What's a book that can help one see around corners to predict trends/technological innovations?

[Zarathustra]

Essentially I'm looking for a book that would've changed the mindset of Blockbuster to look into the future and make the right choice to buy Netflix.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Essentially I'm looking for a book that would've changed the mindset of Blockbuster to look into the future and make the right choice to buy Netflix.

BOLD - Peter Diamandis
Better and Faster - Jeremy Gutsche

 

[daru]

I just don't think that it can be predicted reliably. And if anyone could, would they reveal it in a book? But maybe I've just read to much Kahneman and Taleb lately.

 

[RichieKastl]

This book might be what you're looking for
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

 

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[JAJT]

It's about seeing the forest for the trees.

You need to stick your head up every now and then from the day to day and try to get a grasp of the landscape, the bigger picture, the competitive environment, etc...

If you keep your head down too long, you forget what market you are in.

Blockbuster thought they were in the physical movie rental business. Everything they did to try and survive was about rentals - got rid of late fees, longer rentals, etc... but they weren't in the physical movie rental business. They were in the "movie" business. They never even considered anything that wasn't physical rentals. Digital wasn't even on their horizons. Netflix slaughtered them because they knew they were in the movie business, not the rental business.

Similarly, Sony et al only cared about CD sales. Everything they did was CD related. Never considered they were in the music business. iTunes came out and showed them what people actually cared about wasn't CD's, but listening to music, which sounds very similar when you have your heard down and blinders up but as we all know today those two things are quite different.

I forget the engine oil company but there's a great story of a company who couldn't figure out how to set themselves apart from the competition. Oil was oil, contracts were already in place, there was no ground to stand on for shops to buy them over their current brand. That is, until they changed the shape of their bottle and were able to get almost twice as many bottles on the shelf in the same space as their competitor. They saw that the pain point wasn't oil quality, but rather shelf space (there may have been some other packaging related pains they solved like ease of use and opening the bottles and such, I forget).

The point in all these stories is the disruptors all took a step back and looked at the bigger picture. They didn't double down on the same. Didn't try to beat their competition at the competition's game - they made their own game and found the "blue ocean", so to speak.

The book Blue Ocean Strategy talks a lot about stories like this, and while they make great entertainment and stories to read about, the only real skill any of these companies possessed was seeing the REAL problem or REAL need and solving it in ways that nobody else was.

 

[Manchild_Unbound]

I just don't think that it can be predicted reliably. And if anyone could, would they reveal it in a book? But maybe I've just read to much Kahneman and Taleb lately.

That may be so, but some authors try, and they say interesting things.

Here's one I've read that speculates about the future:

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

A few that I haven't read, but seem to have interesting ideas:

The End of Jobs by Taylor Pearson
The Inevitable by Kevin Kelley
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
The Future of Almost Everything by Patrick Dixon

 

[ALC]

It all depends in which industry you're looking at, the future / present is automatisation, look at what you can do about it.

 

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[Zarathustra]

It all depends in which industry you're looking at, the future / present is automatisation, look at what you can do about it.

I'm most interested in if I should jump on this crypto-bandwagon and I'm looking to gather intuition from past explosive trends/technologies and make a decision through my own reason (not just the opinions of others) to see if crypto is a good thing to invest some time and energy in.

I want to know if there's a way to predict something will be big, the patterns of big trends/explosive technologies, etc.

 

[ALC]

I'm most interested in if I should jump on this crypto-bandwagon and I'm looking to gather intuition from past explosive trends/technologies and make a decision through my own reason (not just the opinions of others) to see if crypto is a good thing to invest some time and energy in.

Tbh, i would look further in Crypto too, even if i didn't follow the trend, i can see some utility in this.

 

[Zarathustra]

Tbh, i would look further in Crypto too, even if i didn't follow the trend, i can see some utility in this.

It's often difficult to distinguish the cultish-fad hype for the reality in crypto so I'm interested in historical technologies that were hyped as shit at the time and see how they played out and who made the most money. Or tech that was hyped but never went anywhere.

I find it really interesting that some people jumped on the internet bandwagon and make a shitton of money (e.g. Mark Cuban), some jumped on but lost a bunch, and some said it was a fad. I want to be the first group in new tech, even beyond crypto. That's where value is most eagerly waiting to be created and shitloads of money to be made.

 

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[ALC]

It's often difficult to distinguish the cultish-fad hype for the reality in crypto so I'm interested in historical technologies that were hyped as shit at the time and see how they played out and who made the most money. Or tech that was hyped but never went anywhere.

I find it really interesting that some people jumped on the internet bandwagon and make a shitton of money (e.g. Mark Cuban), some jumped on but lost a bunch, and some said it was a fad. I want to be the first group in new tech, even beyond crypto. That's where value is most eagerly waiting to be created and shitloads of money to be made.

I didn't jumped on it, i had the opportunity but didn't trust the purpose, for me it was a hype and still to this day, but somehow they ended up making a boatload of money, so why not create that same hype on an other currency, or create a new something in the Crypto World, up to you.

It's interesting indeed, i saw the price growing like nothing the last month, it's just mindblowing, imagine you invested 30K $ at the time...but i'm sorry for these people who are investing now, the hype is nearly over, the price is going up but when people will sell their actions, we will live a massive drop.

Even in France, we got the "Maison du Bitcoin" (House of Bitcoin).
You should look further it's interesting.