Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 17

The Biggest Question from the Influencer Suing Another Influencer for “Copying Her Vibe”

Two influencers meet at a fancy hotel in Austin to collaborate on some social media posts. That’s how the story started but it quickly goes bad as this “influencer vs influencer” article outlines from the NY Times. After experiencing frustration and a dip in her affiliate Amazon sales due (allegedly) to similar content from another influencer who “copied her vibe” the first one decided to sue.

The entire story may seem like a fight between two people you probably don’t care about over som...

4 Non-Obvious Upsides of the Big Omnicom + IPG Acquisition

This past week was panic-inducing across the advertising industry. Two of the “big four” agency holding companies intend to join forces to create the biggest ad agency in the world with over 100,000 employees and an estimated $25B in revenue. The part of the news causing the most fear across the industry probably boils down to one thing summed up in this sentence from multiple stories:

“Omnicom executives said they had “clearly identified opportunities” for $750 million in annual cost savings...

The Brilliant Entrepreneurial Lessons of a Plant Hacker Inventing New Flowers

To raise money to put himself through school and earn a biotechnology degree, Sebastian Cocioba would gather orchids that his local Home Depot had thrown out and apply a plant growth serum to bring them back to life so he could sell them back to the store. Later, he would buy used lab equipment in fire sales and resell it back to other labs for a profit. All this bio-hustling wasn’t just to earn some side cash … it’s a symbol of how Cocioba thinks.

His current work is inventing new smells...

New Study Finds Music Can Alter the Way We Feel About Our Memories

Imagine if the way you remember a moment from your past was dependent on the music you were listening to at the time. It turns out this may be exactly how our brains work to process memories. As a Fast Company article this week notes:

“When participants listened to emotionally charged music while recalling the neutral stories, they were more likely to incorporate new emotional elements into the story that matched the mood of the music. For example, neutral stories recalled with positive music...

12 Provocations for Year Ahead: 2025

“Predictions are boring. None of us knows the future and therefore no one cares what you think is going to happen. Provocations are different. There is no right or wrong, just boring or stimulating. As a result, they can take many more forms: a meaningful question, a firm statement, or ambiguous feeling.”

That’s the way this list of provocations from leadership network ON_Discourse is introduced as the platform compiled interesting thoughts from their members to share as an alternative to pre...

The Non-Obvious Book Awards: 2024 Shortlist and Winners Announcement!

What were the best 15 books of the year in 2024? Join us for this LIVE announcement of the best books of the year curated by Rohit Bhargava and the team at the Non-Obvious Company.

We will announce the 10 shortlisted titles as well as the best five books of the year. In the show, we will also take a look at 12 big themes from books across the year and the best titles and covers of the year as well.

See more details about the awards program and past winners of the awards at www.nonobvio...

Amsterdam Launched a Campaign to Convince British Tourists NOT to Visit. Did It Work?

Back in 2023, in response to a growing number of young male British tourists partying, getting drunk and generally behaving badly, the city of Amsterdam launched a “digital discouragement” campaign aimed at suggesting that these visitors would not be welcome and should skip their trips. At the time, the campaign was widely shared, and many criticized it for unfairly targeting one stereotype of British traveler. Others suggested the real problem was over tourism, which was being fueled by the cit...

The Non-Obvious Books of the Week: The 2024 Non-Obvious Book Awards Longlist

After considering more than 1000 submissions and hours of reviewing titles, I’m thrilled to share that our latest round of winners for the Non-Obvious Book Awards was just announced today! These are the best 100 non-fiction books published in the past twelve months, and you can see the full list on the book awards website »

Next Thursday at 11am EST, we will be doing a LIVE announcement of the Shortlist and the top winners of the event, along with an exploration of the best cover designs, bes...

The Truth About Food Deserts and How the Solution to Fix Them Already Exists

A food desert is defined as “a geographic area where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance. I have known the term for a while but always assumed that the existence of these areas was a symptom of capitalism. It was probably just not economically viable for grocery stores to exist in economically depressed areas. An article from The Atlant...

The Top 12 Trends from Non-Fiction Books Published in 2024

This week is the first announcement for our annual Non-Obvious Book Awards and we just published our list of the Top 100 books of the year that made our annual Longlist. As part of our judging process, I also spend some time looking for some macro themes across the many submissions we receive. In total, we consider more than 1000 books published across the past 12 months from publishers of all sizes (and a handful of submitted self-published books too).

Yesterday I published a short artic...