Against an accelerating backdrop of datafication, a “retro-innovation” trend is emerging. New products and services are designed to connect us with the past in ways that are both nostalgic and interactive.

Retro-innovations roughly fall into three categories:

Innovations that authentically mimic a product or experience of the past to transport the user back into a gone era. Innovations that use a nostalgic format to meet a new need. Innovations that use a new format to meet an old need.

The Italian paper notebook maker Moleskine, whose recent IPO was valued at more than $600 million, is a stunning anachronism in a business environment that glorifies tech startups and digital business models. Cleverly marketed as a tangible (analogue) reservoir of the artful and playful, the company describes its notebooks as “analogue clouds.” Last year, in an effort to replicate their sensibility online, they formed a partnership with digital note-taking and archiving software Evernote.

Beck’s album, Song Reader, is a retro-innovation that used a traditional format (sheets of music) for a contemporary need (co-creation).

Things that don’t last, last longer.

In December 2012, Beck masterfully combined the physical and digital experience by releasing his album exclusively as “sheets of music”–as a physical product, beautifully packaged–without ever performing and recording any of the new songs. Instead, Beck crowdsourced the performance of his new songs; he invited his fans to record and share his songs online. The brilliant part: Beck’s own interpretations of his songs would remain exclusive to concertgoers (which increased the value of his live performances), and the lack of a digital product that could be shared online (legally or illegally) created a new and obscure market for cover versions. Yet the original never existed. It made the release participatory and let fans and musicians all over the world co-create Beck’s “album.”

It fits, then, that Beck will perform “Song Reader” as a one-night-only show in San Francisco on May 24, as an “issue” of Pop-Up Magazine, the “world’s first live magazine.” The issue “exists” as a live performance and nothing will be filmed or recorded. This kind of ‘temporal exclusivity’ pushes the nostalgia factor because it’s all about remembering. These days, we have digital archives to serve that purpose. But Beck’s one performance exists to be remembered even as his fans make their own albums of his work.





Nostalgia is also the hallmark of the Millennial Trains Project, an upcoming event that invites millennial thinkers and doers to spend 10 days together on a train traveling across the U.S. from coast to coast and to stop at 10 cities on the way. The goal is to learn about regional challenges and advance their respective projects in an eclectic, interdisciplinary environment. Founder Patrick Dowd, who quit a job at JP Morgan to launch the initiative, says that the experience will be meaningful because “it is ephemeral: it only happens once, and will never happen like that again.” Things that don’t last, last longer.