Non-Obvious 2019- How To Predict Trends and Win The Future
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What’s the Trend?
A new generation of entrepreneurs are thinking beyond profit and making social impact, not financial performance, at the center of their organizations’ missions.
Trend Longevity Rating:A-
The world’s problems remain complex, and entrepreneurs continue to generate social impact. In the future, we expect (and already see) more business leaders step up to fill a leadership void left by paralyzed partisan governments (like the US under Trump) which step backwards on important urgent issues such as climate change, fighting poverty, and gender equality.
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What’s the Trend?
Some of today’s most innovative and influential ideas are coming from complete outsiders whose unconventional quirks disrupt entire industries.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The past few years offer plenty of evidence for how outsiders can disrupt entire industries, countries and global orders. Leaders with little to no political experience win elections. Outsider musicians like Cardi B, a stripper-turned-rapper, top the singles chart. The founders of cryptocurrencies Ethereum and Bitcoin, already work to change our economic system.
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What’s the Trend?
The business community is starting to reject the “sleep when you’re dead philosophy” in favor of mindfulness in all its forms: yoga, meditation, quiet contemplation and even sleep.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
Technology and connection continue to result in increased anxiety for many. The past year, many professionals were desperately seeking spaces of quiet to disconnect and improve focus. An increasing number of employers realize anxiety is not good for business, so we see more organizations incorporating practices that encourage rest, meditation, and healthy sleep.
The 2018 Non-Obvious Trend Report Overview
Original Publication Date: December 5, 2018
Original Format: Paperback + eBook
Full Book: www.nonobviousbook.com/2018
THE BACKSTORY
This year included a full overhaul of design and layout of the book to make it easier to read and to incorporate color and visuals as well. In addition to the formatting, the trends themselves continued to gain popularity, but looking at all of the predictions of the years started to get difficult for my team in workshops. To help create more of a sense of continuity and encourage people to take a bigger view of the trends, we partnered with Microsoft this year to also create an interactive trend experience and also launched an ambitious website that featured extended content about every past trend.
RETROSPECTIVE: HOW ACCURATE WAS THIS REPORT?
This edition continued to gain more visibility in the industry and was a frequent winner of major book awards, including the Eric Hoffer Book Award, INDIE Book Award Gold Medal and being selected as a finalist for the Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Prize sponsored by the American Marketing Association. As for the trends themselves, there were several that captured reader and media attention. Manipulated Outrage was a big winner, describing a phenomenathat many people recognized - and other popular trends from this report included Brand Stand, Truthing, Approachable Luxury and Human Mode.
2018 Culture & Consumer Behavior Trends
What’s the Trend?
As a consequence of eroding trust in media and institutions, people are engaging in a personal quest for the truth based on direct observation and face-to-face interaction.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
As widespread distrust of the media, governments and corporations continues, this trend continues to be important and describe a critical coping mechanism that many people are using to seek out who they can really trust.
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What’s the Trend?
Shifting definitions of traditional gender roles are leading some to reject the notion of gender completely, while others aim to mask gender from products, experiences, and even their own identities.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The way we understand and describe gender roles continues to shift. In past years we have talked about women, men and this trend - which sits squarely in between. Each continues to describe broad movements and evolving beliefs.
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What’s the Trend?
Empowered with more information about products and services, people are choosing to make a statement about their values and the world today through what they buy, where they work, and how they invest.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The speed with which we continue to have access to real time information to evaluate the impact our buying has on the world continue to make this trend a critical one to watch.
2018 Marketing & Social Media Trends
What’s the Trend?
Lured by the promise of big data, organizations segment audiences too narrowly and unintentionally end up abandoning large groups of potentially lucrative customers.
Trend Longevity Rating:B
While businesses continue to do this frequently and unnecessarily narrow their audience, in many cases it has not turned out create the sort of major issues or challenges that we initially predicted.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
Reacting to a polarized media atmosphere, more brands feel compelled to take a stand and highlight their core values rather than try to be all things to all people.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
Over the past year since this trend was first predicted, there have been example after example of brands utilizing this effect to inspire belief, share what they believe and grow loyalty.
