However, Coolhunting (source:wikipedia) was orginally started by marketing professionals in 1990's. It seems to getting popular in mainstream as I could find a novel and an announced movie on the same. (To define coolhuting in layman terms, is to pick out trends which are going to be popular with masses in future. However, the original context of coolhunting was about fashion and to spot the designs for clothes and shoes etc)
I was digging more on the subject, and guess what! I could find something very beautifully written on the subject by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm summarizes in the text three laws of coolhunting which would be worth mentioning.
- The quicker the chase, the quicker the flight. (The act of discovering what's cool is what causes cool to move on, which explains the triumphant circulatory of coolhunting)
- One can just observe cool but not manufacture it. (maybe apple can do that still!)
- Cool can be observed by those who are themselves cool.
However, there is lot of jargon if I want to explain his work and it takes time to digest. But if I were to simplify it, maybe oversimplify :( than I would put it like this , " Peter's approach is about using principles of sociology and using sound models of mathematics to do communication analysis." (the communication analysis is then used to do coolhunting)
You might ask what good is communication analysis for. The answer turns out to be, communication analysis is very powerful. It can tell you what kind of network you have (if you are a company then it matters whether you do innovation or productivity stuff), identifying hidden leaders in a network, identifying cool people. (malcolm gladwell says in his above mentioned text that, cool things change but cool people not!) etc. Peter himself is using the tool to do election prediction, market trends etc apart from what is mentioned above. He is always stressing the best/worst thing about the tool is that it is very open ended!
It seems to me they have great invention but not having many problems to solve with it (However, problems are there but there is a disconnect between the application area and the solution)
It was for 4 continuous days that we had the lectures and every day I went home with lot of questions and thoughts. The topic of coolhunting is similar to what would you experience when watching Matrix or watching Star wars.
I had also some of mine, which I would like to share here:
How to position this kind of technology in market?
would it make sense to have a Google search like product (web based) which is accessible to all but then we have the paradox as mentioned in Malcolm's rule 1. If all of us know it then it is not cool anymore.
Or to make it available to selected few, who can pay the price! do we give them this technology as a product (coolhunting software) or we just give services. (coolhunting consultancies, then software is sold to them). However in both the cases we need coolhunters, because this process is more art then science. (science we can codify and put in software but not the art!)
Or the coolhunting software becomes an enterprise solution tightly integrated into workflows of enterprises, which is ofcourse customized by the coolhunting software makers. Than it would be a business model like of companies SAP.
This question also makes me think of the complex ecosystem of other creative softwares, like Adobe Photoshop. Adobe sells a single license of Photoshop for around 700 USD. What you get in Photoshop is probably the best software for photo editing but it has a steep learning curve to it. I always use to wonder that can a company like Adobe, make Photoshop something of a level that even a kid could use it, would it mean then the people who run shops because of Adobe Photoshop will suffer! (all the creative pros) who buy Adobe Photoshop at first place.
Maybe with every release company can promise to make it more usable but on the other hand Adobe also certifies people who are expert in using Adobe Software.
Predicting future or cool trends would be a similar business in my sense. However, my analogy might not be a good one but Adobe was my previous employer which made me think of it at first place. So, futurists and other similar professionals, who are few might be the user of such a software technology and the company which makes coolhunting software will be in a similar situation.
If there technology is too accessible then there is no market anymore (No futurists needed and future doesn't even remain true because of first law of coolhunting, from Malcolm's text again)
I read this wired article, which speaks about Google (employees) can predict different things with high accuracy just from the search queries people make. Will Google make such prediction dashboard public ?
