Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 62

What You Can Learn From 50 Top Futurists About The World To Come

Exactly fifty years ago, noted futurist Alvin Toffler wrote one of the most widely read books about the future calledFuture Shock. It was a legendary work, and the inspiration for the team at the Abundant Future Institute to seek out 50 top futurists to each contribute a chapter to a book celebrating Toffler’s vision and offering new thoughts for a new era. I was honored to be among those who added their insights to the curated selection.

The book is nowavailable on Amazonand my contributed...

The Best & Worst Of 2020 Super Bowl Marketing Strategy

Can a Super Bowl ad that costs nearly $6 million be worth it?

That’s a question worth debating if you’re in marketing, so let’s take a look at some of the Super Bowl marketing strategies behind the ads from this year’s big game and see which ones were the biggest winners and losers. For longtime readers, you know I’ve done this before but in past years when I was working at a large agency, I would tread carefully when doing my Super Bowl recaps to make sure I didn’t accidentally mention a...

Ten Stories About Non-Obvious Megatrends You Should Read

Earlier this week I sent the 200th edition of my weekly Non-Obvious Insights email and my bookNon-Obvious Megatrendsjust launched on Tuesday so there is lots happening this week!

Thank you to everyone who has already bought the book and shared their review. Last night I found out with hit #1 in about fifteen categories on Amazon, #2 overall in the Business category (behind the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and the Top 25 of ALL books on Amazon.

In honor of launch this week, I thought...

2020 Will Be The Year Of Bullsh*t. Here’s How To Survive …

This past weekend the Sunday Review from theNew York Timesdeclared the past ten years as the “Decade of Mistrust” and suggested that “Americans learned that they shouldn’t believe anyone or anything.” This rise in mistrust seems connected to the rise of bullshit too – and so it felt like a fitting theme for my first post of the new year.

But this doesn’t have to be a negative thing.Non-Obvious thinkers aren’t afraid of bullshit.We see it all the time and have learned to be strategically...

5 Non-Obvious Megatrends Changing Our World In 2020

For the past ten years I have gone through an annual ritual of publishing a book about trends that describe our shifting culture and business environment. Over the past decade, my team and I have identified and written about well over 100 trends covering everything from the rise of the #metoo movement (a trend we calledFierce Femininityback in 2017) to the growing ability for immersive technology to help us better connect with one another (which we described asVirtual Empathy).

On January...

Why Scientists (And The Rest Of Us) Need Robots To Fear Their Own Death

Every week this theme of how to make technology more human seems to resurface in a slightly different way. Last week, a story about some new research from legendary neurologist and authorAntonio Damasiocaught my eye with an unusual thesis: robots could be more resilient and valuable to humanity if they had a sense of self-preservation. It’s a dangerously elegant idea.

Since the central plot device of any dystopian science fiction narrative that features artificial intelligence taking over...

This Japanese Hotel Costs Just $1 Per Night … If You Livestream Your Stay

In one of the most expensive countries for tourists, one hotel has a novel idea – stay with them and agree to live stream your stay and you can pay just $1 per night. The idea has been popular among young people wanting to travel to Fukuoka and willing to trade their privacy for a deal. It’s a compromise that we’ll likely see more brands asking consumers to make in the future and a sign of how our relationship to the qualities we might once of seen as sacred, like privacy, may now be...

Inside India’s First Brand For Curly Haired Women

India has some baggage when it comes to women with curly hair: “The Indian ideal for beauty prizes long, straight hair. For the most part, curly hair is considered ugly, unnatural and indicative of women likely to cause trouble and break rules.” An entrepreneur named Asha Barrack is trying to change these stereotypes and inviting Indian women with curly hair to embrace their curls and their personality too.

It’s a great example of a brand that is building a community by choosing to...

3 Non-Obvious Insights From the Launch of Disney+

It would have been hard for you to miss the launch of Disney’s new streaming service, which reportedly already passed 10 million subscribers just a day into launch and already inspired Netflix to announcenew partnerships. Of the many articles about the launch, here were three that I found particularly interesting …

Dated content may come with sensitivity warnings. As Disney unlocks lots of archived content, some of the ways that women or minorities are shown in this content will appear...

Alexa Is Five Years Old, So Why Does She Still Suck?

Alexa has officially been around for five years, and this article asks a good question: why hasn’t she improved? The pitch from Amazon was that Alexa would always be listening, and always improving. Half a decade later, she seems no smarter than when we first got her. In our house Alexa does little more than set timers and remind me how much the Redskins lost by every week.What was magical five years ago, today has become ordinary. As the article notes, it’s time for Amazon to step up.

Yet...