Pattern Recognizing by Magnus Lindkvist

Summer reading list

Aug 13, 2009
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Is it any wonder, some people ask, that Sweden's productivity stats are so poor given that the entire country shuts down for over a month every summer? Well, I'll reply, given that there's nothing to do but work from October to April (when Californians will still take early afternoons off at the beach), we're worth it. Here's what I spent my off-time reading and what I thought of the works.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson's Free (subtitle: The Future of a Radical Prize) has gotten a lot of hype in the past year mainly because his last book, 2006's The Long Tail, managed to pinpoint a quirky phenomenon of online consumption and became an oft-used phrase for wannabe-internet guru's (yes, guilty as charged). His new book - should you have missed the hype or failed to grasp the straight-forward title - deals with the fact that more and more things online, and sometimes offline, are given away for free. And...that's really all there is to it. Where The Long Tail made quite an effort to analyze online purchasing and consumption dynamics, Free seems like an idea in search of content. Sure, there are some great chapters (the one dealing with abundance comes to mind) but the overall impression becomes scattered - like a series of blog posts or magazine articles under a common headline (Anderson is, after all, a magazine editor). The Long Tail wasn't riveting but managed to stay interesting and enjoyable for all its 200+ pages. This one will test your patience after half of that.

God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World

John Micklethwait

A lot more enjoyable was (Economist US correspondent) Adrian Wooldridge and (Economist editor) John Micklethwait's God is Back. Having previously scrutinized the management industry (The Witch Doctors), globalization (A Future Perfect), the limited-liability company (The Company) and US conservatism (The Right Nation), they now turn their sharp analytical lens to that great big elephant in the room, the "return" of religion in society. True it never really went away but where most European thinkers (Swedish in particular) used to think that the world is on a one-way track to secularism as nations became more affluent, reality has proved them wrong. Religion is on the rise. From Pentecostals in Korea to Christians in China to Muslims around Europe, God - in many different shapes and forms - is back. The book deals with the Americanified version of religion and its success as an export to many emerging countries around the world. Its main competitor, and the book's other focal point, is Islam and there are some really excellent chapters on the challenges of having Islam co-exist peacefully with other religions (apostasy is punishable by death in, for example, Saudi Arabia). The style is energetic with a dry, analytical wit and not a trace of the sarcastic ramblings of the many atheist manifestos that have been published recently.

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do Ab

Joshua Cooper Ramo

Finally, the best of the crop, is Joshua Cooper Ramo's The Age of the Unthinkable. Any title beginning with "The Age of..." is bound to elicit a few sighs of frustration and the opening chapters of the book are indeed as cliché-laden as you would come to expect ("We live in a unique era....", blah, blah, blah). But then something happen. Ramo used to be a senior editor of TIME Magazine and it's when he starts using his skills as a journalist that the book really gets going. It can best be described as a roller-coaster ride through the early years of the 21st century with some lessonspicked up along the way. The inventor of Nintendo Wii shares the stage with Hizbollah. Israeli intelligence agents are juxtaposed with Silicon Valley's finest venture capitalist. And so on. Ramo is on a quest to understand the new drivers of the world we live in - whether it's in foreign policy or business strategy - and the reader has come along for the ride. And what a thoroughly enjoyable ride it is. Ramo's prose is straightforward - as you'd expect from a TIME writer - and inquisitive. The pages burn with curiosity and Ramo never succumbs to a know-it-all, something he could easily have done being "youngest Managing Director in the history of Kissinger Associates". If you want to understand a little bit of the complex, unpredictable world we currently live in, read this book!

And don't forget to book your copy of my forthcoming Everything We Know Is Wrong - The Trendspotter's Handbook

Everything We Know Is Wrong: The Invisible Trends That Shape Business, Society and Life

Magnus Lindkvist

Pre-order my book

Jun 27, 2009
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Tentative cover...tweaks being made as we speak

Everything We Know Is Wrong - The Trendspotter's Handbook is released on September 15th. Pre-order your copy here.

From the backcover:

Why do grownups believe that the world is just like when they were growing up and that everything happening now is an exception?

We are trendspotting creatures who spend our lives wondering what’s going on in the world around us. So why do so many changes pass us by or – even worse – take us completely by surprise? Why is our worldview always a little broken? What’s the learning of the many extreme events that have taken place over the past decade – from September 11^th, 2001 to the financial crash of 2008? What long-term changes take place behind daily headlines and buzzwords? How can we understand the present and predict the future if we can’t even make sense of it?

These questions are the starting point of Everything We Know Is Wrong – The Trendspotter’s Handbook, an inspiring instruction manual to help you sharpen your trendspotting skills and navigate the many puzzling changes that make up life in the 21^st century. Where other books about trends serve up ready-to-eat meals, this one will help you find, hunt and prepare your own “food” by giving you the tools and mindset needed for successful, in-depth trendspotting. It will help you distinguish between hype and actual insights, between fashion trends and megatrends. With seven insights about how our change-detecting minds work, Everything We Know Is Wrong will help you become an even better trendspotter in an age where we all need understand and adapt to changes in society, life and business.

Inside account of Tesla Motors

Jun 25, 2009
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The problem with following business biographies is that they tend to be written many years after events occured. Electric Car company Tesla Motors is an exception, however. Read a wonderful, scary account of what's been going down behind the scenes in the past few years here.

How trends get started

Jun 14, 2009
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Call it the Heinz effect...

First nothing, then nothing, then everything!

How China commemorates the "Tiananmen Square Incident"

Jun 6, 2009
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With Umbrellas!

Three citylinks

Jun 5, 2009
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Getting ready to speak about the future of regions and cities in a few weeks time, I've come across some interesting stuff in the past 24 hours.

There's Steven Johnson's TED speech about a city's resilience.

The Web and The City

There's DesignBoost excellent collection of recent interviews with some of the world's most influential designers about the future of cities.

Finally, there's a real funky video of a train passing through a Bangkok market. I guess it shows Johnson's idea of a city's resilience in action.

Until the cows come home

Jun 4, 2009
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A friend of mine sent me these pictures showing over 3,000 people making a pilgrimage to Dalarö, outside Stockholm, to watch the annual first outside grazing for about 20 cows. Is there a trend in this?

"If you build it, they will come..."

Waiting for Bovine Intervention

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Choked by a slipped halo

May 29, 2009
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A couple of years ago, I read Phil Rosenzweig's seminal The Halo Effect about how we idolize certain companies, brands or phenomena to the point of blindness. I can't help thinking of this syndrome as I read yet another article showing the murky, previously unseen part of Dubai (or "The Emirates" as they like to call themselves nowadays that Abu Dhabi has bailed them out). From UK's The Independent:

"A major property development firm with links to the ruling family of the UAE city-state, and the firm’s marketing agency, are accused by investors, many of whom are UK citizens, of obtaining millions of pounds through the use of false construction photographs."

The Banana - A marvel of modern creationism

May 28, 2009
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Here come The Creatives!

May 27, 2009
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The Economist last week reported that living abroad gives people a creative edge. This made me think that instead of using the sloppy collectivist word "immigrants", we should call people who live in country they weren't born in "Creatives". This will bring an interesting edge to currently meaningless political discussions about "How to reach out to immigrants" or "Are there too many immigrants?". How do you reach The Creatives? Are there too many Creatives?

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