The foresight work we do for clients seems to have two primary applications: as a stimulus for innovation and as a key part of the situation analysis that supports strategy development. I was recently reminded of one of the most important principles of strategy by an unlikely coach—Mr. Hoots, the Muppet. My kids (now thirty…
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Amazon sent out a news release this morning announcing that sales of digital books for their Kindle digital book format/reader had eclipsed sales of printed books. All printed books, not just hardbacks. (That milestone was reached in July 2010.) This news about digital book sales edging printed sales is apparently a big deal as many…
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One of the things we help our clients do is reframe their perspective on their business. As we tell clients, we can never have the depth of their institutional knowledge, but by coming in with an (educated) outsider’s perspective, we can help them uncover their hidden assumptions and biases, and move past these biases to…
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As analysts of social change, one trend we monitor is the dramatic, ongoing evolution of the American family. The Leave It to Beaver model of married-couple-with-kids, plus the odd dog or gerbil, now fits less than one-fifth of US households. Instead, many more people are living in “voluntary” families composed of (or at least including)…
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The raid that killed Osama bin Laden yesterday has to have been one of the most secret operations in the world — and yet it was live-blogged by an inadvertent witness. Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant trying to get away from it all in the small Pakistani city of Abbottabad , was so irritated by…
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Tiny houses are an American tradition, dating back to the 150sf cabin where Thoreau wrote his masterpiece on simple living. Now they’re back in vogue, driven by foreclosure woes, boomers downsizing, and eco-consciousness. According to an interesting update in the New Haven Advocate, at least two consulting firms—Rightsize by Design and Tumbleweed Tiny House Company—now…
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Internet retailer Amazon announced today that it is starting a program that would allow library patrons to check out books using their Kindle. This sounds like a great idea. I am surprised no one has considered this before. Way to go, Amazon!
As a futurist, I’m amused when people say ‘no one could have predicted that’. I’m currently spending time in Bulgaria. A week in, I notice things that soon will stop registering in my consciousness as the novelty of the experience wears off. My old neighbourhood has changed quite a bit, in a good way.…
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The news that Bing was integrating public Facebook information into its search results was interesting to me on one point: privacy. I know, I know, Facebook and privacy, blah blah blah. (I will avoid discussion about the complexity of FB’s privacy settings, as it has been done to death elsewhere). Now Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook…
DetailsA couple of years ago some colleagues and I were talking about the cleverness of the Netflix model, and we wondered if there was any other product that could be rented/distributed via mail in the same way. One co-worker suggested how it would be great if we could rent books for free, and then return…
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