Cool Hunting

Cool may be our country's most precious natural resource: an invisible, impalpable substance that can make a particular brand of an otherwise interchangeable product—a sneaker, a pair of jeans, an action movie—fantastically valuable. And cool can be used to predict the future.

TIME Magazine: What's Next?

You know it. We're not talking about what everyone's doing. By the time everybody at the local high school thinks something's cool, it's behind the curve. You can get it at the mall, and odds are you found out about it from your friends (or - *gasp* - your kids). This is about spotting those standouts, the few people who do new things, whether it's cool or not, because that's who they are. Because what they're doing will be cool next year....