The Outside View: Fashion’s Suicidal PathMartin Lindstrom on why fashion should be careful to not undervalue anticipation even in the digital age.

[Collection]If you’re old enough, you may remember that sense of anticipation before your favorite band released their newest album, the excitement before the movie you so-couldn’t wait-to-see hit the cinemas, or even — if you’re a fashionista — the seemingly endless six-month wait between the sneak peaks at the Parisian and Milanese fashion shows and the arrival of ready-to-wear in stores. Technology has condensed those agonizing days into the blink of an eye. Not having to wait for what we want is great, isn’t it? Well, it turns out that consumers, whether they quite recognize it or not, miss the wait. Companies have learned, the hard way, that assuming this generation of customers insists on instant gratification may be a costly mistake. For Lego, it was nearly a fatal mistake. The year was 2004. The Lego Company’s extensive Big Data research had “proven” that their customers were fading away. The reason? The arrival of the ‘no-patience generation.’ If true, this would be an enormous blow to the iconic toy company, since its kits took hours to construct. In a desperate attempt to buck the trend that Big Data had identified and circumvent disaster, Lego reinvented their product. Instead of the traditional tiny bricks, they

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