Fashion speaks louder than words. Our relationship with clothing is a staple of our identity and an extension of our skin. Clothes mold the shape, texture and contour of our bodies. To that end, fashion represents fundamental human tensions — form vs. function; invention vs. tradition; nature vs. culture; rebellion vs. conformity.

Historically, fashion has communicated power, affluence, class, gender, culture, descent, and more. It has also appeared within our most popular stories. Shakespeare had an intimate understanding of fashion. In his dramas of power politics among Medieval and Renaissance kings, Shakespeare used clothing to signal the personality and social status of characters. America’s founding fathers used clothing to demonstrate their political unrest, a clear message geared towards feudal classes during the French Revolution.

While the clothes we wear have been overhauled since Shakespeare, today, the allure and emotional influence of fashion is as potent as ever. The evolution of fashion is driven by culture and communication. When these factors evolve, so does the language of fashion.

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Vogue Driven Narrative/Centralization

In his book, Understanding Media, released in 1964, Marshall McLuhan observed: “The important thing in today’s world of fashion is to appear to be wearing a popular fabric.” McLuhan, universally regarded as the father of media communications and a prophet of the information age, argued that human conformity was the inevitable byproduct of print technologies such as books and newspapers.

McLuhan saw the power of media environments to radically transform society — the way we think, feel, and engage with one another. Illustrating the influence of media, he writes: “Societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication… All media works over us completely… and leaves no part of us untouched, unaffected, and unaltered. The medium is the message.” In essence, the ways we communicate shape the way society functions, oftentimes without us realizing.

McLuhan predicted that “electric technologies” would transform the world into a global village. No more borders. The end of cultural barriers. Paradoxically, McLuhan argued that, the connectedness of the modern world would create more diversity, and abolish conformity. He predicted a more colorful assortment of creativity, personality, and clothing styles. To that end, the transformation of fashion is an inevitable byproduct of our connected world.

Historically, the fashion industry was centralized within a small number of intellectual hubs. Fashion Week, the industry’s biggest event, was largest in the “Big Four” global cities: London, Milan, Paris and New York. London was famous for traditional handicrafts, Milan set the standard for textiles and high-end production, Paris bred the best designers and boasted the best street style, and New York City’s media publications shaped and popularized American fashion trends.

But today, fashion has a diverse blend of influences, from the exclusive spectacles of Fashion Week to rural tribal dwellers with few resources beyond spare textile scraps, a boundless imagination, and a sparse internet connection, which they use to communicate with the world.

Vogue — the iconic American fashion magazine — released its magazine periodically, and thereby ensured the continual turnover of clothing styles. Vogue also financed up-and-coming designers through their fashion fund, and their stamp-of-approval came to be known as the fast-track to success. Vogue’s supremacy was reinforced by the centralized structure of mass media, through which millions of Americans developed shared awareness and identity. Even the magazine name, Vogue — defined as the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time — hinted at its monopoly over fashion trends.

In today’s internet era, Vogue no longer guarantees success. Modern brands are made on Instagram — not Vogue.

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Modern Media And How It Changes Fashion

The fashion shifts brought on by the internet are complex, but they can be summarized: while the pre-internet world was limited by the constraints of physical space, the digital bits and bytes that underlie the internet have no such limitations. It follows that we’re moving from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. Before the internet, economic power came from controlling supply, but on the internet, economic power flows to those who control demand and discovery. Distribution is free, participation is global, and communication is instant.

No longer do gatekeepers define the speed and flair of fashion. Influence, now, is decentralized, and as a result, fashion will cease to be governed by a central point of view. To that end, individual personalities will replace gatekeepers as the drivers of style and culture. Fashion will continue to become more fluid and fragmented as a result.

Clothing styles will diversify in this world of increased media fragmentation, and the explosion of subcultures that result from it. On the internet, we each occupy a unique intersection of personalized news feeds and social media streams; we live in a society of instant global communication, which, largely, transcends cultural barriers and national borders. We migrate between groups and identities in a more fluid manner. If Vogue was limited by the taste of a select assembly of editors, Instagram is infinite — limited only by human creativity and the number of smartphones with an internet connection.

As a result of this diversity, modern fashion is less about following the trends and more about crafting your own aesthetic. It’s less about fitting in, and more about standing out; less about wearing standard outfits, and more about customization and personality.

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Identity

Up to the late 20th century, we’ve defined human identity by race, heritage, religion, social status, and nationality. On the internet, beginning with the street style blog, we define identity differently — through a vortex of different signals, such as taste, interests, and lifestyle.

Some modern brands have already responded. In our hyper-visual world, brands let consumers express complex beliefs and values instantaneously. Patagonia represents a love for the outdoors and Nike, a passion for fitness. In this new world, intimate bonds between brands and their customers are inevitable. Digitally native brands must sell more than just a product, but rather a way for customers to broadcast their values and identity — a way of life.

This has given rise to a new kind of brand, which I call “Naked Brands.”

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Naked Brands: Fashion

Naked Brands™ are transparent. They are founded by personalities and celebrities, and prize ongoing communication with fans. Their brands are defined not by symbols, logos, or television advertisements, but by the authenticity of their personalities.

As I wrote in the seminal Naked Brands article:

Naked brands attract obsessive superfans. In the modern age, fans don’t just want to support their favorite brands; they want to establish emotional connections with them. Their fandom is not consumptive, but rather performative, active, and social. Subcultures of intense fandom are centered on a set of activities — pilgrimages, rituals, socializing, and evangelizing.

This almost religious phenomenon has existed since the classical music days of Mozart and Liszt, but since social media provides intimate, immediate access to stars, and since those stars are famous not because their anxieties, struggles, and triumphs are unimaginable, but rather because in many ways, they feel as if they could be our own, influencers’ relationships with their fans have a deepness to them that is almost unimaginable for celebrities and fans of a bygone era.

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Virgil Abloh

Designer Virgil Abloh, the founder of Off-White, a popular streetwear brand with a cult-like following, epitomizes this Naked Brands phenomenon.This new streetwear category has inspired cultish fandom through its unique blend of art, sports, and subcultures, and only recently has it become high fashion. Abloh is a designer, influencer, and a brand — all in one package. He launched Off-White in 2013, at the age of 33, and in 2015, he was the only American finalist for the prestigious LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers.

Abloh sees Off-White as the modern evolution of streetwear. Inspired by earlier iterations and the internet’s remix culture, Off White’s designs incorporate irony, satire, iconic imagery, and vintage typography. The brand is synonymous with the themes that Virgil represents: creativity, globalization and diversity.

Virgil’s lifestyle is as fashionable as his clothing. In a recent interview, he described himself as the “physical form of the internet.” Globetrotting between mega cities, he builds hype through Instagram, and connects with fans along the way. Virgil doesn’t call any single place home. Rather, he’s a self-proclaimed global citizen.

He describes himself as “creatively schizophrenic.” His designs blend a multitude of influences: hip-hop, architecture, engineering, skateboarding, and Air Jordan sneakers. He calls Off-White the first social media native luxury brand, and he encourages fans to text the brand (1–855–633–9483). In the spirit of Naked Brands, Virgil communicates with fans on a daily basis.

Virgil’s transparency inspires almost religious worship from fans, who feel as if they have an intimate connection with him. Putting on an Off-White garment is, in effect, like wearing a piece of Virgil Abloh — summoning his energy, harnessing his creativity, and transcending oneself.

By chronicling his artistic ethos on Instagram, and offering fans a behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to build a brand, Virgil’s success feels at once achievable, and yet aspirational. As a result, his fans are emotionally and financially invested in his pursuits, as if they’re leading the charge themselves.

Naked Brands 101.

No longer can fashion brands guarantee success by spending millions on advertisements and leasing premium mall space. Nor is it enough to create content and call it a day. Rather, the most successful brands have their own belief system, a distinctive vocabulary, and a cult following to boot. Some, even make us feel closer to God. That, though, is best achieved by an iconic founder with an uplifting story and an unmistakable point of view, like Abloh.

On social media, people don’t follow brands. They follow people. And in the future, there won’t be a difference.

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What’s Next?

Writing at a time of mass media, mass centralization, and mass conformity, Marshall McLuhan argued that above all else, fashionable people wore clothes that were popular — en vogue. But beginning in the 1970s, capitalism began to reinvent itself. Media diversified and companies encouraged people to express themselves differently.

Today, in this age of hyper-individualism, people want to curate their own image. Social media doubles as a canvas for people to express themselves and craft their own eclectic style. Through brands, we speak the language of fashion. Clothing, is a conversation, style is a vocabulary, and brands are a dialect.

To that end, transparent, mission-driven fashion enterprises that are guided by visionary founders — Naked Brands — will continue to explode in influence and popularity.

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Cover image source: Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to Greg Rosbourough for sparking my interest in fashion during a conversation in August.

Thanks to Neil Collins, Zander Nethercutt and Andrew Dixon for their feedback on this piece.

Where I’ve Been, Where I’m At, and Where I’m Going

10 months ago, I left the corporate world after a long and arduous… seven month stint 😁

Unsure about what to do next, I started experimenting. Podcasts, videos, writing and more. I’ve succeeded a bit, but failed a lot more. But I’ve gathered important lessons from each adventure, stuck with what’s worked and given up on projects that didn’t gain traction.

What a journey it’s been! And it’s still the beginning — the very beginning.

Some quick highlights from the past 10 months:

• Traveled to Chile, Canada, and Washington D.C.

• Produced a vlog 114 days in a row. I improved my camera presence and video editing skills, but the vlog didn’t gain traction.

• Launched the North Star Podcast, a series of interviews with people who live with joy, learn passionately and see the world in a unique way.

• Published a blog post called Naked Brands, which went viral (20,000 views and counting!) and was recommended by Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter.

• Built a digital model of my brain to help me capture, organize and retrieve my ideas. I call it my “Second Brain.”

• Interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson in his office to celebrate his book release (according to Amazon, it’s the #1 best-selling book in America this year).

These experiences have taught me valuable lessons about myself, and where I want to direct my time and attention.

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I plan to transform the North Star into a global community of passionate learners.

The community will be centered around four themes: work, travel, education, and friendship. A quick explanation of each theme and why I think it’s important:

1. Work: Career paths are changing. In the future, work will become more project-based. As a result, credentials will matter less and experience will matter more. The number of independents will increase, and instead of earning income from a single entity, they’ll have a portfolio of income streams. Our social institutions (college, healthcare, citizenship/taxation) will struggle to cope with this shift and we’ll need new institutions — the North Star — that better reflect these new ways of working. More here.

2. Travel: As globalization continues, we will increasingly communicate with people in other countries and on other continents. To be sure, this is a politically charged topic. Some countries are embracing the free flow of people and information, while others siphon themselves off from outside influences. Experience living and working abroad will become increasingly common. It doesn’t need to be expensive, and done right, it probably shouldn’t be. Definitely cheaper than college. Travel is also a great way to learn about yourself, reflect on your own culture, and meet new people.

3. Education: Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. You’d think that would inspire change. But when it comes to education, people are very risk-averse. Parents don’t want to subject their children to unproven models, which exaggerates the status quo bias. But let’s face it: college is prohibitively expensive for most people. As a result, students are showered with debt and must consider salary as the most important factor in choosing their profession. They’re trapped and it’s a tragedy. But the problem gets worse. Since entering the workforce, I’ve experienced a disconnect between the skills I thought I needed and the skills I actually need to thrive in the modern economy. Lifelong learning is paramount. In particular, knowledge work rewards creativity and productivity. But our current education system does not teach these skills. Change is imperative and I plan to take action.

4. Friendship: As it’s become easier to connect digitally, it’s become more difficult to connect physically. If fewer people attend college, as I believe is inevitable, this problem could exacerbate. Loneliness is an epidemic. The number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015. According to a recent Washington Post article, the reduction in life span for loneliness is akin to smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and has a greater impact on life span than obesity. Humans are social animals. We need connection. The good news is that the internet makes it easier to find people with similar interests. Reducing loneliness and fostering friendship will have a positive impact. Over time, people will invent new tools to make this even easier. Anecdotally, I already make almost all my new friends via Twitter. I plan to aggregate North Star community members to foster meaningful friendships.

But this is just the first step. Nobody can single-handedly fix all these problems. Rather, my goal is to work with people like you, and together, we can make a dent in the universe.

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So, what’s top of mind for me as I look towards the next couple months? I’ve broken it down into two obsessions:

Obsession #1: The future of brands.

The internet has made it easier than ever to start a brand, but harder than ever to grow one. Three trends are driving massive change in the modern economy: consumers have infinite choice, easy access to information, and can connect directly with their favorite brands. Brand building is about more than awareness — it’s about connection. As a result, customers demand transparency from their favorite brands. Today, the best companies are fueled by vivid storytelling and an inspiring vision. Modern consumers care less about the symbols and slogans that have historically defined a brand, and more about the mission and the people behind it. Companies who do this attract capital, customers, and employees. Look no further than Elon Musk and Tesla.

Obsession #2. The magic of interviews.

When people ask me what I want out of life, I always give the same answer: “High energy, joy, and a zest for life.” I try to bring this energy to every North Star Podcast. After almost every interview, the guest says: “that was tons of fun and wow, I said so many things that I’ve never thought of before.” Yes! I live for that. 

My passion for interviews extends to my work — beyond the podcast. Living in New York, I’m constantly inspired by the dreams of the people who surround me. But then — and many of my peers feel the same way — I’m unable to find companies that inspire me. Companies don’t know how to use social media to connect with people. They’re unable to communicate their perspective and their point-of-view, especially on social media where the brand building equation has changed. Through candid interviews with founders, I am able to unlock their vision and the meaning behind it. Together, and inspired by our conversation, we define specific needs, dissect problems, and address them together — at internet speed. All this work is project-based.

Oh, and here’s how I describe my work: “I help founders communicate their vision and realize their dreams.”

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Thank You

Before I leave, I want to thank you all for your help and continued support.

To my real-world friends, Twitter friends, clients, mentors, podcast guests, breakfast buddies, concert companions, and more: You’ve taught me that success is not a personal journey, but rather, a collective one. We’re all in this together.

Sports are outer models of our inner psychological lives.

Cultures express themselves through sports, which makes them essential to any well-functioning society. On a macro scale, they unite communities, and family and friends on a micro one. 

There is a direct relationship between sports and the nature of work. When our working lives change, so do the sports we play. As a result, three eras define the last century of American history: baseball and the factory, football and the corporation, and basketball and the independent professional. 

How do these societal shifts begin? 

Shifts in society begin with shifts in media. Baseball became popular after the radio was invented, football grew with the popularity of television, and today, social media is boosting the popularity of basketball. 

Baseball was once the social center of American life, and as a result, people aptly call it “America’s pastime.” In baseball, one thing happens at a time. Like a factory, players have fixed positions and delegated, specialist jobs (pitchers, right fielders, shortstops, etc.). Order is central to the game. At baseball’s peak, American work was defined by mass production. Efficient factories propelled America’s emergence as a world power. Furthermore, baseball’s lenient pace was perfect for the radio era — play-by-play announcers served as background noise for tedious work days, and radio gave Americans a tight, tribal-like bond.

But the rise of television in the 50s and 60s initiated baseball’s decline. Baseball was too slow for television. But football’s fast-paced and dynamic nature was ideal for it. Football evolved with television technologies including instant replay, slow motion, and graphics — all of which enhanced the game.

The nature of work changed during football’s post World War II rise to prominence. America had proven its capabilities as a military authority during the war, and cemented its position afterwards with the expansion of multinational corporations.

As William Whyte argues in The Organization Man, American values shifted — away from individualism, and towards collectivism — to meet the demands of the corporations that employed them. Corporate work was generally more dynamic than factory work, and office workers were less constrained than they were in the factory. Like the corporation, football is a game of constant movement and synchronization, and players plan their movements before each play and conform to their role. 

American culture changed as well. Television gave America an outlet to export its culture and expand its global dominance. America had become a superpower and needed a new national sport to reflect its position as a global force. As David Walker observed, football was representative of American exceptionalism, its power on the global stage, and its cultural indifference towards delicacy. 

Fantasy football further propelled football’s dominance. By drafting players and “owning” them for a season, fans had a reason to watch every game, even when their favorite team wasn’t playing. But modern culture — defined by the rise of social media — rewards individuality, which the football helmet hinders.

As the helmet foreshadows, cultural and technological shifts will contribute to football’s decline in the coming decades. The helmet, which transforms athletes into gladiators, is indicative of football’s Achilles heel, and Cris Collinsworth said it best on a recent Sunday Night Football broadcast: “it’s easy to look at these guys like they’re robots.” Since Millennials overwhelmingly support humanism, football’s violence and the brain problems induced by it, have become a disadvantage. Furthermore, the attentional shift from television to social media will hurt football, and propel another sport — basketball. 

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Like social media, basketball is all about the individual. The NBA thrives on strong personalities and the best players transcend their teams: Michael Jordan and the Bulls; LeBron James and the Cavaliers. Sneaker culture highlights the influence of these loud personalities. In 1984, Nike and Michael Jordan launched the Air Jordan I sneaker, and since then, Jordan Brand has gained stature in American culture. Because of the internet, personality-centric brand collaborations will become more popular. Today, Big Baller Brand is pioneering a new kind of basketball centric, social media native brand. 

Basketball, like the future of work, demands a diversity of skills. As an independent professional, I wear a variety of hats — I write, create videos, interview professionals, produce podcasts with them, and consult. I embrace serendipity, and most of my planning is short-term. Basketball players are similar. They move freely between positions (they “switch”) and contribute on both offense and defense. Since the game changes quickly, it requires optionality and real-time decision making. 

The NBA has become the barometer for how American sports leagues should operate. Commissioner Adam Silver has embraced numerous cultural trends, including globalization, technology, social media, the pro-diversity movement, and even the rise of direct-to-consumer business models. The NBA’s rise may still be in its infancy, but these secular trends will propel its growth.

Basketball reflects the future of work, culture, and society. As we enter a hyper-digital world, bet on the NBA.  

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Cover photo: Tim Shelby, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.” — Malcolm Gladwell, David vs. Goliath

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The classic David vs. Goliath story: How does an underdog — against all odds — rise above the strongest player, and beat the giant?  The story of David vs. Goliath seems to pop up over and over again — a déjà vu of sorts. Same theme. Different characters.

In retrospect, the history of New York’s shipping industry illustrates this theme as an example in the 20th century economy. Its unexpected transformation provides us with insights that sets the stage for how innovation may change our world in the 21st century and beyond.

In the 1950s, New York was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the USA. The New York shipping port handled about 33% of America’s seaborne trade in manufactured goods. New York ports were three to six times more expensive than other East Coast ports, but New York City still dominated because of its geographic advantage. Shipping ports neighbored the vital economic and manufacturing hub of New York City. 

New York’s ports were designed for relatively small conventional ships.  Trade was local, and the cost of moving goods was costly. Shipping wasn’t expensive because of long-distance transportation costs. Rather, the biggest cost was the time and complication of sorting cargo and moving the cargo from trains and trucks to the ship at the point of departure. Significant costs were also incurred at the destination port, where cargo was moved onto trucks and trains so they could be transported across land.

Furthermore, the pace of shipping was irregular. Demand for employment was unpredictable and there were irregular, but urgent needs to unload perishable cargo. As a result, workers were always on-call and had to live close to the ports. Ports needed big labor supplies to handle the labor peaks, but on most days, there were more workers than jobs to be done. This demand created immediate term jobs, but  did not necessarily guarantee a demand for consistent work, day in and day out. Since workers had to always be on-call, ports had to neighbor the living corridors of workers. 

