Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 61
January 21, 2019
The Dangerous Side Effects Of Marie Kondo’s Tidying Movement
Japanese organizational guru Marie Kondo recently launched a show on Netflix and has inspired millions of people to get rid of the clutter in their lives. Perhaps predictably, now some people are extending that advice to their digital lives too, as the WIRED UK article linked here points out.
In this quest to rid ourselves of anything that doesn’t “spark joy,” we may perhaps be giving up something that is crucial to the creative process … a certain amount of disorder. Tim Harford wrote a grea...
January 17, 2019
Robot Layoffs, Disappearing Street Food & Asymmetrical Jeans | Non-Obvious Insights 01.17.19
I first wrote about the Henna hotel, staffed entirely by robots, more than two years ago. It seems that the experimental property in Japan has discovered a hopeful truth: people sometimes prefer people. And so it may also be the first example in history of robots being laid off. Why Data Overload May Be Killing The U.S. Educational System
There is such a thing as too much data and this well argued piece from HBR points out the folly of our ov...
January 13, 2019
What Mastercard’s New Logo Tells Us About The Future Of Branding
If you think about it, there are a lot of brands that define what they do or how they sell based on their names. This week at CES, Mastercard announced they would be dropping the words of the name from their logo. It’s a smart move considering how the financial world is moving away from physical cards and more towards digital payment solutions.
This is not just an example of a brand trying to get ahead of the disruption in their industry. It is also an admission that the future of what the Ma...
January 10, 2019
Emotion Sensing App, P&G Challenges Agency Model, and Remembering Herb Kelleher | Non-Obvious Insights 01.10.19
Imagine an app that uses AI to read facial expressions and then translates the seven universal human emotions – anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise and contempt – into seven distinct sounds. Once it detects an emotion, it will play the sounds to allow visually impaired people to actually hear emotions. Facial Recognition App Remembers Names Of People You Forgot
This app has a lot of privacy experts concerned because...
January 7, 2019
Why The Myth Of The “Sold Out Show” Is Finally Dying
There was a time when people used to think the waiting list for season tickets to Redskins games took decades to clear. Then the team finally admitted those numbers were inflated and made season tickets available again last year. The idea of a show/venue being “sold out” is one of the most basic marketing techniques in entertainment … and it may be dying. Thanks to the easy availability of last minute tickets online on aftermarket sites like Stub Hub, the idea that any show is actually sold o...
January 3, 2019
Japanese Immigration, Tesla Time Lapse and the Best New Year’s Resolution | Non-Obvious Insights 01.03.19
Can Japan find an antidote for their aging population crisis through immigration? The country is notorious for how difficult it is for outsiders to live and prosper, so it will be interesting to see if this new policy works. The First Major US Copyright Expiration In 20 Years Is Here
Back in 1998 the US approved a copyright extension for 20 years, which just ended. As a result there is quite a bit of recognizable literature, mu...
December 31, 2018
The Ultimate Recap of the Best Stories of 2018
You know that moment in most long running TV shows when they do that recap show filled with all the greatest scenes from past episodes? Reading stories this week was a bit like watching one of those shows, with lots of recaps of the past year. So this week’s “holiday edition” of the Non-Obvious newsletter will feature the best of those collections along with my picks for the best stories of the year. Enjoy the stories and happy new year!
10 Most Interesting Non-Obvious Stories Of The Year: W...December 7, 2018
5 Non-Obvious Trends Changing Business In 2019
For the past six months I have been curating stories and insights for the upcoming 2019 edition of Non-Obvious, and it will be out in just a few weeks. This post offers a sneak peek at five of the trends from the upcoming report this year. If you’d like to read the full report, you can join the waitlist for my early reader list with the link below (available until December 15th, 2018) or preorder your copy with the link below:
Preorder your copy of Non-Obvious 2019 here >>
Join the waiting li...
November 8, 2018
Why Do Critics Hate Movies That Real People Love?
The Queen-inspired film Bohemian Rhapsody film was poorly rated by critics, yet became a big box office hit. Earlier this year, the same thing happened to Hugh Jackman’s The Greatest Show musical film about the life of PT Barnum. Why are critics so out of touch with what real people like? And why do we love the movies that “experts” (who presumably understand film) rate so badly?
As this article suggests, “one thing many critic-proof hits have in common is brand recognition. You know what you...
November 1, 2018
How To Cure Your Social Media Addiction
This was a week filled with more social media stupidity than usual. In a single day I read two disturbing stories that got me thinking about the dangers of our social media addiction.
In one, an excited baseball fan posted a picture of his World Series ticket (with the bar code visible) only to an observant thief take the bar code off his post and use it to steal his ticket and get into the game instead. In another, a couple fell to their deaths off a cliff in Yosemite National Park while try...
