Jan Chipcase can guess what's inside your bag and knows all about the secret contents of your refrigerator. It isn't a second sight or a carnival trick; he knows about the ways we think and act because he's spent years studying our behavioral patterns. He's traveled from country to country to learn everything he can about what makes us tick, from our relationship to our phones (hint: it's deep, and it's real) to where we stow our keys each night. He oversees the creative direction of frog design , an innovation firm that advises the design products for Microsoft Office, Nike, UNICEF, GE, Sephora, Gatorade and Alitalia.

Before moving to frog design, Jan's discoveries and insights helped to inspire the development of the next generations of phones and services at Nokia. As he put it, if he does his job right, you should be seeing the results of his research hitting the streets and airwaves within the next 3 to 15 years.