Non Obvious Megatrends Quotes

“The problem is, most people don’t know what a trend is or isn’t.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“A trend is a curated observation of the accelerating present.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“BE STRATEGIC, NOT REACTIVE. Often, companies will mistake invention for innovation. They are not the same thing. This common mistake can lead to shallow ideation, one-dimensional product or service ideas, and undifferentiated engagement with your customers. Look beyond products to consider new business models that integrate greater purpose and deliver more robust experiences that delight customers.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“FIND THE BLUR. As you think about how to transform your business strategy, consider what would happen if you put two unlikely models together. What if you sold cars the way that a donut shop sells donuts? Or what if Airbnb decided to start a pharmacy? These sorts of mind-bending questions encourage us to think outside our comfort zone and find new ideas in the “blur” between industries. Some of these ideas may seem farfetched and impossible, but they can lead to an actionable idea as you work your way backwards from crazy to possible.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Nordstrom, the high-end retailer, was one of the earliest to launch an innovation lab back in 2013. Two years later, the brand announced that it was shrinking its lab and reassigning its employees into other groups. When asked about it by online site Geekwire, a Nordstrom spokesperson said, “rather than just a team focused on innovation, it’s now everyone’s job.” The natural evolution of any external skillset that starts with being “insourced” is to eventually become integrated into the overall way business is done.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“To respond to this shift from ownership to usership, companies across all industries have been transforming their businesses from a traditional up-front revenue model—in which they sell a product or service in exchange for a one-time fee—to subscription models. We’ve been writing extensively about this trend, which we dubbed Subscription Commerce back in 2014, and it shows no signs of slowing down.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“This shift has led some economists to use the term “usership” rather than ownership to describe the kind of control we increasingly want over the products and services we need or want. In other words, we want to use a product, not necessarily own it. Consumers are interested in flexibility, not in long term commitment and fixed costs. And they are willing to pay for only the portion they use directly from its owner either on a case-by-case basis—such as taking an Uber or renting an Airbnb—or a recurrent one.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“High above the Yangtze River Basin, the Chinese government is deploying a different kind of technology to impact the environment. The effort, known as the Tianhe (Sky River) Project, involves installing machines that produce silver iodide particles, which artificially induce the formation of clouds and rain. Early estimates suggest that this cloud-seeding process for manipulating the weather eventually could generate as much as 7 percent of China’s overall annual water consumption, a huge boon for the country’s 1.4 billion people.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“some independent researchers estimate that at least 15 percent of all social media profiles may be autogenerated without a real person behind them. This high percentage of fakes is frustrating advertisers.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“In the first six months of 2019, Facebook performed what is becoming a necessary ritual of purging fake accounts from its system. According to reports, the purge was its largest ever: It removed 3.39 billion fake accounts. The fake accounts, created in half a year, were more than Facebook’s estimates of real accounts on the platform, which were about 2.4 billion.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Sometimes brands make a stand more quietly. Deep inside one of the world’s most famous factories, located in the tiny town of Billund, Denmark, more than a hundred engineers and scientists are collaborating to redesign a product that has worked perfectly for more than eighty years. The LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre, a well-funded group within LEGO, is dedicated to finding more sustainable materials within the next decade to make the company’s iconic bricks. In 2018 the group launched its first innovation, making flexible pieces such as leaves and palm trees from a plant-based plastic sourced from sugar cane. This sense of commitment to the environment is deeply felt at LEGO. Its efforts may inspire more such initiatives across the toy industry, especially if consumers take note of LEGO’s efforts and demand similar forward-looking commitments from other companies as well.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“A recurring trend from several past reports is the idea of Backstorytelling, which I have been writing about and teaching for more than a decade. For the past 15 years as a strategist and speaker, I’ve been a passionate ambassador for the importance of brand storytelling. I have created and taught a graduate-level course in business storytelling at Georgetown University. Stories are a powerful tool because the human brain is more inclined to pay attention to an engaging narrative than to a bunch of facts. Knowing this, brands are trying to win our attention and earn our trust by sharing their back stories and vulnerabilities.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Each of these experiences leverages the most reliable tactic for securing attention wealth: storytelling.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“On the surface, this trend may seem at odds with the disturbing rise of xenophobia across the world. Yet there are signs that the current climate of hate is fueled largely by a contained but loud group of anti-immigrant populists and outrage-wielding politicians who stand to profit from it. Their movements don’t reflect the beliefs of most people. In fact, the evidence shows that people are becoming more accepting of others, not less. One study found that three years after Donald Trump was elected president, racial prejudice in many areas of the United States actually went down.