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 29 January 2025
Todays prompts are butterfly-inspired robotic wings, microbes, soft mechanical metamaterials, foresight, distributed work, single-crystal’ electrode batteries, shape-changing tissue, and robot blood.
Trends vs foresight. It is all about scenario planning.
Butterfly-inspired robotic wings fly with no batteries, just magnetic fields
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/robotic-wings-fly-with-no-batteries
The wings are a mixture of innovative design and magnetic particles that can move without needing batteries or electronics.
Newly discovered microbes in Amazon peatlands could affect global carbon balance
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-newly-microbes-amazon-peatlands-affect.html
Complex organisms, thousands of times smaller than a grain of sand, can shape massive ecosystems and influence the fate of Earth’s climate, according to a new study.
Bio-Inspired 3D Printing Breakthrough Creates Flexible Materials for Wearable Tech
The method specifically addresses challenges in direct ink writing processes when working with materials like silicone, epoxies, and urethanes, which are essential for creating soft mechanical metamaterials.
Forget trends, it is foresight we need more than ever
https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2025/01/28/forget-trends-it-foresight-we-need-more-ever
A few patterns emerge. Trends are often just things happenings, predictable predictions and lack of actionability.
How Emerging Technologies Can Foster Human Connections at Work
https://hbr.org/2025/01/how-emerging-technologies-can-foster-human-connections-at-work
While many organizations are still debating hybrid work policies, some companies are embracing an even more radical approach: fully distributed teams working within a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
New ‘single-crystal’ electrode battery tech could power EVs for millions of miles
According to new research, this innovation could allow EVs to travel millions of miles—far outlasting the lifespan of the vehicles themselves.
Shape-changing tissue for heart research
https://www.3printr.com/shape-changing-tissue-for-heart-research-4476862/
Researchers have developed a new bioprinting technology that makes it possible to produce tissue that forms itself through cell-generated forces.
Cornell uses ‘robot blood’ to give modular jellyfish and worm robots lifelike vigor
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/robot-blood-powers-jellyfish-worm
Their new worm and jellyfish robots are built around the transformative concept of “embodied energy,” where integrating the power source into the robot’s structure reduces weight and cost, mirroring the evolutionary advancements from aquatic to terrestrial life.