Bianca Bosker

In her NYT bestseller Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker explored the fascinating world of oenophiles—people who treat wine as a way of life, and make shocking sacrifices in its name. In some ways, this was a natural fit for Bosker, who’s hooked on studying obsessives and the things they obsess over—be it televangelists, millionaire bloggers, or weapons sleuths. She’s explored the drivers of human behavior to provide insight into why we become obsessed, what unites the things that obsess us, how obsession spreads, and the surprising feats we undertake in its name. 

Now, in this keynote, Bosker speaks to the process by which we get hooked, as well as the common attributes defining the people, things, and passions that possess us—be it bottles of Burgundy or bloggers. Of course, this is uniquely different—and more valuable—than simply being “viral,” which engages large numbers of people passively and fleetingly. Obsession fuels deeper, more lasting relationships that people actively nurture. From personal experience, Bosker explains what drives this behavior (and how to be mindful that obsession doesn’t tilt over into addiction), while also showing how healthy obsession can be a path to personal success.

While researching Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker discovered a subculture of people who live for taste. And by immersing herself in their world, she went from a life of sensory deprivation to one of sensory cultivation, developing her own senses well beyond previous limitations. In the process, she realized most of us settle for “secondhand sensing”—letting price, labels, and other information substitute for our own experience. 
 
Today, neuroscience reveals that not only can we all train our senses, but also why we should bother to do so: when we attune ourselves to flavor, we engage our more critical, analytical, and higher-order parts of our brain. We’ve all heard of mindfulness. But Bosker came to embrace what she calls “sensefulness”—the idea that it is by tuning into our senses that we truly learn to make sense of the world.
 
In this talk, Bosker examines what we can learn by cultivating and stimulating the senses—in business and in life, as companies and as individuals. A return to physicality, through a mindset that caters to all five senses, can create analog competitive advantages in how we create products, design experiences, and behave as humans and employees. We tend to focus narrowly on the things we can hear and see. But appealing to touch, smell, and taste provides a means to persuade, charm, solidify messages, and excel. Smell, for example, is an overlooked vehicle for communication—we subconsciously exchange social cues through odors, such that we can “smell” illness, old age, relatives, even women’s tears (the scent of which alters men’s moods). Colors can alter our perception of a food’s flavor; smells can solidify memories. 

Sensefulness provides a tool and discipline to tap into our emotions more directly, completely, and effectively, while creating powerful experiences that make us better people, and bring others to our cause. At the same time, tuning into our own senses allows us to stay true to our own felt experience—and avoid being manipulated by noise.