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What’s the Trend?
Organizations use the power of stories to share their heritage, mission, and reason for existing with audiences to earn loyalty and position themselves as desirable places to work.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
If there is any trend that could be described as universally important, it would be this one. Though it has been brought back over time, the idea of stories as a way for brands to stand apart continues to be an effective strategy.
2018 Media & Entertainment Trends
What’s the Trend?
Media, data analytics, and advertising are combining forces to create a perpetual stream of noise that is intended to incite rage and illicit angry reactions on social media and in real life.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
Unfortunately, this trend remains sadly important due to the continued use of manipulation by evil corporations and self-centered politicians, exacerbated by the gullible media who help amplify the manipulation much more broadly.
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What’s the Trend?
The road to mastery on any topic gets faster through the help of bite-sized learning modules that make education more time efficient, engaging, useful and fun.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
This trend has driven real business change and positive results, as we have seen companies use this principle to stand out, educate their customers and help close sales.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
Immersive experiences delivered through technology and personal interactions increase empathy by helping people see the world through foreign and unfamiliar eyes.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The broader take on this trend that we described this year made it even more relevant as we see new examples of installations, art projects, experiences and technology that continue to offer people ways to feel more empathy.
2018 Technology & Design Trends
What’s the Trend?
As automation increases, people hungry for more personal and authentic experiences begin to put a premium on advice, services, and interaction involving actual humans.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The more technology continues to evolve and automation happens to experiences and interactions that used to involve people, we will continue to see a rise in the importance of this trend and the co
unter intuitive importance of humans that it implies.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
As we create more methods for quantifying the world around us, data gets manipulated, contaminated and sabotaged, making it harder to separate true insights from useless noise.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
There is no doubt the flood of data is continuing to rise and sorting through it to find what really matters A continues to be a major problem for corporations that even the smartest artificial intelligence has not yet been able to solve.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
Organizations create smarter connected products, services and features that can proactively protect our safety, health and environment by anticipating our actions or needs.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
One of the side effects of the pace of evolution of technology is just how demanding we have become of that technology. Those high expectations continue to make this trend highly relevant as people want tech to anticipate their needs more than ever.
2018 Economics & Entrepreneurship Trends
What’s the Trend?
Luxury is no longer defined by scarcity and privilege, but rather through more down-to-earth authentic human experiences that create unforgettable moments worth sharing.
Trend Longevity Rating:B+
The reckoning amongst luxury brands never quite materialized as deeply as we anticipated. Alongside luxury that was “approachable” was luxury that was even more out of touch, designed for the “Overwealthy” described in our 2019 prediction.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
Overwhelmed by digital, consumers turn back toward products and experiences that they can touch, feel and sense to deliver a much needed sense of calm, simplicity and humanity.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
The more digital things are becoming, the more the importance of tactile experiences continues to be. Our 2019 trend of “Deliberate Downgrading” also relates to this idea that sometimes we just want a more real and tangible non-digital experience.
* * *
What’s the Trend?
Traditional models of distribution get reinvented as businesses of all sizes seek more efficiency, build direct connections with consumers and rethink their own business models.
Trend Longevity Rating:A
Traditional distribution models continue to be disrupted by new players, innovative aggregators and an ongoing shift in how consumers expect buy and receive just about anything.
AFTERWORD
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“There’s no such thing as weird food. Only weird people.”
FERRAN ADRIÀ, Chef and Molecular Gastronomist
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Apparently, the world will end on March 16, 2880.
While putting the final touches on the first edition of Non-Obvious, I came across a news article about a team of scientists who discovered a 0.3% chance the world will end on that day due to a cosmic collision course between Earth and a celestial body known only as Asteroid 1950 DA.
The story immediately struck me as the perfect metaphor for the types of predictions we commonly encounter in the world today . . . overblown proclamations with dire consequences and relatively little certainty.