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The shipping container was invented by Malcolm McLean, a ruthless businessman who sought an more efficient way to ship goods. Originally the owner of a trucking company, the inefficiency of transferring goods from truck to ship hurt his business, which inspired him to invent the shipping container. McLean’s next company, Sea-Land, was the first corporation to embrace shipping containers. As a result, Sea-Land transported cargo faster and cheaper than competitors.

The container ship first came into international use in the 1950s. By the next decade, the volume of international trade in manufactured goods grew more than twice as fast as the volume of global manufacturing production, and two and a half times as fast as global economic output. Container shipping would be 94% cheaper than previous alternatives.

Container ships replaced conventional ships, and as a result, the transportation of goods went from expensive to cheap. Container shipping grew to become a highly automated system for transporting goods in a cheap and efficient manner. Two economists suggest that the shipping container made moving freight around the world “essentially costless.” By significantly reducing the cost of shipping, the shipping container system transformed the global economy. 

As container shipping became the new norm, it influenced trade patterns and the location of industrial hubs. As it turned out, New York City’s ports were poorly designed for container shipping. Due to limited space, complicated logistics, and excessive traffic, for the first time, New York City had a geographic disadvantage. New York City’s transportation ports were unable to adapt to the fast-growing container shipping industry. 

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In 1955, New Jersey Governor Robert Meyner launched the 450-acre Port Elizabeth project. At the time, it was the largest shipping transportation port project in American history. Elizabeth, New Jersey was a small town of shallow tidal wetlands, an invisible “David” 19 miles away from its gargantuan New York City neighbor.

After a few years of careful planning and deep water dredging, Port Elizabeth was designed to handle 25 oceangoing vessels at once. It embraced automation, which made reduced costs and boosted efficiency. For the first time, containers could be handled in an assembly line fashion. Port Elizabeth also built logistical infrastructure, close to modern interstate highways and expanded rail networks.

In just a few years, Elizabeth , New Jersey — not New York — became America’s container capital and the world’s first container port. Its container cargo tonnage doubled from 9% to 18% between 1956 and 1960. Soon, it would operate on a scale that was inconceivable by comparable standards. Only Port Elizabeth, and later its adjacent Port Newark, had the space and facilities required to accommodate the surging demand for container cargo transport. By 1970, two New Jersey ports, Port Elizabeth and Port Newark, had captured 63% of the eastern region’s general cargo trade.

By the mid 70’s, New York’s archaic ports drove up prices and became a significant economic drain on the city and New York State. While New York ports could handle a mixed load of containers and small, individual loads of freight, the cost of the extra port time to handle less efficient, non-containerized cargo swallowed the savings from containerization. New York’s docks were pressed for space. They could not handle the hundreds of trucks and railcars needed to transport all the goods. New York, which once offered transport-cost advantages for factories serving foreign or distant domestic markets, was unable to compete with its New Jersey neighbors. Between 1967 and 1976, New York lost a one-quarter of its factories and one-third of its manufacturing jobs.

Container ships and the ports required to handle them, turned the economics of location on its head — a paradigm shift.

The growth of Port Elizabeth exceeded all forecasts. In late 1965, the New Jersey port added five new piers and sixty-five acres of paved storage. Port Elizabeth’s relentless expansion led to a 30 percent increase in hirings between 1963 and 1970, despite the automation-driven efficiencies of containerization.

By 1985, David had overtaken Goliath — Port Elizabeth/Newark was the busiest container port in the world. The port served as a model for innovative transportation ports worldwide.Governor Robert Meyner’s vision catapulted a small, insignificant town on the eastern seaboard into an innovative, dynamic economic hub, which served as the gateway for global trade in and out of the United States. 

What you need to succeed in one paradigm can be a disadvantage in the next one. This is how David beat Goliath.

Note: Assume that stats and figures are from The Box by Marc Levinson. You can find a shorter version of this post on Twitter.

When we disable ego, we enable learning. 

Learning is an innate capacity but judgment, fear, and ego get in the way. Pace and quality of learning accelerate with relaxed concentration – flow.

So how do we get into a flow state? There are three requirements: 

1. Clear goals
2. Immediate feedback
3. Challenge-to-skill ratio

To clarify the challenge-to-skill ratio parameter, the task must be difficult, but not too difficult. Provided that these parameters are present, we can get into a flow state in a surprisingly short amount of time. By shifting our perception of flow states, we can enjoy them faster and more often. 

Video games illustrate these parameters well and are designed to get us into flow states. That’s why they’re fun and addicting. David Chapman writes: 

“They are engineered with clear rules and easy-to-understand goals, and give immediate feedback (such as a score or damage bar). They present a long series of carefully calibrated, increasing challenges, with skills to develop. They demand intense attention control, as you have to keep track of numerous monsters and constantly scan the screen for threats and opportunities.”

When we enter a flow state, the rational mind goes dim. Awareness and uninhibited perception take over. Full immersion is the essence of flow states: energized focus, full involvement, deep enjoyment. 

Presence. 

Tiago Forte calls flow the “holy grail of productivity.” The pre-frontal cortex shuts down and self-criticism disappears. Flow states improve pattern recognition and lateral thinking. Flow is a non-ordinary state of consciousness and a state of inner tranquility with more focus and less stress. The science proves this. 

In a flow state, you feel free and relaxed, not tense and overly controlled. 

Josh Waitzkin, a chess and tai chi world champion, calls flow the secret to optimal performance. In his book, The Art of Learning, Waitzkin writes: 

“In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our own earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.”

His quote reminds me of a Japanese word I like: Mushin (無心). The English translation is “the state of no-mindedness.” 

Advanced martial artists enter a Mushin state during combat where the mind is free from ego, anger and fear. No internal chatter — present, aware, and free.

Guided by the subconscious, the sword and the warrior become one in the same. The mind is guided by instinct and intuition. It works deftly, but with no intention, plan or direction.

Flow with whatever comes. Move with – not against – randomness and unexpectedness. Flow itself can become more rewarding than what what we achieve with it. 

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Sources: 

1. The Inner Game of Tennis
2. The Art of Learning
3. Tiago Forte
4. @mistermircea
5. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
6. David Chapman

Americans in the ‘50’s were unified by a relatively common culture. Daily media consumption rituals created cohesion and synchrony among citizens. Known for its conformity, the 1950s were more social than individual. Society, culture, and the economy were dominated by a small number of large institutions. Mass media was particularly concentrated. Television networks such as NBC, CBS and ABC, and the widely seen ads that funded these national conglomerates, shaped the anatomy of many American brands during this era.

Baby boomers reminisce about shared experiences — favorite weekly television shows, the personalities of news anchors, and watershed news events. Most Americans experienced new consumer brands in chorus. Lifestyle brands were launched and promoted across a limited selection of popular advertising and broadcast channels.

Consumer brands that could afford to advertise on national shows controlled mind and market share. Through broadcast media, brands achieved super-linear revenue growth — a network effect of sorts. The greater market share these brands captured, the more brand advertising investments could be leveraged. In turn, these up-and-coming brands could benefit from economies of scale, and a virtuous feedback loop that led them to dominate fast-growing consumer markets in the USA.

Through broadcast media and its monopoly on reaching customers, product ownership became a social and cultural signal, and as consumer values changed, so did American brands.

There was one product category — coffee, which mirrored the evolving nature of the American spending economy for well over 70 years. Founded on American consumers’ daily lifestyle habits, coffee mirrored the very essence of changing consumer-brand relationships.

The evolution of coffee consumption has been defined by three distinct waves of coffee culture. It’s driven by ever-evolving media influences and the changing values of American consumers.

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First Wave: “Folgers — Mountain Grown for Better Flavor”

The coffee industry mirrored the evolution of class, culture, and communication in America. During World War II, the Army Quartermaster Corps would roast, grind, vacuum pack and ship beans to soldiers overseas. Instant coffee was a part of soldiers’ daily rations and social enjoyment, and American troops grew accustomed to drinking it habitually. Each American soldier consumed an average of 32.5 pounds of coffee, per year. Tied to the U.S. G.I, (slang term for the United States military), soldiers coined a new nickname for their coffee: “A Cup of Joe.”

When soldiers returned from battle, instant coffee saturated grocery stores and supermarkets. Americans stopped buying coffee beans in bulk, and stocked their kitchen shelves with cheap, prepackaged ground coffee instead.

The largest American coffee brand, Folgers, democratized coffee through effective advertising and robust distribution partnerships. A trusted reputation for consistent flavor and instant preparation was pinnacle to the success of Folgers coffee.

Before founder James A. Folger passed away, he wrote to his son, who took over the family coffee business that “money-making was always secondary to a good reputation.” In 1951, Folgers launched its first television commercial, and by the end of the decade, Folgers Coffee was a popular staple of television advertising. Folgers ads targeted families, and in particular, housewives. Their commercials famously featured “Mrs. Olson,” a Swedish housewife and coffee connoisseur who recommended Folgers coffee to her neighbors and friends. In these commercials, Mrs. Olson exalted Folgers for its powerful, delicious coffee scent and bold flavor. Coffee, an expensive luxury once exclusive to the wealthy class, became a convenient, daily household tradition that could be enjoyed by everybody. Folger’s coffee grew steadily in popularity over the next 25 years.

However, cheap coffee had its tradeoffs. The acclaimed aroma of Folgers coffee was labeled as a manufactured fake. As Taylor Clark disclosed in his book, Starbucked: “Folgers systematically lowered the cost of their product by adding ever-cheaper beans into their blends… Just before sealing the powdered coffee in the cans, manufacturers injected a simulated coffee aroma — so when consumers opened the containers, they got a whiff of fresh coffee.” Folgers marketing and engineering wizardry lost its magic as market forces shifted, and by the early 1980s, the quality and reputation of Folgers waned.

