The New Inspirer

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The guys & girls over at trendwatching.com are doing an excellent job at distilling major trends from consumer behavior. For 2008 they have identified eight major trends:

1. Status Spheres.  A variety of lifestyles, activities and persuasions, which can be mixed and matched by consumers looking for recognition from various crowds and scenes.
2. Premiumization. According to trendwatching.com 2008 will be about the premiumization of everything and anything. In other words, no industry, no sector, no product will escape a premium version in the next 12 months.
3.  Snack Culture. This embodies the phenomenon of products, services and experiences becoming more temporary an transient; products that are being deconstructed in easier to digest, easier to afford bits, making it possible to collect even more experiences, as often as possible, in an even shorter timframe.
4. Online Oxygen. The idea that consumers need online access as much as they need oxygen.
5. Eco-Iconic. Over the past few years, the ECO trend has moved from Eco-Ugly (ugly, over-priced, low performance alternatives to shiny ‘traditional sphere’ products and services) to Eco-Chic (eco-friendly stuff that actually looks as nice and cool as the less responsible version) to Eco-Iconic in 2008: “Eco-friendly goods and services sporting bold, iconic design and markers, that help their eco-conscious owners to visibly tout their eco-credentials to peers”.
6. Brand Buttlers. Instead of stalking potential and existing customers (which is not very 2008), why not assist them in smart, relevant ways, making the most of your products and whatever it is your brand stands for? Remember, giving is the new taking.
7. Make It Yourself. With (in particular younger) consumers having come to expect to be able to create anything they want as long as it is digital, and to customize and personalize many physical goods, the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well.
8. Crowd Mining.  When co-creating, co-funding, co-buying, co-designing, co-managing *anything* with ‘crowds’, the emphasis in 2008 will move from just getting the masses in, to mining those crowds for the rough and polished diamonds. How to do that? Shower them with love, respect and heaps of money, of course.

The report over at trendwatching.com has excellent examples which illustrate these main trends. Have a look at them and be inspired >:)

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“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters” -Seneca

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….we all are geniuses. Over here at The New Inspirer we believe in being optimistic about the future and being a source of inspiration to ourselves and others. Optimism about the future leads us to being investors in the future. And what better place to invest in the future than the stock market.

It will come as no surprise that stock markets around the globe are currently under severe pressure. European indices shed more than 5% in Europe alone today and sentiment can be characterized as pretty lousy. It is generally under these circumstances that it’s good to remember why these markets are here in the first place. Markets are here to match ideas with resources (be it in the form of labor or capital).  When some of these wonderful ideas are on offer at a sharp discount, it’s time to go shopping!

We are putting some of our money to work in those businesses that we think are worth our while and in which we have faith that they’ll be able to provide value to the world going forward. And hopefully reap a handsome return on our money in the mean time >:)

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Some people have somewhat unusual hobbies. But what about collecting personal secrets? The website PostSecret.com collects secrets from people all over the world, which are simply mailed in. About 20 of these postcards are displayed every week on the site. Some are funny or tragic, others philosophical or sensual. Very interesting reads >:)

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Apple has done it again. It created just another device which you would seriously consider owning, built numerous technological enhancements to inspire the rest of the hardware industry. Steve Jobs today announced “the world’s thinnest notebook” the Macbook Air.  Apart from it being really thin (it fits an envelop) it no longer uses a cd-rom drive (but can be “borrowed”  from another computer), leverages iPod touch technology to the track pad (different ways to use the track pad to navigate through pages and applications) and is beautiful -of course-.  Have a look at the specs over at Apple. Thumbs up >:)

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And then read this research. We came across some interesting research by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert who has made it his life’s work to understand why people make errors predicting what will make them happy and why they do so over and over again. The Washington Post draws up his conclusions thus far:

• Bingeing is bad, except when it isn’t

” Breaking two cookies into quarters and eating one piece on each of eight days is likely to produce no happiness at all. Better to eat two cookies at once, and then wait a week before grabbing another two.”

• Happiness often comes from what you don’t know

“When you don’t understand why a bad thing happened, it is worse. When you don’t understand why a good thing happened, it’s better.”

• Keeping your options open won’t necessarily make you happier

“When you lock yourself in something you cannot get out of, you will find ways to be happier. . . . I do love my wife more than I loved my girlfriend, and they are the same person.”

• The things you fear are not as bad as you think.

“For as long as anyone can remember,” Gilbert once noted, “people have hungered for information about their personal futures, confident that if they knew their fates, they would also know their fortunes. Alas, knowing the future is not the same as knowing how much one will like it when one gets there.”

So, take it from an academic: there’s no reason you shouldn’t be happy >:)

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Traveling to new places is always nice, however if you don’t pack light, it can become quite a hassle to go around town with your traveling gear. While this might not be as bad when arriving, it becomes more problematic once you’ve finished shopping at your destination and are headed home.

A brilliant solution to this problem we saw recently in Hong Kong and it’s called In-town Check-in. When you’re traveling by Airport Express train to the airport, you can check in your luggage at Hong Kong Central Station or Kowloon Station. Simply check-in your lugagge and receive your boarding pass as early as 1 day before take-off or as late as 90 minutes before departure. And then you’re off to enjoy the city again. No more boring waiting at the airport and no back problems due to carrying around those heavy bags. We can’t wait until more cities around the world copy this idea >:)

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We wish you all:

12 months of hapiness;

52 weeks of fun;

365 days of success;

8760 hours of good health;

52600 minutes of good luck; and

3153600 seconds of joy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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