Mind candy are prompts to help you to keep up to date, develop strategic responses to trends and train your change muscle, making you more resilient and agile for the future. If you need help with developing these prompts, you can book a free appointment here. If you want me to speak at your event, contact me at ron@ronimmink.com
How to use the prompts
Become a trend watcher yourself. Use these prompts to explore their relevance, assess opportunities and threats, and analyse timelines and impacts on your organisation. Consider multiple possible futures across varying time horizons—1, 3, 5, and 10 years.
Scenario prompts 20 February 2025
Todays prompts are metal foam, quantum computing, strategy, Crunchbase AI, the first two-way brain-computer interface, BuddhaBot, the AI agent economy, AI buying (and the impact on marketing), and particle entanglement.
AI doing the buying, how many five star reviews do you have?
Feather-light bulletproof metal foam to power up spacecraft, military gear
This material is unlike anything created so far. Notably, CMF combines the strength of steel with the lightness of aluminum and is resistant to ballistic impacts, fire, and radiation.
Microsoft’s Majorana 1 chip carves new path for quantum computing
Microsoft today introduced Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture that it expects will realize quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.
Can You Tell a Genius Strategy from a Huge Mistake?
https://hbr.org/2025/02/can-you-tell-a-genius-strategy-from-a-huge-mistake
Chess can be played at different speeds, and when master players observe one move in isolation without knowing the kind of chess being played, it can be hard to identify smart play from poor play. Likewise in business.
Crunchbase’s AI can predict startup success with 95% accuracy—will it change investing?
Instead of focusing solely on past events, Crunchbase now leverages its massive dataset — including usage patterns from 80 million active users — to predict future business outcomes.
China debuts world’s first two-way brain-computer interface with 100x efficiency
https://interestingengineering.com/science/worlds-first-2-way-bci-china
A dual-loop framework using a memristor chip—an energy-efficient hardware component that mimics neural networks—to create a more natural interaction between brain and machine.
Bhutan’s monks and nuns use AI chatbot trained on ancient Buddhist texts
Monks and nuns from the Central Monastic Body of Bhutan will soon be able to explore their religion with BuddhaBot Plus.
The Next 10 Years Will Be About the AI Agent Economy
https://www.nfx.com/post/ai-agent-marketplaces
Soon, there will be a race to build the key platforms where AI Agents transact, specialize and grow. It’s going to coalesce into a trend – the rise of the AI Agent marketplace.
Your most important customer may be AI
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/19/1112076/your-most-important-customer-may-be-ai/
As people rely more and more on AI for recommendations on everything from product purchases to trip planning, brands are figuring out the new rules of the road.
A ‘Teleportation’ Breakthrough for Quantum Computing Is Here
https://www.wired.com/story/quantum-computing-information-teleportation/
A team at the University of Oxford succeeded in getting two quantum processors to connect to each other and transmit the same information using particle entanglement.
