Primal instincts

Entrepreneur, Dec, 2002 by Mark Henricks

PHYSICAL HUMAN NEEDS, SUCH AS SEX, ARE SURrendering primacy to ethereal concerns like spiritual bliss. Consumers, no longer driven by material wants, are replacing doctors with marketers as healers. Brand glut will resolve itself to a single "choose this lifestyle" choice. If anyone but Melinda Davis made such predictions, she'd be laughed out of the future as well as the present. But the CEO of New York City trend-tracking company The Next Group has shown uncanny ability to tap our national subconscious. In The New Culture of Desire (Free Press, $26) she unveils findings of the "Human Desire Project," a research study underway since 1996. Forecasts are interwoven with practical tools like a "self-administered metaphysical" to see how engaged you are in "imaginational life." She concludes with five principles for adapting to the new environment, the first of which is to "Recognize your primal desire."

Austin, Texas, writer MARK HENRICKS has covered business and technology for leading publications since 1981.