Member Reviews
I've been reading these reports every year for a while. Again, the closing and ending sections duplicate previous books. He seems to be having trouble knowing what to do when a trend he noticed in the past hasn't been replaced.
At the same time, Bhargava doesn't seem adept at picking up on bigger cultural movements and themes outside of his social orbit. Say, survivalism. Apocalyptic stuff is all over the place. Whether it's people on the far left building sustainable homes and urban farms, or people on the far right building armed bug-out shelters, people are fearful of society breaking down. I'm not pointing this out as if I discovered it; cultural critics have been writing about it. Since Bhargava is writing largely for an audience of marketing people, and like all things in our capitalist cesspool, survivalism has products to sell, it seems like he'd expound upon it.
Rohit Bhargava is a trend hunter. I saw a video of how meticulously he collects all the articles to make this yearly book. Good recap of an year with insight and the context.
I found this to be quite interesting, and full of neat information.
A really interesting read - definitely something a bit different and some useful new ideas.
This book wasn't necessarily ineffective in making me think, but it doesn't feel so indispensable. It's good for tech and analytic business, but other than that, it didn't really catch my attention.
'Focus on the short-term certain future.' This is a refreshing perspective because many of the other future-trend-related books I've read often leave me feeling randomized and scattered still not knowing exactly where I should be focusing. Rohit's book is different. It is a resource for how YOU should think to identify trends for yourself.
Have made this required reading for my entire team!!
I had already read about this book somewhere and it was on my wishlist - so when I saw it on NetGalley there was no second thought!
I really liked the process described to find trends and I believe that it's helpful in many more situations. And let's be honest, the worlds could use a little more curiousity.
The identified trends for 2017: well, some had me nodding right along others surprised me but I really liked how there were suggestions on how to use these trends.
The format was a bit wonky, which made some parts hard to read (especially the intro and the last part) but since this was an ARC, that foesn't go into my consideration all thatmuch.
Overall this was well-structured and definitely worth a read if the subject matter interests you. I also loved the reading suggestions throughout the book.
Non-Obvious 2017 by Rohit Bhargava was a fast read because I skimmed through a lot of it. You can’t argue that it’s not well researched – it is. There is an amazing amount of work that has gone into this book. But unfortunately that didn’t make it interesting for me.
It’s a collection of curated, non-obvious trends but I suppose I lost interest about the time that the role of women was called out as a trend. It felt obvious to me.
If you’re working in marketing or have a need to understand the changing society, then there are insights, anecdotes, stories and deep research in here that could fundamentally change how you view your customer proposition.