Microtrends

The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

By: Mark J. Penn, E. Kinney Zalesne

Narrated by: Brett Barry

Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and President Bill Clinton proves that small is big by identifying 75 hidden-in-plain-sight trends that are moving America, revealing that the nation is no longer a melting pot but a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles.

In 2000, The Tipping Point entered the lexicon.

Now, in Microtrends, one of the most respected and sought-after analysts in the world articulates a new way of understanding how we live.

Mark Penn, the man who identified "Soccer Moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture - microtrends that are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, is enough to launch a business or social movement.

Relying on some of the best data available, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live. Among them:

• People are retiring but continuing to work
• Teens are turning to knitting
• Geeks are becoming the most sociable people around
• Women are driving technology
• Dads are older than ever and spending more time with their kids than in the past

You have to look at and interpret data to know what's going on, and that conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and outdated. The nation is no longer a melting pot. We are a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. Those who recognize these emerging groups will prosper.

Penn shows listeners how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise, tip an election, spark a movement, or change your life. In today's world, small groups can have the biggest impact.

©2007 Mark Penn (P)2007 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"The ideas in his book will help you see the world in a new way." (Bill Clinton)

"Mark Penn has a keen mind and a fascinating sense of what makes America tick, and you see it on every page of Microtrends." (Bill Gates In 1982, readers discovered Megatrends)

Lacking Credibility

Author's begin the chapter titled Vietnamese Entrepreneurs with the following statement: ???In America, most people still think of Vietnam as the place we became involved in a no-win war, based on a lack of cultural understanding. Fifteen years; 58,000 U.S. soldiers??? precious lives; a humiliating escape in April 1975 from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon. The war itself was based on the domino theory???the idea that if Vietnam became communist, so would country after country in Asia, and the balance of power would fall to communism. Boy, was that theory wrong.???

This is typical New Left rhetoric. By adding five years to the actual length of time America spent in Vietnam (1962-72) to 1960-75), the outcome supports the author???s subjective statements, ???humiliating escape in April 1975???.
This leads readers to believe that American forces were still in Vietnam to lose a war lost by the South Vietnam after the U.S. Congress voted to stop funding them. Mr. Penn all U.S. forces had left Vietnam by 1973.

I wouldn???t make such a big deal of this, but in the book???s conclusion, the author goes on about how people today make judgments based on their own worldview rather than the underlying facts. A Google search would have revealed that only ten US Marines were left in all of Vietnam guarding the American embassy, until a 40-man Marine force attached to the Seventh Fleet was flown in to assist the evacuation of the embassy, as 40 Divisions of North Vietnamese Army surrounded Saigon. If the author had done his research he would have to change (humiliating escape) to heroic rescue.

As for leaving from the roof of the American embassy which refers to the photo taken by the Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es, which by the way was not the U.S. Embassy, but the roof of 22 Gia Long Street, a private apartment building housing CIA officials and their families. Pass on this book the author lost all credibility.