Coolhunting Chasing Down the Next Big Thing

‘Coolhunting’ and ‘swarm creativity’ are powerful concepts about identifying emerging trends and discovering the key trendsetters. They are about uncovering hidden innovation and innovators and they include the how and why new ideas and new knowledge are converted into products and services that correspond to the collective human mindset. Coolhunting involves making observations and predictions as part of the search for cutting-edge trends. It is a way of capturing what the ‘collective mind’ is thinking, and using what is captured to one’s advantage. For an example of this ‘collective mind’ concept, on the television show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, contestants unsure of the answer to a question had the option of asking the audience or phoning a so-called ‘expert’. Far more often than did the experts, the collective intelligence of the audience produced the correct answer. This is a simple example of swarm creativity. Humans swarm around like-minded people, with whom they not only feel comfortable but also can collaborate to produce winning ideas. The volume includes sidebars that expand concepts and present engaging anecdotes, as well as illustrations (charts, graphs, tables, and pictures) to help guide the reader through the explanations of concepts or simply to make for a more enjoyable read. The book includes many examples from history and from more recent business cases. Some of the examples are: how the CEO of Continental Airlines, participating in an online forum of frequent flyers, brought 200 of these people together in Houston at a dinner to discuss how the company could improve its services; how 10 research labs, collaborating globally to discover the causes of the SARS disease, were able to share newly acquired knowledge and achieve tremendous results very quickly; and, how Linux, an organization with no one officially in charge, became the only serious contender to the strictly hierarchical organizat