As the bastions of Folgers brand — convenient, instant, freeze dried coffee — reached a plateau, another coffee entrepreneur rose to the limelight and created a new coffee lifestyle, which emerged into a lucrative business opportunity.

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Second Wave: Rise of the Green and White Siren

The second wave of coffee was led by Starbucks in the 1980s. While traveling in Italy, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz visited espresso bars in Milan, and there, he identified the potential to bring Europe‘s quaint coffeehouse culture to America.

By adding elements such as physical stores, artisanal espresso bars, and regionally labeled coffee to its retail store, Starbucks created an inviting cultural experience. The brand transcended any other coffee house. Starbucks became a hot destination, famous not just for the coffee they sold, but as a coffee-centric social environment, with an alluring, localized European flair.

The Starbucks brand advertised personalization, environmental sustainability, and promised “fair trade” coffee beans. It introduced a consistent and compelling logo image of a “twin-tailed mermaid”, a green and white siren that defined Starbucks’ visual identity. Starbucks added ethical coffee-sourcing guidelines, launched farmer support centers, expanded its collection of stores and opened drive-thru locations. But the Starbucks pursuit didn’t stop there. Seeking economic growth, it ventured far beyond a focus on the aesthetic experience of coffee. Choosing ubiquity over exclusivity, Starbucks expanded its customer base by putting ready-to-drink products in squalid gas stations and 24/7 convenience stores. Today, Starbucks holds a hegemonic position — there are more than 24,000 Starbucks locations in more than 70 countries around the globe.

In the 50’s, Folgers had commoditized the coffee bean, and by the 90’s, Starbucks commoditized the entire coffee experience. This set the table for the third wave of coffee.

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Third Wave: Artisanal Java Culture

As workers began to adapt to the internet economy, so did the WiFi enabled coffee shops that doubled as offices for digital nomads.

Within the coffee industry, this is known as the Third Wave of coffee culture, a term coined by Timothy Castle in 1999. This new wave is centered around high-quality beans, and considers coffee as a fine, artisanal experience, rather than a commodity.

Many third wave coffee shops pay special attention to subtle flavors. They’ve ritualized the coffee-brewing and serving process. The trend was propelled by the “coffeeshopification” of cities, a phrase that originated with Stephen Gordon, who predicted that coffee shops would soon replace most retail stores. Coffee shops can now cater to a variety of audiences, including rambunctious teenagers, focused workers, and coffee connoisseurs.

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The Perspective Era — Java and Joe

Today, the coffee industry reflects the emerging trends of newly defined consumer brands. Consumers are attracted to brands of a different type, indicative of the “perspective era” that we are entering — an era that will be dominated by people and companies who can promote and defend a unique point of view.

Joe in the Juice is one example known for its visceral ambiance: trendy to some, abrasive to others. Doubling as entertainers, lively young baristas turn frothed milk into decadent flowers atop the lattes they serve, all the while high-fiving customers. Vibrant and zealous, Joe in the Juice is one-of-a-kind. If Abercrombie had a coffee chain, this would be it. With drinks like “Hangover Heaven,” “Go Away Doc,” and “Sex Me Up,” the brand’s edginess restricts it to a narrow cohort of society. FastCompany called the Joe in the Juice chain, a “Hipster Chippendales.”

Anecdotally, as I write this article, seated inside a Joe in the Juice coffee shop in Bryant Park, New York, almost half of customers who walk inside, turn around and escape out the door within ten seconds. It’s too loud. Not a single senior citizen has lasted more than a minute. More bar than coffee shop, more EDM than jazz, the bass is thumping, and I hear more laughs than typing keyboards — a polar contrast from the Starbucks down the street. With Diplo blasting through its overpowering speakers the store has congregated a large group of sporty, energetic youth, who thrive on a cacophony of environmental stimulus.

Blue Bottle Coffee is another example, and expands the sensory palette of coffee by combining intricate taste and complex flavor. Blue Bottle serves coffee connoisseurs who yearn for artisan coffee. Polished, yet unpretentious, Blue Bottle obsesses over the chemistry of tang and chicory — a quest to perfect the art of constructing coffee. Founder James Freeman sees coffee as a divine experience. In his book, The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee, he proclaims: “Coffee makes us the people we want to be. I am actually able to change the brain chemistry of my customers. Making coffee is a performance that lasts 90 seconds, and that alters the people who experience it.”

Blue Bottle isn’t the only brand that sees coffee as sacred. San Francisco’s Four Barrel and Portland’s Counter Culture have cultivated deep relationships with coffee farmers, and their distinctive plantations. Each roast comes from a unique climate, soil, and geographical region, each bean, a unique story. In the spirit of the third wave, they’ve retreated away from the mechanized mainstream and towards artisanal experiences.

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Coffee: An Extension of Our Daily Selves

Recent shifts in the coffee industry are indicative of the fast-changing relationships between consumers and the brands they behold. Coffee brands, which once relied on friction for market dominance, are now subject to widespread competition.

Tiago Forte, a productivity coach for knowledge workers, describes this phenomenon as a paradigm shift from the attention era to the perspective era.

Brand attention was once optimized for attracting “eyeballs” and saturating consumer attention. This strategy no longer works. Our information rich world has created an attention deficit.

Allocating brand attention most effectively to relevant sources, amidst the wealth of information, will only become more difficult. Across industries, barriers to entry and threats by competing brands are collapsing — and rapidly changing. Tiago Forte illustrates how we’re shifting from a world of scarcity to one of abundance, thereby entering a new epoch: the perspective era. Forte predicts that people — and by extension, companies — will offer “perspectives-as-a-service:”

Joe in the Juice is for the hip; Blue Bottle is for coffee connoisseurs; Counter Culture is for the environmentally conscious.

In this social media age, consumer reach is a commodity. The playing field that Folgers built its brand on no longer exists. It follows that the best coffee brands won’t merely convey information, but rather they’ll engage their niche markets with a singular, one-of-a-kind coffee experience.

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“Point of view is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum… In a world of hyper-abundant content, a point of view will become the scarcest of resources.” — Paul Saffo

To compete in this caffeine-crazy modern era, brands must define and embody a compelling point of view. Perspective era brands are defined not by the products themselves — what they make — but by the unique outlook of the brand. They appeal not to the masses, but to hyper-niche consumer segments. They attract distinct sects of people; they engage and magnify individuality. Many consumers today consider their favorite brands an extension and expression of their own evolving identity.

Third wave consumers express their individuality through a complex combination of their own, unique perspectives and personalized brand experiences — one full-bodied macchiato at a time.

It’s 10 am. An entire block in New York City’s NOLITA district is shut down. The streets are closed and cops are everywhere. Social media celebrity, Logan Paul, has opened up a pop-up shop at the corner of Mulberry and Kenmare.

Eager fans have feverishly interacted with Logan Paul, “The Maverick” on social media. Now, fans lust for the chance to don his clothing. Rumors say he’s at the shop but nobody really knows.

His fans want to touch, try on and purchase Logan Paul’s new line of branded merchandise. Paul’s brand inspires passionate devotion, affirmed by the length of the line leading up to the pop up shop: ten city blocks. Some fans called in sick just to be there. Kids with portable phone chargers huddle around their sacred iPhones, immersed in the expansive worlds of YouTube and Instagram. It’s their last chance to get inside the store. By 3pm, the pop-up shop will vanish and the fans will disappear.

This experience on the New York streets on this balmy summer Sunday is indicative of both the widening delta between generational mindsets, and the new and unexpected ways in which 10 to 20-somethings are consuming media.

What is going on here? Why are people so obsessed with a YouTuber?

Perhaps this generation’s attraction to Logan Paul’s free-spirited character reflects a broader shift — a transformation in how digital natives relate to their favorite brands. To understand what’s going on, let’s start by looking at how media shapes brand communications. Then we’ll dive into a history of brands and their evolution.

Marshall McLuhan is universally regarded as the father of communications and media studies. Illustrating the power of media shifts, he writes: “Societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication… All media works us over completely… and leaves no part of us untouched, unaffected, and unaltered. The medium is the message.”

McLuhan observed how communications technologies determine the structure of society. The printing press took society from an oral culture to one of print and literacy. Movable type allowed humans to accurately reproduce texts at great speed. This created a more visual world. The printing press — and the shift in media consumption that it catalyzed — was responsible in no small part for social shifts such as the emergence of nationalism, the homogenization of society, and the standardization of culture. As McLuhan observed, we do not merely use technology — it reinvents us.

Companies who own and manage brands must adapt when humans develop new ways of communicating. The history and evolution of branding can be summarized in four distinct economic periods: agricultural, early-industrial, late-industrial, and digital.

1. Brands in the Agricultural Economy

During the agricultural economy, communities were organized around farming and gaming livestock. During this time, “brands” defined unique ownership. The word brand derives from brandr, meaning “to burn.” Around 950 A.D., “a brand” referred to a burnt piece of wood. Around the same time, Roman glassmakers branded their works using glass molds and marks. Other artisans in the 13th century used brands in the form of watermarks on paper, stamps, hallmarks, and silver-makers’ marks on paper.

Livestock branding can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians, some of whom believed that brands were a magic spell that could protect animals from harm, and by the 1500s, individual ranches branded their livestock. Unbranded cattle, known as mavericks, often escaped across fences, only to be rounded up by neighboring ranchers. To claim ownership, ranchers created unique, permanent marks on their livestock — brands — to determine if their animals were lost, stolen, or mixed in with similar animals from another range. Livestock brands demonstrated defined property rights and signified value. Like successful modern brands, brands in the agricultural economy were symbolic, permanent and easy to identify.

