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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
