Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing,   ISBN:9780814473863

Customer Rating: 

This is a thinking book and wwhile the authors present the material well this book is long winded. I love the idea of cool farming but would have loved more example of how to do it

Customer Rating: 

If you are one of those people who want to discover the next thing, this is a great resource for you. If you are wanting to understand the real power of Web 2.0 technologies, especially social networking this is a great book for you. Some of their insights are straight forward, while some are counter intuitive. E.g. A company could increase its chance of surviving the dot com bubble if they actively went out and talked to their competitors quite often. Those that did not, had much higher failure rates. When in doubt follow the swarm. Bees lead! This is a slim, but thoughtful book with significant academic research (MIT Media Lab) behind it. Most definitely a book for smart folks. I still liked it.

Customer Rating: 

COOLHUNTING: CHASING DOWN THE NEXT BIG THING is a key to identifying and capitalizing on trends, and is a reference any serious business library will find contemporary and important in its topic and approach. What is cool? Businesses receives tips on identifying what is presently cool and what desires will evolve from present trends. Chapters show how to identify new ideas which will spark new trends, from identifying people responsible for such ideas to anticipating and building a business model around it. Businesses seeking to capitalize on 'cool' ideas will want this.

Customer Rating: 

This book was a tough read. When I finished it I asked myself "Why did I read it?" And I asked myself "What did I get from it?" I know I read it thinking there would be some good insight provided into how to identify trends and trendsetters so a reasonably quick profit could be made by jumping on the bandwagon. And now that I have finished the book I know that I certainly didn't get what I was looking for.

As far as I am concerned, the book uses too much of its own terminology and has to spend too much time defining terms. And the authors cite too many names and specific instances instead of smoothing over all of that and telling a simple easily digestible story. The title of the book is "Coolhunters." And that is fine. But why was there so much coverage of "Coolfarmers" in the book. That was a sideshow, and should have been left out in my humble opinion.

Basically I learned that coolhunters are seekers of trends and trendsetters. A coolfarmer is a leader of trendsetters. Swarm creativity is creativity resulting from a collective mindset. And Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) are teams of trendsetters who share ideas, information, and work in order to produce swarm creativity. Then social networks are cited as an example of some COINs. But so what? I still need to have all this pulled together for me so I can recommend the book to someone interested in starting a business or make their business better. I can't do that!

This book had 10 chapters as follows:

1. Why "cool" matters
2. Swarm creativity creates cool trends
3. Swarms can better predict the future
4. About trendsetters
5. Coolhunters look for coolfarmers
6. When swarms go mad
7. Do-it-yourself coolhunting with technology
8. Coolhunting by automated social network analysis
9. Five steps to becoming a coolfarmer
10. The coming world of swarm creativity

Customer Rating: 

Coolhunting leert met de analogie van de bijenzwerm erg veel over het herkennen en medevormgeven van nieuwe trends. Gloor & Cooper tonen het geheim achter succesvolle innovatieve netwerken die zich kenmerken door samenwerking als Netscape, de open source ontwikkelaars en de negatieve varianten ervan als ENRON en de NASA. Heel praktisch kun je zelf een coolfarmer en coolhunter worden, zo blijkt uit de ogenschijnlijk eenvoudige benodigde stappen. Toegegeven, velen van ons maken al deel uit van diverse netwerken, en die kunnen nog veel productiever.

Ik zou graag de connectie leggen tussen de productieve gemeenschap uit de boeken van Robert Quinn en de COllaborative Innovation Networks van Gloor & Cooper. Absoluut lezenswaardig!