The New Inspirer

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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….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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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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Entrepreneur Sanne Roemen never makes an invoice. She lets her clients decide what they want to pay her. And how they want to pay her.  Sanne, who consults on how companies can apply web 2.0 principles in their business, knows by experience by now that clients generally pay her three times as much as she would have offered before the job was done. The side-effect of clients paying less than expected therefore isn’t too much of a problem. “I can’t determine for the client what the value of my services is. That’s something which is different for everybody”.  Although Sanne totally trusts on her clients to judge her value added, so far she hasn’t had any negative experiences. Above that, it’s part of the entrepreneurial risk. “When making an offer it’s exiting to see whether or not you’ll get the job. Now it’s exiting to see how much you get once the job is finished”.

More….»

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An interesting slide show by Karl Fish which examines the changes in the world that are ahead of us. There are numerous interesting presentations by the way (like this one) that can be found at slideshare.net >:)

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Get fresh ideas for products and services. Every day a new Idea. The website idea-a-day.com delivers. Subscribe by email, RSS or simply visit the site for some entrepreneurial inspiration. Just to name two interesting ideas we picked up from this site:

• Create a “Reply & Delete” option for SMS so that a cell phone’s box doesn’t get cluttered;
• Sell ready made cold and flu remedy drinks in coffee shops like Starbucks.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get rid of most of that (junk-) mail that reaches your door mat every day? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to open up your browser while on vacation in New Zealand and see which letters were delivered to you in New York? Earth Class Mail makes it possible. The idea is simple: tell everybody to send their mail to a P.O. Box. Earth Class Mail picks it up, scans your envelopes and places them in your virtual post box. With a few mouse clicks you decide which post to open and scan, which mail to forward to a physical address and which envelopes to destroy.

Plans start at $14.95/month and run up to $59.95 depending on the number of documents you wish to receive and number of named recipients you want to attach to the service. And there you are. A step further to a paperless life and mobile mail.

Earth Class Mail currently offers several P.O. boxes in the United States and a couple of street addresses along side(which might be necessary for certain deliveries by the likes of UPS & Fedex). Know of something similar in Europe & Asia anyone? >:)

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Always wanted to sell that brilliant article, great photo or fantastic video you made?. Now you can. It might even get picked up by one of the major news agencies such as Reuters, the Associated Press or Hearst Magazines.

Mochila.com basically brings buyers and sellers of content together. Sellers offer their writings along with pricing and possible restrictions. Buyers look for what they need and instantly download and use the best match. Payment can have two forms: either by paying the price tag or by means of an advertisement share. In the latter case ads are incorporated in the content and its revenues are shared between buyer, seller & Mochila.

Already 1000 Media organizations have joined Mochila including some very big names that were already mentioned. We think this is a brilliant initiative which could really open up the world of popular media to a greater diversity of subjects and writers. Writers who now have a chance to turn their writing skills into a viable economic proposition >:)

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