2. Brands in the Early-Industrial Era

Industrialization moved the production of many household items from local communities to centralized factories. Mechanization, rapidly declining transportation costs, and global trade allowed products to be manufactured, distributed and consumed in mass quantities in regions across the world. Some companies became global; they branded their logos on shipping barrels that traveled internationally.

This global trend started with alcohol. Fermented liquor producers who produced beer, ale, and wine distinguished their products by burning their logos on crates and cases of goods. Food aggregators, who stored grains and cured dried fish and specialty meats, adopted a similar strategy. Brands differentiated the type, source, and quality of products, becoming symbols of quality and trust. This added value, reliability and consistency, which boosted consumer loyalty. This, along with fleets of marine vessels, enabled global trade, and in turn, increased sales volume. Brands that were perceived as trustworthy commanded bigger margins than undistinguished alternatives. Products without recognizable brands risked commoditization, and as the industrial revolution matured, branding became a standard practice.

As branding caught on, the need for its regulation became abundantly clear, and the American government created new laws to govern the process. Beginning in 1870, American companies could register trademarks. Competitors were prohibited from creating visually similar, “copycat” brand names and labels. Competitors could mimic product features, but nobody could legally replicate brands. By the early 20th century, beverage companies such as Base Ale, Stella Artois and Coca-Cola had widely recognized brands. Beginning after World War II, mass media propelled their growth. Consumers began to develop social and psychological relationships with brands, a trend that accelerated through the late-industrial era.

Mass media birthed national and even multinational brands. Popular culture stretched beyond print and radio — to television, which infiltrated consumers’ domestic and social lives. By the mid 1950’s, television had cemented its position as the single most important form of entertainment. TV commanded the lion’s share of advertising revenue.

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As Tim Wu observed in his book, Attention Merchants, the mid-1950s was a historic anomaly. Never had so many people paid attention to the same set of messages at the same time. 82.6% of American television viewers tuned into Elvis Presley’s first television appearance on CBS’s ED Sullivan Show. “Prime Time,” an invention of TV business moguls, made watching television a societal ritual. Some TV programs lost money on the content itself, but profited substantially from selling TV advertising by airing regular commercial breaks between regular programming. Brands achieved national — even global — recognition. It was the brand — not the product — which informed more and more consumer purchasing decisions. The big got bigger. On popular prime time television, only the highest commercial bidders (America’s largest corporations) could afford to advertise, and thus, advertising became a booming and lucrative industry. Madison Avenue lit up. Detroit flourished. The fashion, cosmetics, personal care and, tobacco industries boomed. Industrial product manufacturing took off. With direct access to engaged public minds, advertisers manipulated human motivations and desires, thereby creating demand for their “must have” products. Marketers used mainstream and efficient distribution to globalize American culture. America, defined by its material abundance, became an aspirational tentpole for the world to lust over.

Various cultures throughout the world have been interconnected through trade, wars, migration, and slavery. Television effectively intensified this cross-cultural pollination. Multinational brands dominated. Advertising agencies were born. Mad Men were living large. Through the synthesis of packaging, labels, visual icons, colors, typography and sound, brands etched themselves into public minds. Some used iconic characters and catchy jingles to garner attention. Some brands focused on the continental United States: Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s. Others went global: McDonald’s, Burger King, Mercedes, Michelin, Starbucks. Regardless, their growth tactics mirrored each other, as both national and global brands used media to influence culture and infiltrate the changing fabric of society.

Brands became a center point of ordinary social conversation. Through memorable television media experiences with high production value and premium sponsorships, brands shaped our aspirations. They defined “The American Dream.”

Apple promoted human freedom in a famous 1984 advertisement that introduced the Macintosh. Its brand and logo earned national prestige — particularly among creative types. Nike’s brilliance came from sponsoring the world’s greatest athletes: Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Roger Federer, all of whom donned the Nike swoosh. Brands moved beyond visual names and spoken words. For the first time, advertising and culture were inextricably linked.

Shifts in branding are catalyzed by shifts in media consumption.

In each period we’ve discussed: agricultural, early-industrial, and late-industrial, we find similar shifts in the way media is produced, distributed, and consumed.

Today, popular influencers are capitalizing on this shift. Inspired by transparency, they have built loyal followings, and now, they are building companies. Successful influencers are perceived as genuine, sincere, and most of all, transparent. They differ widely from institutions built during the industrial era. Brands built during the late-industrial era garnered trust through mass marketing, as opposed to transparency. This is no longer a sustainable strategy.

Today, brands are responding to the effects of social media and the smartphone on media consumption. The ROI on transparency is increasing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in shopping and lifestyle brands, like that which drove a mile-long line for nothing but a short lived pop-up shop in New York City.

Digital communication has caused demand for transparency and authenticity to explode. The most dominant company in America illustrates how.

Amazon (“The Everything Store”) is a central location for almost every product one can buy. It’s the most trusted retailer in the world. Amazon customers are increasingly persuaded by transparency and customer reviews, and less by brand value gained through traditional advertising. Catchy slogans, jingles, premium aesthetics and expensive packaging have almost zero weight, especially in a market where consumers can place orders for goods with nothing more than their voice. It follows that Amazon purchasing decisions are less influenced by manufactured brands, and more by key words, product ingredients, and specific customer uses cases. This shift is apparent on other large algorithmically sorted platforms such as Facebook and Google. By answering the age-old question of who to trust, reviews and transparency have significantly diminished the value of traditional brands. In response, a new reality is taking shape.

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Large platforms have fueled the colorful influencer phenomenon. Today’s up-and-coming brands — especially brands geared towards digital natives — are driven by social media influencers. Brands, which once commanded attention through colorful logos, broadcast advertisements and catchy jingles, are now popularized by the influencers who represent them.

These emerging brands attract obsessive “superfans.” Their fandom is not consumptive, but rather performative, active, and social. Subcultures of intense fandom are centered on a set of activities— pilgrimages, rituals, socializing, and evangelizing. This almost religious phenomenon has existed since the classical music days of Mozart and Liszt, but since social media provides intimate, immediate access to stars, and since those stars are famous not because their anxieties, struggles, and triumphs are unimaginable, but rather because in many ways, they feel as if they could be our own, influencers’ relationships with their fans have a deepness to them that is almost unimaginable for celebrities and fans of a bygone era.

Social media-driven culture is underestimated because of the lack of common knowledge about it. (A fact is “common knowledge” if everybody knows it; and, everybody knows that everybody knows it; and so on ad infinitum.) We proudly represent Nike and Apple in public, but relationships with influencers are largely restricted to the private domain. As a result, influencers and the brands they are building are under-appreciated and widely misunderstood.

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Examples: Casey Neistat and Emily Weiss

Technology changes but human nature doesn’t. Throughout history, people have congregated around strong, singular personalities much like moths to light. Today, social media makes it easy to discover, align with, and follow such personalities.

Emily Weiss is on a mission to build a beauty brand for the Instagram generation. Her beauty brand, Glossier, has inspired cult-like loyalty through transparency. She actively maintains her popular Into the Gloss beauty blog, which she started as a side project in 2010 while working as a Vogue fashion assistant. She built a community of fans before hinting at her first Glossier product. Her other posts are more casual. On Instagram, she feels more like a friend, sharing photos from sun-soaked days at the beach, (seemingly) unedited selfies from her living room, and updates on company anniversary parties. Photos from her private vacation trips to the beach are akin to what any close friend would typically post. Emily Weiss’ posts document the glamorous side of her entrepreneurship — boujee restaurants, prestigious conferences, and sun-soaked beaches, attracting fervid social media followers. With a tribe of dedicated commenters and fans, Glossier crowdsources new product ideas.

Similarly, Casey Neistat started his daily vlog to highlight the day-to-day operations of starting and growing his company, Beme. Among other things, Neistat used the vlog to document feature launches and discuss his company’s struggles. The app struggled, but the vlog thrived. As I write this, Neistat has more than 7 million YouTube subscribers. Consider this: some of Casey Neistat’s fans tuned into each of his 500 vlogs, many of which were more than ten minutes long. Those who did, have likely spent more intimate time with Neistat than most of their best friends and family during this time. This is especially true for fans with leisure time, many of whom are young adults, and are no longer in school.

Casey Neistat uses his YouTube channel to rally support around business initiatives, such as his forthcoming news show. Because of his consistent transparency, his fans feel invested in his endeavors. They assume the role of a trusted confidant. If the show becomes popular, fans like myself will take pride in saying they saw the first, unpolished, test episode of Beme News.

By broadcasting Beme’s humble beginnings, Casey Neistat invites us to support the company’s growth — physically, emotionally, and financially.

In this modern age, fans don’t just want to support favorite brands. They want to establish emotional connections with them. They want to shape their evolution and feel intimately close to the people who inspire them. This fandom is no different from the pride one gets from discovering an up-and-coming rapper after their first mixtape or watching an NBA star dominate in high school.

Emily Weiss and Casey Neistat are pioneering modern, digitally native brand standards. As a result, they’ve built globally recognized personal brands and have attained celebrity status, reaching hundreds of millions of fans in less than a decade. Because of social media, young audiences are attached to influencers with eccentric — and often polarizing — personalities.

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Naked Brands

In the words of Marshall McLuhan: “we drive towards the future using only our rear-view mirror.” Today we’re moving towards an immersive and interconnected world, our lives awash with digital technology. History predicts an impending shift. The Internet will spawn new brand archetypes, powered by social media influencers who are mere clicks away at all times.

Social media mavens Logan Paul, Casey Neistat and Emily Weiss hint at a changing of the guard — the rise of Naked Brands.™

Naked Brands are transparent. They are founded by social media influencers, and prize ongoing communication with fans. Their brands are defined not by symbols, logos, or television advertisements, but by the authenticity of their personalities.

10 to 20-somethings value passionate relationships over branded trust. Naked Brands are here to stay.

