When a Mayor Decides to Think Different
What happens when a mayor decides to do something genuinely different, not just manage better, but build differently? The usual answer involves a new building,…
ADJ
Aric is a co-founder of This is Bulgaria, a futurist, and a professional troublemaker. With over two decades of experience, he explores the intersection of technology, business, and human behavior, turning complexity into actionable insight.
The Three Minds of Apple: On the Ternus Succession
In April 2026, Apple announced a transition that, on its surface, appeared almost uneventful. Tim Cook, who had served as chief executive officer for fifteen…
The Map No Longer Matches the Territory
In the winter of 1776, as Adam Smith finished The Wealth of Nations, the world ran at the speed of an ox and the power…
The Norris Synthesis – aka: How to innovation and win
Last week we lost Chuck Norris, and because he was one of the heroes of my childhood, I went back to study his career with…
Between China and Eastern Europe, Learning What Cannot Be Copied
Nobody announces the moment when the rules of a technological era change. It simply becomes apparent, usually too late, that the assumptions everyone was operating…
The Shape of What Was Always Coming: How Systems Thinking and Structural Architecture Will Define the Next Era of Business, and Why Bulgaria Is Positioned to Lead It
Your strategy did not fail because your team was not smart enough. It did not fail because your data was insufficient, your consultants were underprepared,…
The Company That Refused to Disappear
There is a certain kind of company that history misremembers, not because it failed, but because it changed form too many times for the public…
THE ZORA PROTOCOL AKA The Awakening of the Danubian Destiny
PROTOCOL PREFACE: ON THE NATURE OF HISTORY AND KETTLES “The sleeper must awaken. But first, the sleeper must calculate the precise caloric intake of a…
Before the Heat Comes Up – How Nations That Learn to Distil Will Inherit the 21st Century
Every year in the Kazanlak Valley of central Bulgaria, around the first week of June, something happens that most of the world does not know…
A Dance Forgotten, A Laugh Remembered
The yellow cobblestones of ulitsa Tsar Shishman were slick with rain, shining like wet amber under the streetlamps. The city was a familiar hum: trams…
The tragedy of circular generalism
Systems are collapsing under the weight of those who cannot see specifics anymore. That is the central fact of this century, and almost everything follows…
The Constant Beneath the Noise – On Trends, Human Nature, and the Forces That Outlast Every Technology
Walk through any major city and you can feel how urgently the present wants to be mistaken for destiny. Screens glow in every palm. Cars…