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 textiles. Industry 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 confinement. 80K retail stores will close by 2026, claims report. Where Next for Kith’s 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 Antimatter. Facebook 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.