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Acknowledgements: Thanks to Zander Nethercutt for editing this piece and providing feedback, and to Conor Witt for thinking through these ideas with me. Thanks to Kunal Tandon for the tweet that inspired this piece.

“America runs on Dunkin’.”

This is the famous slogan of Dunkin’ Donuts, the Massachusetts-based coffee and doughnut franchise. Since opening its first location in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1948, the brand has built an passionate, cult-like following. Many of my friends from Massachusetts swear by it.

Similarly, Pennsylvania natives praise Wawa, and I worship In-N-Out Burger due to my California roots.

Both restaurants are nearly identical from location-to-location. Wawa shelves its products in consistent areas throughout its stores. They all offer the same built-to-order food, brew the same coffee, and sell the same candy. No surprises. One Wawa fanatic once told me: “I could order, get my food, and check out in 1 minute… blindfolded.”

Likewise, In-N-Out prizes consistency. Founded in 1948, the brand respects its tradition. From the soda machines, to the seating style, to the palm tree wallpaper pattern, each restaurant has a similar blueprint. Like Dunkin’ Donuts, many Californians — from San Diego to San Francisco — maintain a deep connection with In-N-Out.

Before the internet, the organic growth of restaurants was limited to geographic regions. Dunkin’ dominated New England, Wawa dominated the Philadelphia-area, and In-N-Out dominated the West Coast.

All three chains advertised with loud material branding such as tall, bright signage and highway billboard advertisements. As the digital age matures, we will see these chains as relics of a bygone, pre-Internet era. This nostalgia will manifest in ways we don’t expect.

Compared to national competitors like McDonald’s, regional chains have low advertising budgets. Smaller restaurants depend on customers to do marketing for them. Dunkin’, Wawa and In-N-Out inspired customers to advocate for them in physical social environments: schools, markets, parks, and churches.

Now, we’ve transitioned to a networked age where word-of-mouth occurs in cyberspace. Networks have reorganized society, and as a result, information flows in new ways. On Instagram, information is arranged by interests, desires, and relationships — not geographical space.

My Instagram feed illustrates this phenomenon well. It reflects my desires, interests, and relationships, but geographically, it’s unpredictable. Here are the top photos in my feed:

1. Japan

2. Wisconsin

3. Japan

4. Austria

5. Dubai

Before the Internet, daily interaction with people on different continents was rare, difficult, and expensive. Today, it is a ritual for 700 million Instagrammers around the world, and digital natives are leading this shift.

Propelled by the aforementioned shift, a new species of restaurants is popping up. As Casey Newton observed, Instagram shapes modern restaurant design. They are flooded with natural light, elaborate murals, and colorful decorations. One San Francisco restaurant owner says “the average guest takes pictures for 10 minutes before ordering.” Some even bring tripods to enhance their photography. These trendy restaurants encourage – and even rely upon – customers to document their experiences and broadcast them on Instagram. The best ones are irresistible to photographers.

Up-and-coming restaurants like Sweetgreen and ByChloe are sprouting up in megacities, the hotbeds of Instagram culture. Unlike their predecessors, Sweetgreen and ByChloe welcome distinctiveness. Each location is unique and reflects the community that surrounds it. They honor and preserve the natural structures of the buildings that house them, many of which have rich history.

Sweetgreen, which got its start in Washington D.C., has added locations in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

ByChloe has followed a similar roadmap with its 10 locations in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. All the locations are comfortable and homey, and reflect the brand’s mission to redefine what it means to eat well.

On Instagram, our interests and desires determine what we see more than our geographic coordinates. Los Angeles and New York are on opposite coasts of America, and before the Internet, communication between them was largely restricted to letters, phone calls, and newspapers.

But on Instagram, topological neighbors act like topographical ones. Every second, thousands of tweets, emails, texts, and Instagram posts flow between across the United States.

Modern restaurants reflect this new geography. They’re pioneering internet-native marketing strategies, and reshaping youth culture along the way. From Sweetgreen’s radiant interior artwork, to ByChloe’s 80s-style menu typography, the entire experience is Instagram bait.

Sweetgreen is emblematic of Instagram’s influence. Local artists fill its spaces with photography, oil paintings, mixed media, watercolors, and intense neon signage. ByChloe has adopted a similar strategy. Each location is comfortable and homey, and replicates the experience of dining at home or in someone’s kitchen.

Word-of-mouth occurs on Instagram now. Yesterday’s restaurants were geographically constrained and aesthetically rigid. In contrast, tomorrow’s restaurants will reflect the cosmopolitan ethos of America’s biggest cities.

It’s time for a new motto: America runs on Instagram.

“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Our youth is defined by hierarchies. We ask: Am I the fastest? Am I the coolest? Am I the smartest?

From the basketball court, to the high school cafeteria, to the SAT, we play a simple game. This game has clear rules — compete against others and climb up the social hierarchy. Be faster. Be cooler. Be smarter.

We compete for social status and we always know where we rank in the standings. We survey the environment, hoping to climb up the hierarchical status ladder.

This hierarchy dominates our thinking. It is our default setting.

Status is a zero-sum game. When we win, somebody else loses. When we lose, somebody else wins. While growing up, our actions are dictated by our place in the hierarchy — that is, until we leave high school, or graduate from college.

Then, we enter mass society.

We find ourselves stuck within the same game we’ve always played. All of a sudden, the hierarchy is infinite and the ladder is prohibitively tall. We lose track of our place and begin to feel helpless and overwhelmed.

Submerged in the abyss of society’s vastness, we feel anonymous. We combat our helplessness with superficial displays of status — jogging… running… sprinting… on the hedonistic treadmill, where we expend more and more effort but stay stagnant nevertheless.

But then, something changes. Hopefully.

The school of hard knocks slaps us in the face. We learn that the rules of the game aren’t etched in granite. Slowly but surely, we discover alternatives. Through hard work and dedication we can liberate ourselves from society’s stringent rules. We learn to create our own game.

The rules of this new game reflect our strengths and ignore our weaknesses. It’s like we own the home court advantage and even the referees are on our team. Armed with Thor’s hammer and surrounded by nails, we compete on our own terms.

That’s what the greats do. That’s why Stevie Wonder, who is blind, embraces the piano. That’s why Steven Hawking, who has ALS, passionately explores the universe. That’s why Michael Phelps, who has Marphan Syndrome, swims competitively and owns more gold medals than any other Olympian.

These greats have all doubled-down on their unique advantages. They have the self-confidence to play their own game and follow their own rules. They hone their strengths, champion their edge, and rule their own territory.

When we create our own game, we move from hierarchical anxiety to territorial domination. As a result, we march to the song of our soul and inch towards our North Star. We stop competing against others and start competing against ourselves. We become intrinsically motivated visionaries.

And when we love the process more than the outcome, we are free to win forever.

Across the United States, the business of retail is in for a rude awakening. The decline of shopping malls has been obscured by a turbulent political climate. One in ten Americans is employed in retail, an industry with a murky future due to overbuilding and changing consumer habits. Reports from around the country indicate that the death of retail, and by extension, the collapse of shopping malls is already underway.

Macy’s recently accounted that it plans to cut more than 10,000 jobs. This overlaps Macy’s announcement to close 100 stores to cut costs, and in the next year, Sears and JC Penney plan to close more than 200 stores combined. Layoffs are the new norm— the U.S. has lost 20,000+ retail jobs in the last three months.

The mainstream media has finally caught onto the societal magnitude of this decline. Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic says we are witnessing “a great retail apocalypse,” while the New York Times was more sinister in their analysis in an article titled “Department Stores, Once Anchors at Malls, Become Millstones.” Retail developers are lost and desperately searching for solutions — perhaps because there are none.

Although the economic outlook for shopping malls (and the retail stores that grew with them — J Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch, Wet Seal, etc.) may look grim, we are beginning to see clues that may showcase the new shape of the retail landscape. To escape the fire and rise from its ashes, companies must adopt new assumptions about modern consumer purchase behavior. This begs the following questions: will retail shopping malls, which once served as the bastions of suburban life, descend towards irrelevancy? Or can retail shopping malls survive the turbulent winds of technological disruption?

As American boardrooms shift their strategic focus to the behaviors of digital natives, executives must adapt to their desires and part ways with long-held operating assumptions. The shift will likely come with new business models and changing cost structures. As mall developers shift their strategy towards the needs of a younger generation, their strategy should rest upon four pillars.

1. New Assumptions

Retail experiences designed for the digital world require new ways of thinking about the economy and the levers that drive consumer spending. In this new age, the power has shifted to consumers who have more choice and information than ever before. Today’s shopping malls were planned and built with different assumptions about the way the world functions. By bundling stores into a concentrated location, consumers could discover and purchase essential and non-essential goods in a single place. As malls became a destination, the popularity of shopping grew rapidly. Malls excelled due to unmatched convenience and the increased spending that resulted from said convenience, but today, American shopping malls rest on a destabilizing foundation.

Since moving into my Hoboken, New Jersey apartment last summer, I have purchased all essential and non-essential goods on Amazon including my mattress, kitchen utensils, and basic clothing. It takes less than a minute to make a purchase on Amazon, equal to the amount of time it takes to walk downstairs and hop in an Uber. Amazon has disrupted shopping malls with convenience — price, selection, transparency, customer service, and soon, speed. To defeat the turbulent winds of technological change, shopping malls must compete on vectors that technology cannot accommodate — such as fostering human connection, live entertainment, community-building, and other out-of-home experiences.

The rise of digital platforms like Netflix, Facebook, and YouTube has boosted the entertainment factor of the home, a trend that’s been propelled by a 2600% increase in the number of gamers since the PlayStation was released in 1994. The opportunity cost of visiting a mall has never been greater. Malls, which once competed against television and movie theaters, now compete with a plethora of immersive and addictive entertainment services and social networks. Amazon is not the only culprit contributing to the decline of shopping malls.

