the collected literature of William Shakespeare. He even wrote a reader’s guidebook to the Bible.
Though he was celebrated for his science fiction, Asimov never defined his work using a single category. When asked to name his favorite book, he often joked, “the last one I’ve written.” He cannot be described only as a scientist or a theologian or a literary critic.
He was, without question, a writer and thinker with an incredible curiosity for ideas. In fact, he used this curiosity to maintain his grueling schedule of publishing, which at its peak resulted in about fifteen books per year. His secret, if there was just one, seemed to be in his ability to juggle multiple projects at once.
When he became stuck during writing (which indeed happened to him just as it does to any writer), Asimov would simply move on to one of his other in-progress projects. He never stared at a blank sheet of paper.
He credited his ability to focus on so many areas at once to his voracious appetite for reading and his capacity for being a “speed understander.” What if you could become a speed understander like Asimov?
I believe we all can.
The simple aim of this book is to teach you how to notice the things that others miss. I call this “non-obvious” thinking and learning to do it for yourself can change your business and your career.
The context within which I’ll talk about this type of thinking is business trends. For better or worse, most of us are fascinated by trends and those who predict them. We anticipate these predictions as a glimpse into the future and they capture our imagination.
There’s only one problem—too many trends are based on guesswork or lazy thinking. In other words, they are obvious instead of non-obvious.
This book was inspired by the landslide of obvious ideas we are surrounded with and our desire to do something better with them.
In a world where everyone is one click away from being a self-declared expert, learning to think differently is more important than ever. Observing and curating ideas can lead to a unique understanding of why people choose to buy, sell, or believe anything.
A non-obvious trend is a unique curated observation about the accelerating present.
Unlike many other far-future predictions, the trends and methods in this book are designed to help you right now. There are plenty of people who can tell you what the world might be like twenty years from now. Sadly, many of those are guesses or wishful thinking. How many trend forecasters do you think predicted the rise of something like Twitter back in 1996 when it was first created? Exactly zero.
Yet this doesn’t mean curating trends (or honing your ability to predict them) is useless. The most powerful trends can offer predictions for the short-term future based on observing the present. The truth is, knowing the short-term future is more valuable than you may think.
Why Does Trend Curation Matter?
Most of our life decisions happen in the short-term, though we may describe them differently. You choose to start a business in the short-term. You choose who to marry in the short-term. You change careers from one role to the next, all in the short-term.
Long-term decisions start in the short-term, so understanding how the world is changing in real time is far more valuable in your day-to-day career and life than trying to guess what will happen in the world twenty years from now.
When I speak at industry events, I often describe myself first as a “trend curator.” The reason I use that term is because it describes my passion for collecting ideas and taking the time to see the patterns in them to describe the world in new and interesting ways. In this book, you will learn the exact step-by-step method I use and how to become a trend curator yourself.
The result of all of my idea collection is that for the past eight years I have published an annual list of fifteen trends that will shape the business world in the year to come. Across that time, I have advised some of the largest brands in the world on business strategy, taught several courses at Georgetown University, and been invited to speak at events in thirty-two countries around the world.
All of this gives me the valuable chance to gain firsthand insight into dozens of different industries and to study media, culture, marketing, technology, design, and economics with an unfiltered eye. Adding to these real-life interactions, I also read or review dozens of books and buy magazines on everything from cloud computing to Amish farming methods.
My philosophy is to collect ideas the way frequent fliers collect miles—as momentary rewards to use for later redemption.
Why I Wrote Non-Obvious
When I first started writing an annual list of predictions in 2011, my intent was to share trends as ideas that didn’t have a home with any project I was working on at the time in my role at a large marketing agency. In 2015 the first edition of this book expanded beyond the trends themselves to feature an inside look at my process for curating trends and detailed instructions for how you can learn to curate your own ideas.
The book is divided into four parts.
Part I is dedicated to sharing my methods of trend curation, which I have usually only taught in depth through private workshops or with my students in class. You will learn the greatest myths of trend prediction, five essential habits of trend curators, and my own step-by-step approach to curating trends, which I call the Haystack Method.
Part II is the 2018 edition of the Non-Obvious Trend Report, featuring fifteen new ideas that will shape business in the year to come. Each trend features supporting stories and research, as well as an outline for why that trend matters and concrete ideas for how to apply the trend to your own business or career.
Part III is filled with tips on making trends actionable, including a short description of workshops you can host yourself to bring these trends to life in your organization. In this section, I also discuss the importance of anti-trends and how to use “intersection thinking” to see the patterns between industries and stories.
Finally, Part IV is a candid review of 105 previously predicted trends from the past seven years along with an honest assessment and rating for how each one performed over time, all sourced from a combination of conversations with industry insiders and a review panel of trusted colleagues.
You can choose to read this book in the order that it’s presented or you can skip back and forth between trends and techniques. Whether you choose to focus on my predictions for 2018 or jump to the last part to see how previously trends rated, this book can be read in short bursts or all at once.
Either way, like Asimov, you don’t need to be a speed reader.
Being a speed understander, however, is a worthy aspiration. It’s my hope that this book will help you get there.
1
The NORWEGIAN BILLIONAIRE:
Why Most Trend Predictions
Are Spectacularly Useless
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In 1996 Christian Ringnes was a billionaire with a first-world problem—he was running out of space for his favorite collection.