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Studies indicate that instead of making us self-centered liars, social media may be giving us the one thing we need to shape our identities in a digital world: power over our stories. And what’s the fun of having power over our stories if we don’t give ourselves the title role?”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“As Simmons also argued, “if you write off the endless stream of posts as image-conscious narcissism, you’ll miss the chance to watch girls practice promoting themselves—a skill that boys are otherwise given more permission to develop, and which serves them later on when they negotiate for raises and promotions.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“It’s easy to assume that the person closest to the problem you hope to solve is the one most suited to lead the workshop. This is never the case. Instead, the best workshop facilitators are individuals who can lead a discussion, keep a conversation on track, and ask provocative questions without bias. They also expertly summarize the discussion, recapping any action items and ensuring that everyone who spent their precious time participating understands what they collectively achieved and what needs to happen next.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Adopt A “Yes, And” Mindset Improv actors successfully collaborate in a scene by going with the flow and building on one another’s ideas, saying “Yes, and,” then adding their own contribution. This additive approach is one of the hallmarks of effective workshops as well. If someone has an idea for how to leverage a trend, go along with it, even if you think it’s unlikely to work. Then try to add to it and make it better. You never know where it might take you.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Strengthen Your Company’s Culture Contrary to what you might have read, you don’t have to provide free food, massages, or ping-pong tables to inspire a great company culture. Workplace surveys after surveys show that what people desire most is making an authentic human connection with their co-workers feeling that their work matters, and having some autonomy over their own time. Tapping into trends can help you strengthen your company’s culture in all these areas.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Trend spotting isn’t the same as identifying actual trends. When you focus on spotting stories that stand out, you gravitate toward collecting interesting ideas without understanding the broader context of what they mean. Calling the multitude of ideas spotted the same thing as a trend is like calling eggs, flour, and sugar sitting on a shelf the same thing as a cake. You can see ingredients, but true trends must be curated to have meaning just as a cake must be baked.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“A few years ago, someone asked whether I considered the rise of 3D printing to be a trend. I replied that I did not, but I viewed the rise of the maker movement of people who want to create something on their own (which 3D printing certainly enables) was a trend worth watching.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Good trends always focus on the shift in an underlying human behavior or belief.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“The line between trends and fads can be blurry. Although some trends may seem to spotlight a currently popular story or cultural event, they typically describe behaviors and beliefs that develop over time. Fads describe something that’s briefly popular but doesn’t last. Great trends reflect a moment in time, but that moment is never fleeting, and the basic idea is more elevated.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“trend is a curated observation of the accelerating present.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“At 90 years old, Naisbitt still is a collector of ideas. As he often explained, if you want to get better at anticipating the future, start by getting better at understanding the present.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“KEEP IT SHORT. Simplicity goes hand in hand with elegance. When it comes to expressing your ideas, this usually means using as few words as possible. It is also a well-known marker of expertise that when you truly understand something, you can explain it to a layperson without dumbing it down.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“EMBRACE THE PAUSES. As a speaker, I needed years of practice before I was comfortable with silence. It’s not easy. When you use pauses effectively, you emphasize the points you really want people to hear and give yourself time to articulate what you want to say in a conversation or from the front of the room if you’re presenting to a group. Thoughtful, persuasive people aren’t afraid of silence.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Any experienced facilitator or creative coach will tell you that the best way to kill the flow of a brainstorming session is to dwell on individual ideas. Ideation and analysis need a buffer of time between them for either to be effective. Often the meaning of ideas and the connections among them surface only after setting the ideas aside. Analyzing them later can give you more ideas and perspectives that enable you to see the connections more deeply.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“consider how frequent-flier miles work. You don’t take a flight, collect a few thousand miles, and turn around immediately and try to use them. Instead, you collect those miles until you finally accrue enough to go somewhere interesting. What if you could collect ideas the way most of us collect frequent-flier miles?”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future

“Save interesting ideas for later consumption without overanalyzing them in the moment.”
― Rohit Bhargava, Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future