Malls and the suburbs that enabled them were built around the automobile. To accommodate large swaths of people, and the cars that transported them, shopping malls built large surrounding parking lots, which swallowed up a sizable percentage of their valuable suburban real estate. As self-driving cars and transportation services like Uber shift the way we transport ourselves, malls can convert parking lots into green spaces, restaurants, and entertainment centers. As a result, the land that was once monopolized by cars will be utilized by people in new ways. Malls who navigate these changes wisely will see spaces they already own rise in land and public use value.

The shopping mall experience must reflect the realities of the 21st century, from transportation, to entertainment to culture. The malls of the future can only thrive by confronting these contemporary shifts and building for a technologically advanced world.

2. Entertainment Bundle

Shopping malls transformed the act of shopping for non-essential goods into a form of entertainment. They sold status and amusement to the upper echelons of American society who could afford to spend an afternoon shopping and consume beyond their basic needs.

I distinctly remember the stores at Stonestown Galleria, the local shopping mall nearby where I grew up in San Francisco. I frequently visited the mall in search of Panda Express, See’s Candies samples, GameStop, and the San Francisco Giants Dugout Store. My purchases were infrequent because trips to the mall were more about entertainment than making a purchase. The local mall was a place to escape home, spend time with friends, and enjoy the independence. I wasn’t the only one. For teenagers, the mall was a safe indoor place of freedom; a place to spend their allowance and eat junk food. For decades, malls were successful because they entertained parents with their children in tow. Malls were a sanctuary for parents to explore fashion, escape household mundanities, and conveniently drive to an active, safe destination to shop and dine. An afternoon at the mall offered a sense of accomplishment that benefitted all parties — kids were happy and parents were satisfied with both the diverse retail choices and the convenience of making material purchases, which grew the American economy.

Most of the material things we purchase at shopping malls are non-essential. Entertainment may continue to serve as the primary value proposition for suburban malls, but shopping as a form of entertainment will look dramatically different. Tactile experiences, from shopping, to entertainment, to recreation will draw the most visitors.

Shopping malls should welcome guests with a variety of sensory experiences that cannot be replicated digitally or anywhere else. They should unite communities via outdoor experiences, sports, classes, food, drink, and socializing interactions. Shopping malls are democratized entertainment bundles for all ages and that value proposition does not need to change.

3. The Memory is the Product

Until recently, memories were a personal experience. They lived on through flashbacks and spread through stories. Today, with cameras in our hands and on our bodies at all times, process every experience as a potential social media post, quantifying our activities in terms of how many likes a potential future update would garner. Jean Baudrillard, one of my favorite media theorists calls this the “museumification” of society. Baudrillard looks at this phenomenon with a critical lens, but it represents a major opportunity for mall developers. The value of a modern experience sits in direct relationship to its ability to be photographed, shared, and leveraged as a status symbol.

This phenomenon manifests itself in New York City’s market for “doors off” helicopter tours, which has emerged as a hot fad in the past five years.

Companies such as FlyNYON do not just sell exclusive helicopter tours. Instead, they sell the actual experience, which finds permanence through the inevitable Facebook post and integrated palpable experiences, memory and socialization. FlyNYON is acutely aware of this — they sell a collection of Instagram photos of the entire helicopter ride, with the passenger positioned as the hero. These photo collections sell status in the same way a Louis Vuitton bag once did. Your immediate friends may see the bag, but your entire social network and the world at large can fawn over your Instagram.

We can dig up clues about the future of retail from the diction of FlyNYON’s helicopter tour description: “Experience the surreal nature of floatingabove these magnificent cities while snapping shot after shot from amazing and unthinkable photos. Warning: Our frequent flyers prove that this experience is addicting, the rush is unforgettable and the photosyou’ll get will be breathtaking.”

Status is transitioning from a function of what you own to what you do, from liquid assets to social capital.

The strategy of turning the pursuit of status into an enjoyable experience is robust, but the tactics must shift. Modern high-end brands such as Equinox and ByChloe depend on Instagram to inspire organic growth.

Equinox conveys status via exclusivity and a shareable commitment to fitness. The fitness brand sees itself as a mecca of health and wellness (which members oft demonstrate through Instagrams of their workouts) that empowers its membership to achieve its loftiest goals.

ByChloe, a vegan restaurant in New York City conveys status via global awareness and conscientiousness. ByChloe encourages people to document and share their experience with 1980s style signage, PopArt typography, and clear calls-to-action. One Yelp review reads: “After seeing it on my Instagram for so long, I had to try it.” A trip to ByChloe is incomplete without an Instagram, a reality that is baked into the fabric this restaurant.

To attract young shoppers, malls should create interactive memorable and sensational experiences that are always evolving. New attractions inspire photos, photos inspire Instagrams, and Instagrams boost a destination’s perceived relevance. Like the fashion brands who thrive within them — such as H&M and Zara — shopping malls should embrace a state of constant evolution driven by weeks instead of seasons. Santa’s visit under the Christmas tree should be replicated as consistently as possible. Malls developers should focus on modern status symbols, many of which are driven by smartphones and the cameras that make them so powerful.

4. Community Building

Victor Gruen, the father of the American mall industry, originally set out to mimic the cultural centers of Vienna, Austria — where he was born. He envisioned shopping malls as centers for social interaction and community engagement, both of which could combat suburban isolation. Shopping malls would become majestic indoor-outdoor experiences that combined balconies, food, drink, zoos, sports, and community centers that mimicked traditional European town squares. Gruen’s vision was never fully realized, but his words still carry weight as we look towards tomorrow. In the future, retail experiences will foster friendship between guests and generate loyalty via community.

Modern mobile apps allow communities to emerge spontaneously in physical places. The apps that we use habitually — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. — are a modern manifestation of a clock tower’s silent chime, a historical convening mechanism in the traditional European town square.

To illustrate the convergence of retail and community, look no further than the world’s most valuable company: Apple. The company is known for visually stunning retail stores that foster human-to-human connection between passionate customers and ignite their creative spirits. The company recently introduced a new program called Today at Apple to drive regular foot traffic to Apple’s retail stores. Apple encourages its customers to do more of what they love, learn, share, and experience their Apple-related passions — music, photography, videography, art, and coding — together. The initiative is enhanced by photo walks, how-to sessions, camps for kids, and live music performances that transform Apple stores into community centers.

Taking guidance from Apple, shopping malls must become recreational centers, as well as venues for education and entertainment. In turn, mall development initiatives should revolve around community engagement (instead of merely selling objects) with indoor-outdoor experiences that combine food, music, learning centers, and creativity rooms — all of which should be dynamic and easily interchangeable. These entertainment hubs should be safe and enjoyable for guests of all ages and reflect a variety of ages and interests.

The malls, and retail stores within them, that foster friendship, shared experiences, spontaneous encounters, and hold tactual events can thrive in the digital age. Technology may make our lives more convenient, but it cannot augment the essential subtleties of human connection. Our success as a species has always depended on our ability to communicate and interact.

Shopping malls may be able to rescue themselves after all.

The days are longer, the sun’s rays are gentle and warm, and my winter coat has migrated to the back of my closet. It’s Spring. Given this, I felt the urge to upgrade my wardrobe with some shirts that reflected both my newfound appreciation for fashion and desire to express it.

My shopping excursion started with a simple question: What brands do I like?

I was stumped. So, I decided to hit the New York streets to support a brand with a unique worldview and powerful messaging to go with it.

I like Nike, but only for clothes I wear to the gym. Zara is trendy, which I like, but the brand does not stand for anything. H&M is on the right track with their Coachella collection, but something didn’t feel right. Maybe it’s the Justin Bieber tour merchandise or Yeezy (Kanye West’s clothing line) inspired merchandise that feels like a cheap knockoff.

I ended up shopping at Uniqlo, not because of the brand itself, but because of their partnership with New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). I pulled out my smartphone and did some research on the MOMA collaboration, “Surprise New York,” a limited time Uniqlo collection intended to make contemporary visual art more accessible, “wearable” and enjoyable. I purchased a couple of artistic shirts. Then I discovered that Uniqlo also sponsors free admission to the MOMA on Fridays.

The Uniqlo product design per se was not the main reason I walked away with two new shirts. Rather, I supported Uniqlo because of its affiliation with something I enjoy — modern art. Crucially, the “Surprise New York” collection stood for something.

My experience at Uniqlo indicates how consumer-oriented companies should think about branding in the digital age. As we shift away from the mainstream, towards more distinct brands, the brands we support will be more diverse, and in turn, reflect our unique lifestyle preferences and personalities.

The best consumer brands connect with shoppers at an intimate level and allow them to express themselves. Brands that fail to do so become commodities. Contrast a simple t-shirt that sells for $10 on Amazon with a $325 alternative from Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 collection. Yeezy’s Calabasas-inspired collection sold out in less than five minutes. Both the simple T-shirt and Yeezy products provide similar utility, but the Amazon shirt is a commodity while the Yeezy shirt — with a high-fashion price-point — conveys social status and is a potent form of self-expression. People don’t flock to Yeezy for the utility it provides. They wear it to actualize their dreams, express themselves beyond what words can accomplish, and establish a personal connection to Kanye.

Like Yeezy, the brands with the most passionate and loyal customers appeal to only a small percentage of consumers. Supreme, the most influential streetwear brand in the world, was established by a rebellious gang of New York City skateboarders who captured synergy between skateboarding and Hip-Hop culture. To outsiders, Supreme feels like an exclusive cult, and to their fans, to define it as such is not a stretch. Customers routinely wait in line for hours and pay absurd prices on the secondary market to don the brand’s iconic red and white logo, not because of how it looks, but because of what it means.

Equinox attracts a cohort of people who see fitness as the foundation for success. Equinox stands for commitment and attracts fitness lovers who pay $235 per month for exclusive access to the club. Every Equinox location has space dedicated to selling high-end branded merchandise. One of their shirts reads, “It’s not fitness. It’s life.”

Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO of VaynerMedia, a social media advertising agency based in New York City, uses social media to share wisdom and inspire his fans. He has established a community of entrepreneurs by sharing hard-earned wisdom and engaging with his followers directly. Vaynerchuk motivates entrepreneurs and because of the attention he commands. He was one of the most popular speakers at this year’s South By Southwest conference and will be a judge on Apple Music’s new series, Planet of the Apps, where he will appear alongside Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, and will.i.am.

These up-and-coming brands are one-of-a-kind; they command devotion by striving for distinctiveness over widespread popularity. Oft polarizing brands like Yeezy, Supreme, Equinox, and Gary Vaynerchuk foreshadow the kinds of companies that will thrive in the internet age.

Since undifferentiated products will become commodities, new consumer brands must become even more distinct. Consumers will demand more from the brands they can personally affiliate with — brands that feel like an extension of themselves, and offer comfort, community, and inspiration. They will build loyalty among consumers who identify with them, but they will not chase after consumers who do not.

If traditional brands sought to appeal to the averages, new-age brands target distinct consumer segments and appeal to the extremes. They may only appeal to a small percentage of consumers, but their brands captivate consumers with hype and authenticity. Brands are already building fandom via collaborations with powerful personalities, and if my experience at Uniqlo is any indication, it works. The strategy of affiliating with popular personalities and causes is not a new one, but the tactics are changing.

Prominent brand personalities may turn to social media stars who are perceived as sincere and trustworthy.

Nike’s brand currency partially derives from long-held partnerships with LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Serena Williams. Now, Nike encourages its top-tier athletes to promote the brand on social media, and Nike has invested deeply in relationships with niche up-and-coming influencers.

Some influencers are even building their own brands and companies. Emily Weiss is both the founder of Glossier and an influential blogger, while Michelle Phan used her following on YouTube to establish her own makeup brand. A recent Variety Magazine survey indicates that uniquely defined brands will continue to emerge. The survey found that the five most influential figures among Americans ages 13–18 were YouTubers; teens are seven times more emotionally attached to YouTube stars than traditional celebrities. Personalities have never had more sway over consumer purchasing decisions.

Due to their innate authenticity, personalities deviate from the “vanilla corporations” that digital natives, like myself, avoid like the plague. They identify with brands for the lifestyles they encourage, and the social causes they support, as opposed to what they sell.

I connect with Apple through their iconic founder, whose quotes fill the walls in my room and remind me to “stay hungry, stay foolish.” I admire Casey Neistat for his improbable rise to success and through my own effort to produce a daily vlog. Equinox sees a commitment to fitness, and the community that comes from it, as a prerequisite for success in any domain. The results I’ve seen since becoming a member make spending a quarter of my rent check on an gym membership a no-brainer. I’ve applied Tim Ferriss’ wisdom to my own life, and through that, I’ve developed both deep trust in and respect for him. The message is more important than the product.

My connection with these brands has evolved beyond superficiality — they are a part of me. Still, I haven’t found a fashion brand that I can identify with in the same way the aforementioned brands do. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve stopped looking.

The seasons change four times per year. Your move, fashionistas.

In physics, a phase transition is when a system either absorbs or emits energy, resulting in its transition from one state to another. An example of a phase transition is when ice turns into water. This transition requires energy in the form of heat.

The exact moment when water is ready to turn into a frozen ice cube is known as a critical state.

Borrowing from Cesar Hidalgo, author of Why Information Grows: “The dynamics of criticality, however, are not very intuitive. Consider the abruptness of freezing water. For an outside observer, there is no difference between cold water and water that is just about to freeze. This is because water that is just about to freeze is still liquid. Yet, microscopically, cold water and water that is about to freeze are not the same. When close to freezing, water is populated by gazillions of tiny ice crystals, crystals that are so small that water remains liquid. But this is water in a critical state, a state in which any additional freezing will result in these crystals touching each other, generating the solid mesh we know as ice. Yet, the ice crystals that formed during the transition are infinitesimal. They are just the last straw. So, freezing cannot be considered the result of these last crystals. They only represent the instability needed to trigger the transition; the real cause of the transition is the criticality of the state.”

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Narratives

Humans have a natural proclivity for both spinning and subscribing to narratives. Narratives make history cohesive and provide us with an explanation of why things happen. They provide us with a spoken or written account of connected events. Narratives simplify abstract complexity.

Religion, money, corporations, human rights — all of these ideas are narratives. Countries, even, are narratives, told to unite people that would not otherwise trust one another, or be able effectively cooperate.

Humans love stories and depend on them for communication, meaning and cooperation. The success and advancement of Homo sapiens is the direct byproduct of our uncanny ability to unify and adapt through narratives. Large numbers of people would not be able to cooperate without shared common myths and beliefs. Narratives have the power to shape our values and determine our worldview.

And yet, our love for narratives has a dark side, which Nassim Taleb warns us of in his book, The Black Swan. Taleb asserts that humans have a limited ability to look at a sequence of facts without forcing a relationship among them. Narratives can bind unrelated facts together and blind us from reality. Narratives can create false simplification. They can provide a false sense of connection between a sequence of events.

Economist Tyler Cowen warns us of the dangers of stories in a TED Talk called Be Suspicious of Stories. Cowen warns that humans tend to gravitate towards overly-simplified storylines, especially good versus evil. The most popular stories are easily grasped, easily told, and easily remembered. Due to their simplicity, they can cloud complexity. Like a game of telephone, narratives tend to warp through truth by omitting details.

Our comfort with narratives can also inhibit our ability to grasp the true and critical nature of complexity. Narratives can push us to see the world as a matter of black and white. They can leave no room for the critical but subtle states of transition, and the many shades of gray that characterize reality. Searching for these micro nuances helps us comprehend the critical states of progress.

Richard Feynman said, “The imagination of nature is often larger than that of man.” Narratives can cloud our ability to understand complexity, to think objectively, to overcome assumptions, and to identify the immense learnings gained from understanding the critical states.

Instead of looking at narratives, we should look at critical phenomena.

Did Rosa Parks start the civil rights movement? Or was the movement already running in the minds of those who had been promised equality and were instead handed discrimination?

Did World War I start with Franz Ferdinand’s assassination? Or should we blame escalating tension in the Balkans? How about the then recently formed German-Austro-Hungarian alliance?

Did Donald Trump’s election jump-start America’s populist movement? Or was the populist movement a byproduct of the growing ubiquity of social media and the collapse of the Overton Window — defined as the range of ideas and policies the public was willing to accept? Was immigration the culprit? Wage stagnation?

Was the introduction of the iPhone the critical state of the mobile era? Or did it occur with the innovation of web views on mobile devices, and the emergence of fast connection speeds, GPS turn-by-turn navigation, and a critical mass of apps which could be functional on an entirely new operating system?

Ernest Hemingway exemplifies the notion of criticality in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, Bill asks Mike “How did you go bankrupt?” Mike responds, “Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly.”

Major shifts are not usually caused by one event. Instead, significant events often jumpstart major shifts. These critical events resemble the point when water turns to ice.

Why should we care about criticality and phase transitions?

Professional success often requires identifying and investing in opportunities before their phase transitions. These investments are often made 5–10 years before the phase transitions that end up in overly simplified historical narratives.

Today’s prominent social media advertising agencies were established 5–10 years ago. BuzzFeed started as a viral content lab in 2006, more than a decade before the majority of content consumption shifted to social media. Those who purchased apartments in New York City’s Meatpacking District before the completion of the High Line profited tremendously. Fashion-forward clothing is trendy because it has not reached a critical state of mass adoption.

oday, Amazon is positioning itself for a voice-first future with Alexa and a phase transition from retail to e-commerce. CEO Jeff Bezos operates on 5–7 year time horizons in order to submerge the company within a new market before that market reaches its critical state.

The time scales at which we look at the world matter when making business decisions. The time scale on which a business operates determines its vision of what it aims to accomplish.

Social media managers tend to operate within short time frames. What is happening today? Are there any prominent cultural events next week?

Most companies operate on multi-year time horizons. A struggling retailer like Sears or RadioShack will likely operate on a shorter time-scale than a growing, digitally-native vertical brand like Warby Parker or Bonobos.

Venture capitalists operate on time scales that can span more than a decade. They invest in both emerging technologies and the second-order implications of those technologies.

The shifts we look for reflect our operating time horizons. Consider Donald Trump’s presidency. On a short time horizon, White House beat reporters are likely to cover day-to-day shifts within the Trump administration. On a medium time horizon, journalists are likely to comment on public policy. On a longer time horizon, book authors are likely to consider multi-year trends such as the state of democracy, America’s position as a global superpower, and other geopolitical shifts.

The most successful entrepreneurs usually enter a space before it becomes common practice, and because of this, many entrepreneurs operate on extremely long time horizons. This is what we mean when we say entrepreneurs have “vision.” This is why many good ideas and breakthrough innovations start off looking like bad ideas. They depend on the open-mindedness of innovators and early adopters. Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

The best entrepreneurs understand the natural progression of their space at multiple scales. They observe the nuances closely. They witness the microscopic formation of the “ice crystals” before an innovation reaches its tipping point. They notice market dynamics that others miss. By operating with a unique perspective, they can observe the nuances of transition.

Entrepreneurs understand the niceties of gradual changes in their domain. Through relentless commitment and attention to detail, they see beyond mainstream consensus. These insights are why many of the best ideas defy consensus and counter mainstream narratives.

Instead of waiting for the moment when water becomes ice, we should shift our attention to the cold rooms where the infinitesimal ice crystals are forming.

Find cold water that is getting colder. Watch the ice crystals formulate. Build for the critical state.

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Inspiration:

1. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
2. Why Complexity is Different, Yaneer Bar-Yam
3. Timing and Infrastructure
4. What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?