your car’s sensors will now spy on your private life. Catholic priest quits after “anonymized” data revealed alleged use of Grindr. China Readies Strict Data Privacy Laws. Facebook launches tool to help people in Afghanistan lock down their accounts.

I like discovering new words, this week, I learnt about overemployed: These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs. There are even rules to make it work, and a network to discuss it. Some work 10 jobs at the same time ( we could also call this type of employee an entrepreneur…)

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind as you like to cross over to new fields:

The pantelegraph was the first machine that could transmit pictures electronically. How Henry the vacuum cleaner became an accidental design icon. The physics of lightning. Make it She, an app to measure gender biases in websites. How newborn mammals dream the world they’re entering. Can animals count? The insides of pro bowling balls. In Praise of Garages. Entrepreneurship is contagious and this quote:

People innovate because they are inspired to do so — it is an idea that is transmitted. And when people do not innovate, it is often simply because it never occurs to them to do so. Incentives matter too, of course. But a person needs to at least have the idea of innovation — an improving mentality — before they can choose to innovate, before they can even take the costs and benefits of innovation into account.

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Feeling Good

Nerdy: name that ware. The museum of broken relationships. Sand grains. The Loiseaux Family destroys buildings. Matchboxes ( and their history). Shanghai Astronomy Museum. A music time machine. The cultural borders of songs. Banksy reveals a spree of new seaside works.

Welcome to this 23rd 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 other  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 into the future.

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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 sections illustrations of such emerging opportunities for innovation when questioning the unquestioned:

How GenZ bank. The Map Is Not the Territory. Adaptive fashion is catching on. Greater fool theory. Pecan or almonds? Doulas’ Provide Aid at the End of Life. Startups Turn Your Loved Ones Into Stones, Diamonds and Jewelry. The used cars bubble. D2C medical apparel companies are growing.

Want to know more about analysis techniques? Seven Sure-fire Ways to Do Scenario Planning Badly. Curiosity depends on what you already know. A collection of 100+ strategy analysis techniques. Rare Events Need Different Methods.

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Our future

How Africa’s super app landscape is evolving. How The YOLO Economy Is Shaking Up Luxury. You car’s sensors will now spy on your private life. The Pleasures and Challenges of Writing Fictional Food. How TikTok’s Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desire. The dangerous appeal of technology-driven futures. Deepfakes Are Becoming the Hot New Corporate Training Tool. The fascinating community of those who are trying to save Internet content: the data-hoarders. ClubHouse for the boys. Dissecting the ESG model. Make it rain.

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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?

Lab-Grown Foie Gras. A Universal Typeface by Kosuke Takahashi That Combines Braille and Visible Characters. The irresistible rise of the rose. The great equalizer: How Tinned Fish Became The Internet’s Newest Obsession. Would you climb a mountain for internet access? DTC beauty brands are replacing focus groups with private online club. These wild shoes are designed to weather floods and extreme heat. We Live in a Golden Age of Dinosaur Chicken Nuggets. Is anything cool anymore? GNT debuts green colorings made from spirulina and turmeric. Why China Is Cracking Down Now on After-School Tutors. It’s all about cold drinks, folks. Bouncier Buns and Nori Sleeves: How the Pandemic Changed Restaurant Food. Why is China smashing its tech industry?

For the in-crowd, taste is all about social bonding. It isn’t developed in isolation. It’s a direct result of engagement with a peer group of other avid consumers

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On our radar

Summer’s here so I am taking time to catch up on topics I like.

Typefaces, font and forgotten languages have long been a keen interest of mine, so I went down the rabbit hole of typefaces and punctuation: Reserving typefaces. A book for punctuation lovers , Hyphens and Hashtags ( the author manages well the bridge between the monks in the middle-ages to social media). Typos, tricks and misprints. A Typeface History. Typeface decisions grow in importance as a political branding tool ( see also In the name of the fada: a much-politicised punctuation mark). Swiss font designer reveals the fashion of words. Punctuation in litigation make or break patents and their iterations. How Poets Use Punctuation as a Superpower and a Secret Weapon. If you have’nt read it yet, there is always Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

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Hodgepodge discovery

Articles for the curious mind as you like to cross over to new fields:

Empires, pandemics and the economic future of the West. How we gather. Rituals create community by translating our love into action. A fascinating tale of the US Post Office. How much has been paid in ransomware? New Shape Opens ‘Wormhole’ Between Numbers and Geometry. Is Your Nervous System a Democracy or a Dictatorship? The Catalog of Apollo Experiment Operations (pdf). Making tacit knowledge explicit.

I like to learn new words. This week, I discovered Thomassons.

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Feeling Good

A single cell become a complete organism in six pulsing minutes of timelapse. A celebration of vintage motorcycle design. I can see music. 80s nostalgia: send a mixed tape. The long trail map. Tokachi Millennium Forest.