One of the aims for this book is to challenge lazy or obvious trend predictions that are, sadly, just like that exaggerated astronomical prediction. Mistaken trend predictions can be even more damaging than a doomsday prophecy, because they lead to flawed decisions today instead of just empty dread for the far future.
A trend is a unique curated observation of the accelerating present.
Non-Obvious intentionally doesn’t offer geopolitical arguments for why Denmark is going to become the world’s next superpower by 2050 thanks to wind energy production, or optimistic technology predictions about how self-driving cars will enable virtual-reality tourism during daily commutes.
These kinds of predictions are sexy, and some might even come true. Unfortunately, they also include a lot of uncertainty. The future should involve far less guesswork.
Curating trends is certainly about seeing the things others don’t. Yet it’s also more broadly about a mindset that encourages you to be curious and thoughtful. It’s about techniques that help you move from trying to be a speed reader to being a “speed understander,” as Isaac Asimov wrote.
The future belongs to those who can learn to use their powers of observation to see the connections between industries, ideas, and behaviors and curate them into a deeper understanding of the world around us.
I’m not saying that this type of thinking can save us from the asteroid 867 years from now, but it can change the way we approach our lives and our businesses in the present.
Preparing for the future starts with filtering out the noise and getting better at understanding today... as it always has.
RESEARCH:
Notes, References, & Credits
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The preparation of this book and the Non-Obvious Trend Report involves scanning tens of thousands of stories every year, interviewing dozens of experts and reviewing more than 100 books. Where relevant, these sources have been cited specifically in an endnote, however this does not reflect the full breadth of sources consulted. On average, each trend includes about 30 stories and links that were used in the development, curation and writing of that chapter. Since inserting a long list of links in a physical book (or even an ebook) has limited value, all of these links are instead shared through a downloadable PDF (where you can click any link which you can access and download). The intent of this list is to offer a useful way for you to visit individual links to stories, to learn more about a trend, or to discover where exactly the ideas and research cited in this book come from.
To download a PDF with active links for this 2019 edition of Non-Obvious, visit this URL: www.nonobviousbook.com/resources
ENDNOTES
Chapter 1: The Norwegian Billionaire
1Mini Bottle Gallery. This story is gathered from first-hand conversations with staff at the venue, stories available online about the founding, and literature provided to visitors at the museum.
2Trend spotter definition. This definition was taken from Wisegeek.com, but there were plenty of similarly narrow-minded definitions spread across the Internet I could have picked to share here. The common bias of most of them is that there is some type of special training and industry knowledge required to be a trend expert. There isn’t.
3Curse of knowledge. The famous linguist Steven Pinker discusses this “curse of knowledge” in his book The Sense of Style, where he notes that the more expertise we have about a topic, the more difficult we tend to find it to simplify or explain it to those who are not as well versed as ourselves.
Chapter 2: The Curator’s Mindset
4Mindset.Carol Dweck’s simple yet profound book was first published in 2006.
5 “Parking ticket not a car wreck.” Dweck’s Mindset is filled with analogies and anecdotes like this one to illustrate the value of a growth mindset versus a fixed one.
6Vogel Collection. This story was sourced primarily from the New York Times profile written about the Vogels after Herbert’s death in 2012.
7The truth about Columbus. Columbus deserves little of the ceremony he gets and, in fact, he never even set foot in North America during his famous journey in 1492. Listen to the real story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164702
8 Why are traffic signs orange? The answer took a bit of Googling after my kids asked, but they’re orange because testing shows that this is the color most visible from a distance. And everyday cars aren’t orange because people care more about picking a color they like than optimizing the color for safety.
Chapter 3: The Haystack Method
9 John Naisbitt Interview. This profile and the quotes are taken from an article and interview published in the USA Today around the time that his book Mind Set! was published. Full i
nterview:https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/books/2006-09-24-naisbitt-usat_x.htm
10Non-Obvious Trend Report (1st edition). This first year of the report was published as a visual presentation and is available online (unedited). More details about this report and how to read it, as well as how the trends fared over time, is all included in the Appendix.