The simple truth is that we aren’t the purely rational beings we like to think we are. Our choices and beliefs are constantly being shaped by the silent, automatic work of our intuitive System 1, with only occasional interventions from our deliberate System 2. System 1 is our default setting. It runs in the background, handling most of our day-to-day tasks without any conscious effort. It’s the system that lets you instinctively finish the sentence “bread and…”, immediately know you prefer coffee to tea, or feel a flash of unease when someone’s friendly words don’t match their tense expression. System 2 is the slow, effortful, and conscious part of our mind. Engaging System 2 takes real attention and is mentally draining. Because it’s lazy, System 2 often just goes along with the first suggestion System 1 offers.

The customer’s true role in creating ground-breaking products is far more complex and interesting than a simple suggestion box can capture. Depending on the situation, the customer can be a guide to new markets, an accidental obstacle to future success, a source of deep insight, or an active partner in creation. The key isn’t whether you listen to the customer, but understanding which customer you’re listening to, and why.

Ever wonder why some ideas take off and change everything, while others that seem just as good just… disappear? That’s the million-dollar question for every new business, whether it’s a huge corporation or a startup in a garage. The path from a promising idea to real-world success is anything but certain. You need a guide. This post pulls together the best advice from some of the top minds in innovation to give you a “compass” for navigating this tricky landscape.

Brand management and Innovation are two complementary and interwoven business activities and companies are well-served to manage them with the same team. For large companies, a brand is a very valuable asset. It helps customers recognise you, easily understand what you stand for, and it simplifies the customer’s purchase decisions. Managing this important asset of the business falls on the marketing team, generally speaking. A brand however also needs product and service innovation, in order to keep up with changing consumer needs and category dynamics as well as generate growth.

The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. - Steve Jobs Stories are a vehicle that humans have used for ages to transfer “information” from generation to generation. Our minds have adapted to this powerful formula for understanding and remembering. I am curious about how it works and how people/businesses can use it to be more effective communicators. I have read some books now related to the subject, which I shall mention at the end of this post, and I just wished to share some of the findings.

Never really thought a subject like breathing could be so fascinating. We do it all the time and mostly without thinking, but in reality there is so much to it. Both when we do it correctly as well as when do it incorrectly. If you are remotely interested in the subject, I highly recommend the following book. I for one am intend on applying many of the learnings and have in fact seen a drop in my blood pressure just by focussing on nasal breathing (don’t know whether the drop will last, but I have never seen these levels since I starting measuring it some 6 months ago).

Health trackers are very popular gadgets. They come in at different price ranges and have different functionalities, but they clearly serve a purpose: people wish to track aspects of their activity and health, and the knowledge obtained can help stimulate making changes for the better. Apple is especially active in this area with the Apple Watch. Initially, the positioning of the Apple Watch was all over the place, but very quickly Apple narrowed in on the Health functionalities of the watch.

Signal has just designed a pretty brilliant marketing campaign for themselves, showing why people should potentially care about the privacy message that Signal so strongly pivots their product around and probably having the foresight that the campaign could lead to free PR. If you don’t know Signal, it is a messenger app/service that prioritises privacy and wants none of your data (link to their web site). Signal designed a marketing campaign on Instagram, where they created individualised ads incorporating some of the information that Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) has about the specific individual.

Amy Webb is a Quantitative Futurist that started the Future Today Institute. I have listened to her many times on the TWIT network’s podcasts where she discusses future trends and have read her book The Big Nine, which I reviewed here. Every year she (and her team) come out with a Trends Report that makes for very interesting reading. Make sure to check it out if you want to know what’s up with AI, Blockchain, Biotech, Tech regulation, Data Privacy and so much more.

In my push to leave behind me as much of the data-tracking-web as possible, I have been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine rather than Google for the last 6 months. I can honestly say that, based on search results alone, I feel no need to go back. That being said, I wasn’t always very happy with the speed of the site. Sometimes it was fine, but other days, it was really slow.

As a person with no accessibility restrictions, I find it is sometimes difficult to really understand the world of hearing impaired, seeing impaired or those with reduced mobility. However, it is important to be aware of it and sensitive to it, primarily as a person but also for companies/brands that develop products and services. If you feel equally curious about this as well, I have 3 recommendations of things to watch or listen to:

I have not been much of a Facebook fan for data privacy reasons. A couple of years ago I deleted my Instagram and Facebook accounts, in fact, and am now only connected to them via WhatsApp. However, living in Europe, it is a lot more difficult to get rid of that, so I have been very hesitant. WhatsApp was supposed to stay independent and separate when it was purchased by Facebook in 2014, but users will have noticed lately that they need to accept a new privacy policy where data from Whatsapp will be shared with Facebook.

