A scientist friend of mine once observed that all great research begins with: "Hmmm … that's interesting." You can use the same observation, over and over, to generate good ideas from what you'll find in Microtrends by Mark Penn.
This book is filled with factoids, lumped into 75 categories with cute titles. The facts and sections are unconnected by any meaningful narrative. That's OK. And many facts are simply unsupported or only part of the story. The way I suggest you use the book, that's OK, too.
You'll find facts here that surprise you. For me, one was on page 70. Penn describes a group that gets "married at a rate of 70 percent, registered to vote at a rate of 82 percent, were college educated at a rate of 59 percent and were, on average, making more than $50,000 per year." That's the average Muslim in American.
Some of the facts are just fun. Did you know that there are three times as many "professional tanning parlors" in the United States as there are Starbucks? I didn't and I started wondering why that was so.
Penn didn't tell me why, but he offered me the spark for a question. This book will be valuable to you if you use it as a stimulus to ask questions. Don't expect more than that.
The author says, "Microtrends is based on the idea that the most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us." There is something of the appeal to the principle of the Long Tail in this.
This is not a book of synthesis like Megatrends, John Naisbitt's seminal book. Naisbitt worked hard to identify ten major trends that illustrated how we were between two eras, moving from the industrial age to the information age. It is a measure of how well Naisbitt did his job that Megatrends gave us phrases, such as "High Tech/High Touch" that became part of the language.
But Microtrends is not Megatrends. If you buy this book looking for answers or explanations or predictions you will either be disappointed or led astray. Penn seems to have simply dumped a bunch of facts between covers.
That weakness is also the strength of the book. There's a lot here to start your thinking. There are the sparks that could set off a fire of innovation for you. Just remember that you're the one that's going to have to do the work. All Penn has given you is a starting point.
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