Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 23

Short Form Video Is Back and It Might Actually Have Been a Great Idea After All

Four years ago, with much fanfare (and budget), a platform called Quibi emerged with the promise that people would watch short vertical episodic shows and that would be the future of entertainment. Then, despite their $1.75 billion funding, they crashed and burned. Around the same time, TikTok was just starting to take off. Since then, the growth of vertical video has exploded.

This week there was a feature in Fast Company about the rapid rise of two short form video platforms (DramaBox a...

A Major Reinvention of Food Policy May Be Coming. Is That Good News?

Activists and consumers who believe food regulations in the U.S. need to be overhauled are getting excited right now. The recent media spotlight has been on President-elect Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In the past, he has been a vocal vaccine-skeptic and blames the food industry for the “mass poisoning of American children” through food ingredients and additives. His appointment, if confirmed by the Senate, will likely affect everythi...

The Win-Win Strategy of Jaguar’s Controversial New Brand and Logo

British luxury car brand Jaguar just launched a new rebrand and it’s sparking some controversy online because of how radically it moves away from the very recognizable pouncing cat logo that has defined the brand for centuries.

Most of the ire seems to speculate that there’s a new team and CMO in charge, the brand is suffering from declining sales and therefore they must have taken the most short-sighted approach of throwing out all their brand heritage and forgetting where the brand comes fr...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Pretending You Care by Norm Feuti

As we head into a holiday season, the Black Friday deals are already getting published out there and you might be thinking about heading out and engaging in a bit of consumerism yourself to get deals, buy gifts and spend some money on things you probably don’t need. In advance, I’d like to recommend picking up this old-but-still-great book about exactly why it sucks so badly to be working in retail right now dealing with all of us and our unrealistic expectations.

Through pages filled wi...

Why Do Most People Hate the Sound of Their Own Voice?

Do you hate to listen back to a recording of your own voice? Most people do and this has been true for so long that the first studies into why so many of us dread hearing ourselves date back to the 1960s. At that time, a team of researchers coined the term “voice confrontation” to describe their theory that most of us dislike our voices because what we expect to hear and what we actually hear on a recording sound more different to us than anyone else.

There may be other reasons too, from ...

The AI Granny Scambaiter Is Everything We Hope AI Might Become

The largest mobile operator in the UK clearly has a delicious sense of humor and a life-affirming grasp on the therapeutic benefits of schadenfreude.

Especially if that delightful misfortune comes at the expense of people working for scam robocaller networks trying to hustle people out of their money. Daisy, as this “scambaiting Grandma AI” is known, was designed to engage phone scammers in endless, realistic conversations with synthetic grannies. Here’s a short take on how it worked from She...

The Problem of Expertise

Is your expertise holding you back from being more open minded?

Recently I sat down with Ben Weiss for his excellent Leaders + Legends Podcast and shared the vision behind Non-Obvious Thinking and why I believe expertise sometimes creates a mental trap where we are unable to explore other perspectives because we become so good at thinking in one way.

Rohit Bhargava, Founder of Non-Obvious Company, on how to think outside the box for disruption!

Here’s a short clip from our conversation ...

The Beautiful Thing About Paradoxes

If you’re like me, you may soon find yourself with just a little more time to think, due to business travel slowing and holidays not quite starting yet. This combination may offer you just a little more time to consider new ideas. When that happens for you, this collection of “20 Paradoxes That Will Boggle Your Mind” from Mental Floss may be a fun read. Many of the paradoxes are described through stories and moments from history or myths that add color to the idea of the paradox.

How you’ll f...

Why Do So Many Companies Want People Back in The Office Now?

The future of work is hybrid. If there was one prediction I heard most often about the workplace coming out of the pandemic, this was it. Why would anyone want to return to work once they were able to stay at home and do Zoom calls in their pajamas? And presumably the savings on office real estate would bring companies on board with this too. Then we hit 2024 and huge tech companies and many others reversed course and demanded employees come back into the office, sometimes five days a week. The ...

Michelin-Starred Chef Discusses the Art of Plating

Anytime I have the opportunity to dine at a nicer restaurant, there is always someone immediately pulling out their phone to take a photo of the food when it arrives. Taking pictures of beautifully plated food is the ultimate pointless exercise many of us do anyway. Unless you’re a food or culture influencer, you’re probably not posting that photo. You will rarely show it to anyone else. And you’ll probably never look at it again. It’s a bit like taking photos of fireworks on the 4th of July. Yo...