Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 10

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Imaginable by Jane McGonigal

If you are a fan of thought exercises and a visual process to help you imagine the future, this is the perfect book for you. I first read it several years ago when it came out and was immediately captivated. The writing is excellent but the way that the concepts are broken down into easy methods anyone can use in a meeting or brainstorm to see the future and prepare is a masterclass in a book for how to run an effective workshop. Whether that’s your goal, or you just want to open your mind to se...

How NFL’s New 8k “Hawk Eye” Cameras Offer an Interesting Model for Truth and Verification

Rather than relying on chains and the human eye to measure whether teams have achieved a first down in NFL football games next season, the league is turning to Sony 8k cameras with a new technology known as “hawk eye” to precisely and instantly measure whether a first down was achieved. The idea is to verify the exact line and distance required by high-definition cameras to remove the possibility of human error and make the game faster.

Yesterday was also International Fact- Checking day,...

The Sad Retreat of April Fool’s Day and What It Reveals About Our Culture

The week of April Fool’s Day, I regularly look forward to reading about all the brands taking risks, exploring their fun sides and doing something with personality. This used to be one of my favorite weeks to read all the advertising trade publications. This year wasn’t as much fun. Much of the coverage seemed to center on spotlighting the cringiest pranks or the weirdest ideas or even offering a historical look back at failed efforts from previous years. So much negativity. Hardly any brands th...

Artificial Naps, Precognitive Dreams and the Evolving Science of Sleep

What if you could get the restful benefits of taking a nap without actually taking a nap? Researchers studying the health effects of “power naps” recently performed a test on monkeys where they simulated the brain activity of sleeping with electrical pulses. The monkeys showed the same cognitive benefits that come from sleeping without the nap. The findings suggest there may be new ways to treat sleep disorders but also may lead to an “artificial nap” industry where pods or venues offer this sor...

Rimowa Sells Old, Beat-Up Suitcases and Demand Is Off the Charts

Buyback programs are getting popular among retailers in many categories but usually they are for products that are still in “sellable” condition that can be refurbished. When legendary luggage brand Rimowa launched their own in-store buyback program, they began receiving used suitcases from customers that had clearly taken a beating and traveled the world. As they refurbished and resold them, a curious truth emerged. People loved the pieces because of all the dents and bruises and stickers and u...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Who Is Government? by Michael Lewis

In the words of bestselling author Garrett Graff who recently wrote a review for The Washington Post, this book “examines some of the remarkable people who make up the federal workforce — career civil servants who have accomplished the extraordinary in quiet ways, people whose jobs are normally buried layers below any partisan rancor. Perhaps never before has there been a book better timed or more urgent.” It is indeed a timely read in a moment when the Federal government is being attacked from ...

The Wild Theory of the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” That Aims to Explain Everything Trump Is Doing

There is a theory circulating Wall Street and other circles that aims to take all the chaos of the first several months of the new Trump administration and offer an explanation for how it all fits a grand master plan that could, if it works, be heralded as “the greatest geopolitical deal of the century.” If this idea seems far-fetched, follow the link and read the full story from The Atlantic which breaks down exactly how these seemingly haphazard tariffs and other early economic moves could mak...

Why the EPA Fighting Back Matters

The EPA has a marketing problem and it’s a basic one that has existed for decades. Despite being largely effective in its mission to protect American air quality and prevent toxic sludge from entering waterways, the government agency receives almost no public credit for their success. Of course, I’m oversimplifying their mission and perhaps overstating their success—but when you compare America to many other nations outside Europe, it’s clear that the moves the US government made decades ago to ...

Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant Is Exactly What Anyone in Business Really Needs

This past month Adobe launched a super useful enhancement that I’ve been testing it for a bit. The Adobe AI Assistant has a number of features to help anyone more easily understand what contracts are actually saying. Given most contracts are in PDF format, it’s a perfect extension to have this built into Adobe. The tool allows you to easily extract a list of deliverables, find key dates and more easily see changes from one version of a contract to another. If you use your own contracts, it can a...

The Quest to Prevent Scalpers and the Rise of the Freebie Bots

There is a word for people who buy a child’s game when it first comes out and then immediately try to sell it online for a huge profit: assholes.

Ok, technically the more common and polite term would be scalpers. It’s a common problem, though. Particularly when it comes to the still popular game of Pokémon where new card packs can be bought and sold online with ease. Recently, to try and curb this black market game, Pokémon Center Singapore has confirmed they will be removing the plastic wrap...