Everything We Know Is Wrong

Magnus Lindkvist

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Entrepreneurship

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) PTE LTD
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814382731
• Langue: English

Extrait

Everything we know is wrong!

Everything we know is wrong!
The trendspotter s handbook
Magnus Lindkvist
Copyright 2010 Magnus Lindkvist
This edition published in 2011 by Marshall Cavendish Business
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
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The right of Magnus Lindkvist to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.
The author and publisher have used their best efforts in preparing this book and disclaim liability arising directly and indirectly from the use and application of this book.
All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain necessary copyright permissions. Any omissions or errors are unintentional and will, if brought to the attention of the publisher, be corrected in future printings.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-981-4382-73-1
Illustrations by L I N D K V I S T Co / Lotta Olsson
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International
Dedicated to my family
and to anyone who spends their day creating something
Contents
Introduction
Congratulations, you re clueless
The goal and structure of this book
1 Blinded by slow motion
How mass entrepreneurship is redefining capitalism slowly
2 Seeing through the matrix
How the illusion of boundaries and borders is crumbling
3 A shock to the senses
How information abundance has left us clueless
4 The trend illusion
How a faster world forces us to use our imagination
5 Beyond the horizon
How an older society means a lot more than grey hair
6 Missing the bigger picture
How a new perspective is the world s most valuable currency
7 Believing is seeing
How the world is getting better and why many of us miss that
Conclusion
Everything you know is wrong, right?
Notes
Acknowledgements
About the author
Introduction
Congratulations, you re clueless
May you live in interesting times.
- Chinese curse

What the hell just happened?
Kor ula Island, Croatia. September 2008. The late summer is blowing a gentle breeze over this beautiful island in the southern Adriatic. The olive trees are dark green. The water emerald blue. Timeless would be a word that would come to mind if it weren t such a clich . In the living room, the television is on with my twin infants taking turns to either bite it or use it as walking support. The BBC news is full of drama and tension. Banks are collapsing. The financial system is in freefall. It even seems that capitalism itself is at stake. The contrast between the drama unfolding on TV and the tranquillity in my surroundings could not be greater. This crisis will be described as special in the months to come. Special because it is so vast and affects so many different parts of the economy. Special because of its global reach, its unparalleled scope and lack of repentance in its destructive force. Most of all, though, it is described as special because it was so completely unexpected when it struck. Over the months following the meltdown, a number of professors, economists and pundits appeared and claimed they foresaw it all. The rest of us - some 99 per cent - were taken by surprise. If there s any kind of beauty - or, at least, a redeeming feature - to this sharp economic downturn, it is the fact that we all realized and had to admit that we are blind to many things happening in our midst. We are blind to the many hidden forces acting behind the scenes of everyday life. We are blind to long-term developments that were initiated decades ago and are only now coming to fruition. We are blind to most things happening in the world no matter how much news we consume. This is a book intended to make us aware of this kind of blindness. It is a book about not knowing. The title - Everything we know is wrong! - is not a collective insult but a call to curiosity.
We are blind to the hidden forces acting behind the scenes of everyday life
We are all trendspotters now!
Creativity author Daniel Pink claims that we re living in an age that will be dominated increasingly by creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers . There is one short word that encompasses all four of these activities: trendspotting. Just as 11 September 2001 made French newspaper Le Monde proclaim Nous sommes tous am ricains! (We are all Americans!), the events of September 2008 made us realize that we are all trendspotters. We cannot entrust our understanding of the world to some self-proclaimed experts in the way Roman soldiers consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The experts had let us down. We had to take matters into our own hands. All it takes to be a trendspotter is to ask yourself the question: What s going on in the world? and then pick up a newspaper, log on to a website, switch on the television or ask someone else that very question or a variation of it. It doesn t take more than some curiosity and making the effort to go outside our own heads for answers to add this title to our business cards. This is a book written for all the trendspotters in the world, and that includes you.
We cannot entrust our understanding of the world to self-proclaimed experts
Trend - the story behind the word
Originating in the Norse word for to turn , trendr , the word trend was long used to describe the flow of a river or current ( The Mississippi is trending west ). When statistics gained popularity in the nineteenth century, the meaning of trend was extended to include definitions of demographic movements and mass observations. The real breakthrough for the word, however, came after the Second World War, when society broke away from a conformist past to embrace individual differentiation. The attribute trendy was born. Just as Eskimos are rumoured - although it s never been confirmed - to have hundreds of words for snow, there are many different ways to describe the type of changes we see (and don t see) around us. To simplify matters, a useful metaphor is to think of yourself standing on a crowded city street somewhere in the world. Laid out before you are at least three different kinds of trends:
There are many different ways to describe the changes we see around us
If you look at people at street level, you ll see what they wear and what s in their hands. You may even hear certain words in their conversation referring to current events. These kinds of trends are microtrends or fashion trends and tend to last between one and five years. These kinds of trends tend to dictate what we wear, what kind of electronic gadgets we use and what kind of buzzwords permeate our language.
If you look slightly higher, you ll see the fa ades of buildings. There, you ll be able to track macrotrends with a lifespan of about a decade or two. These kind of trends include economic cycles and shifts, political winds and the rise of a new kind of technology. These will be visible in the kinds of logotypes that decorate buildings - what kind of industries are doing well or disappearing.
Finally, if you stare at the tops of buildings, you ll be able to see certain megatrends . These are deep societal changes lasting more than two decades and can be seen in the height of buildings (built to house many people because of urbanization, perhaps) or the purpose of certain constructions (the chapel becomes a shopping mall or a mosque, for example).
That s how far our eyes can see, but if we were to travel up into space and look down at the earth, we would be able to detect so-called gigatrends . These trends, spanning half-centuries or more, are especially visible at night, when the economic activities in various regions tell us what parts of the world house intense economic activity, what regions are growing and urbanizing, and how cities are growing together into vast megaregions.
In the past few decades the word trend has exploded in usage owing in part to an increase in the number of media channels available to consumers. One implication is that the meaning of the word has been further enriched to encompass a number of different phenomena. These include:
An observation of similarities in a certain place or within a certain period of time. For example, global temperatures are rising, people are living longer and having fewer or more children, and more people tend to wear a certain brand or colour.
A purchase recommendation wherein an authority figure such as a fashion journalist or a management guru urges people to act or shop in a certain way because it will be in , trendy , hip or all the rage next season. White is the new black! Downsize! Visit Paris!
Anomalies that challenge the status quo, assumptions or prejudices. These can describe a new or different kind of behaviour or technology, for example, and are often preceded by a dramatic Did you know ?
The inflation in the number of meanings of trend can easily create