Fostered by Millennial interests, in 2030 game-playing is the leading form of entertainment among crucial consumer demographics. Brand managers respond by embedding their brands into gaming experiences that mix the virtual with the real. Ubiquitous adoption of augmented reality has made brand-oriented gaming as common as playing Angry Birds was in 2013. Consumers engage in…
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Intelligent, customizable brands seek out consumers. With the influx of data analytics about consumer needs, sentiment, and lifestyle choices, by 2030 brands are seeking out users, rather than users seeking brands. Consumers no longer pay attention to brands because AI brands now know what consumers need, and present them with appropriate, individualized choices at the…
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Recent client work on the future of cars and auto repair had us thinking about Big Data (I know, I know) and driving, especially as the various streams of data generated by cars and drivers begins to be aggregated. What data is being generated and collected now? Car event data recorders (the so-called “black boxes”)…
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Brands that create themselves … brands that know what you want before you need it … brands that respond to consumer aspirations … Welcome to brands and branding in 2030! Brands 2030 is ten forecasts that provide a provocative look at ideas and trends that could shape the future of brands and their interactions with…
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Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today. Americans are increasingly doubtful about the future and the tenets of the “American dream,” polling finds. The first major poll of American Jews in more than 10 years shows rapid assimilation into the larger culture for every denomination except the Orthodox. Agribusiness giant…
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One of the central conceits of the Internet is that once something is published, it is out in public forever. This is so basic an idea that sitcom characters were joking about back in 1996 (1996!). But in the post-Snowden age, there is greater interest in being able to limit the data shared on the…
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Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today. Slate suggests that a combination of Uber-like car services and autonomous electric vehicles could drastically change cities. Chinese researchers, using data from the Twitter-like social network Weibo, found that anger spreads more readily through social networks than joy, sadness, or disgust. In the World…
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Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today. The Serval project offers free software to enable cellular phones to exchange calls and text messages without a cellular network. Serval is seeking crowdfunding for its “Mesh Extender,” a device that would extend the ad hoc mesh networks created by…
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Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today. Wired’s Clive Thompson calls for supplementing the Maker movement with a Fixer movement that would promote the skills needed to fix “broken” goods and pressure manufacturers to improve the repairability of their products. Bank analysts are warning that China may be reaching a “Minsky…
DetailsHere are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today. Using “big data” to evaluate the productivity of individual scientists may have unintended consequences. A recent editorial in Science argues that any automated scoring of an individual’s publication output discourages “risky and potentially groundbreaking work” and tends to steer scientists towards highly populated fields…
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