I just listened to this podcast and I thought it was a worthy listen, so I am recommending it here. The podcast is an interview with Jim Loehr who is a psychologist that helps top athletes and high performers manage performance and life. I just thought that some of the anecdotes were interesting, but certainly also the main message where high performance can only (bar some exceptions) be really/sufficiently satisfying if we also pay attention to the hidden score card that one has in their own head.

Many books I read are interesting, but not all are “life changing”. This recent book certainly has the potential to fall in the latter category. Overall, I like books that fall in the “productivity” category, but not all offer a leap forward in my way of working. Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen was a transformative book for me. It had so many good ideas bound together by a common sense process.

This twitter thread from Chris Herd of First Base HQ about remote working and the possible implications on society and business is an interesting read. Personally, I have been working from home for the last 9 months. It has been a very successful experience. I am certainly not saying that seeing colleagues in the office does not have some advantages, but I don’t feel it is outweighed by the disadvantages of commuting and office hours.

The US elections are around the corner and we will, hopefully, soon know who the US President is for the next 4 years. The polls currently have Biden winning, but we all remember that Clinton was also winning 4 years ago. So, should we believe the polls this time around? Have they learned? An interesting article in a Dutch newspaper argues that they have fixed the main issues and that we can be more confident in the predictive nature of the current polls:

More and more people get their news from social media sites nowadays. This fact combined with the suspicion that the facebook site has had a notable impact on the 2016 US elections and with the 2020 elections around the corner, make the linked news article quite interesting. As anybody in research will tell you, in order to establish a causal effect (does facebook influence elections?), any experimental research design needs to have a control and experimental group, but with just about everybody using Facebook and/or Instagram, it is rather difficult to establish the real influence as there is no real “comparable” control group.

In line with the books I mentioned yesterday about AI, the linked article from Wired discusses how Google is offering companies to help address ethical issues around AI. The company plans to launch new AI ethics services before the end of the year. Initially, Google will offer others advice on tasks such as spotting racial bias in computer vision systems, or developing ethical guidelines that govern AI projects. Longer term, the company may offer to audit customers’ AI systems for ethical integrity, and charge for ethics advice.

Interesting backstory to a company and product I have used for some time. The Anti-Facebook: 12 Years In, Facebook Cofounder Dustin Moskovitz’s Slow-Burn Second Act Asana Finally Has Its Moment

Lately I have read a couple of books about privacy and artificial intelligence. These subjects are quite related, as massive amounts of data are required to make artificial intelligence work and that directly leads to privacy considerations. We all benefit one way or another in our daily lives from sharing our data, e.g. by accessing free tools (such as Facebook and Google) or by using tools that already start to benefit from AI (such as Google Assistant or Google Maps).

As was to be expected, smartphone sales dropped significantly in Q2 2020. The question is how manufacturers react in this environment. Changes can be made in the product portfolio, pricing and promotion strategy as well as sales channel strategies. Samsung suffered most, but I would venture that their wide product range and economies of scale should have allowed them to react better. The article mentions the Note 20 as a possible saviour for Samsung, but I doubt that, even though it is a great product.

Ben always writes interesting analyses and I think this article is worth reading if you want to understand what is going on between Apple and Epic Games. There is no doubt in my mind that all the pressure Apple is under will lead to some changes in their App Store policies, which is a good thing for developers and also users. Epic is attacking every level of the iPhone stack: the company doesn’t just want a direct relationship with customers, and it doesn’t just want to use its own payment processor; it is also demanding the right to run its own App Store.

We’ve known about the Surface Duo for quite some time, but Microsoft has finally made it “official”. However, rather than an actual product launch, it feels much more like a beta programme. That is necessary to a large extend, as the foldable phone category is very young. We’ve seen many companies try different ways and we clearly haven’t settled yet on THE foldable form factor. In the case of the Surface Duo, we are looking at two independent screens rather than a foldable screen as we’ve seen in the Galaxy Fold phones.

Samsung brought out a new set of totally wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds Live. The most innovative aspect of the product is its design. The look is very distinctive (they look like a bean), but from the linked review it appears that Samsung did not forget about the basics. Personally, I can’t wait to try them. Galaxy Buds Live review: good beans, no compromises

Samsung’s screens have always been best-in-class. They offered higher refresh screens a little later, but this innovation brings real benefits and I can’t wait to see how it does on the Note 20 Ultra. Samsung Display Announces First VRR Mobile Display - Inside Note20 Ultra