Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 2

The year 1933 brought the world’s first drive-in theater. Since that moment, it’s become one of those iconic American-style exports of entertainment. Today it’s a nostalgic experience, still done at several hundred spots around the country and perhaps others around the world but much less than at its peak. The story of the rise and fall of the drive-in theater is a fascinating one.

The fall, in particular, is blamed on the rising price of oil and a lack of green space due to rapidly deve...

European payment network Klarna was one of the first fintech companies to go all in on AI. They were even featured as a case study by OpenAI. Then after a flood of customer complaints, they tried to quietly backtrack and hire back many human assistants. Recently an author was called out after readers discovered that the text of AI prompts was published in her final book.

A lawyer was caught using fake citations hallucinated by AI and failed to notice them. A tech company’s AI coding tool...

I ask for my coffee extra hot. Sometimes, I do that, and it comes cold anyway. There would be times when that happened and I would drink it anyway. Most people don’t like to cause a scene and sometimes that means we don’t speak up. It’s a small moment, but also a symbol of larger opportunities for defiance in our lives that we often let pass by.

According to Dr. Sunita Sah, the ability to embrace your defiant side is critical in learning to speak up for yourself. When I spoke to her for this ...

This is a press release I just read which got me thinking: Kroger Crafts the Perfect Sandwich Making Guide

The release included a powerful reminder from one of their Vice Presidents of something that “every meal is an opportunity for creativity and enjoyment.” I like sandwiches, so I was immediately hooked. Especially after they promised that there would be “endless possibilities in every bite.” After all, who doesn’t want that sort of optimism in a sandwich?

So, I dived into their perfect...

Here are two stories from this week that don’t seem to be related to one another. The first is about Delta ​testing AI for dynamic pricing​ in specific situations. The other is about Amazon ​acquiring a company that makes a wearable listening device​ that always captures your conversation. When you put them together, you can start to get a good sense of where dynamic pricing controlled by algorithms is likely to go. Here’s a scenario:

You are having a conversation about a trip you need to tak...

Up the Organization was published in the mid-seventies, which technically makes it just about as old as I am. The lessons, though, are actually timeless and the book stands apart for an idea that was well ahead of its time … and feels relevant for now too. In case you don’t know Robert Townsend, he was the visionary CEO that helped Avis pioneer their iconic “We’re Number Two. We Try Harder.” advertising campaign that is widely recognized as one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all t...

Recently, an AI generated influencer went viral at Wimbledon. She wasn’t the first, but there was a ​firestorm of stories about how she is the latest symbol of the believability crisis we find ourselves in​. As one executive from Getty Images explained:

“People are used to seeing curated, almost perfect images from human influencers, achieved through extensive editing, filters and professional photography. Zelu, being entirely AI-generated, naturally embodies this idealised flawless skin, per...

For over 100 years in the early days of the U.S. Postal Service, the way mail would get sent from small towns involved a crazy method of railway mail clerks attaching pouches to a moving train as it slowed and went through each town. That’s just one of the fascinating stories you can read about this week as the U.S. Post Office gets set to ​celebrate their 250th anniversary​ this Saturday.

From helping get commercial aviation off the ground (literally) to inventing the ZIP code system that di...

The big story of GLP-1 medications has routinely been about weight loss, obesity and expanded usages beyond its original classification as a way to manage diabetes. A key element of how they work is to reduce cravings and impulsive choices when it comes to food. ​More recent data is starting to emerge​ that these effects may not only affect the way people buy and consume food. As Retail Prophet founder Doug Stephens puts it:

“You could almost look at the entire consumer market and say that an...

The Commodore 64 is back!​ Appealing to grown-up geeks and younger technophiles alike, the computer aims to offer a “simpler, distraction-free computing experience” and suggests that a great potential usage is to teach kids BASIC coding and how computers really work while leaning into the brand’s heritage and history:

Honouring the past. Innovating the future. We’ve been sleeping for 30 years. Please excuse us. Now we’re back, you know we had to start with the best-selling desktop computer of...