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Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

Watch Joseph Pine’s “what consumers want” talk at TED

Customers want to feel what they buy is authentic, but Mass Customization author Joseph Pine says selling authenticity is tough because, well, there’s no such thing. He talks about a few experiences that may be artificial but make millions anyway […]

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Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

Watch John Gerzema’s “The post-crisis consumer” talk at TED

John Gerzema says there’s an upside to the recent financial crisis — the opportunity for positive change. Speaking at TEDxKC, he identifies four major cultural shifts driving new consumer behavior and shows how businesses are evolving to connect with thoughtful spending […]

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Design Innovation

Watch Bruce Sterling’s Closing Keynote on IxDA | Interaction ‘11 Conference

Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne.

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Design Innovation

Watch Bill Verplank’s Opening Keynote on IxDA | Interaction ‘11 Conference

Bill Verplank is a human-factors engineer with a long career in design, research and education. As a fresh ME PhD from MIT he worked eight years at Xerox on the testing and refinement of what we now call the “desktop metaphor”: bit-map graphics, keyboard and mouse, direct manipulation […]

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Economics Innovation Trend Watching

Watch Dave Eggers’ wish “Once Upon a School” at TED

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open […]

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Innovation Trend Watching

Watch Kathryn Schulz’s “On being wrong” talk at TED

Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we’re wrong about that? “Wrongologist” Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility […]

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China Trend Watching

Education in China: universities asked to include romance in courses

Can romance be taught? Is falling in love so important that it has to be included in courses in universities?

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Design Economics Innovation

Watch Erik Hersman’s Keynote on IxDA | Interaction ‘11 Conference

Erik is the co-founder of Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili), a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya. Currently, he is working with a team of mostly-African programmers to continue development of this new free and open source platform that makes it easier to crowdsource crisis information and visualize data […]

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China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: luxury market grows 23% in 2010

Luxury market grows 23 percent in 2010 from 68 billion yuan (US$10.2 billion) in 2009, with the younger generation driving sales […]

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Design Information Technology Innovation Trend Watching

Watch Richard Buchanan’s Keynote on IxDA | Interaction ‘11 Conference

Richard Buchanan is Professor of Design, Management, and Information Systems at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Before joining the Weatherhead faculty in 2008, he served as Head of the School of Design from 1992 until 2002 and from 2002 until 2008 as Director of Doctoral Studies. While at Carnegie Mellon, he inaugurated Interaction Design programs at the Masters and doctoral level […]