When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck

I'm reminded of the old Paul Virillo quote:
"When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress." (From: Politics of the Very Worst)

Disasters have their own spectacular fascination. Here's a satelite shot of the Costa Concordia from Digital Globe.

The hidden beauty inside everyday objects

For years, Nick Veasey has made these amazing x-ray images of all kinds of everyday objects: animals, shoes, sea shells - and larger (really large, in fact) objects like entire air planes, busses and excavators.
It's beautiful, and very informative, too. You really get to see a different aspect of reality.
Check his site.

All copying is not the same

One of the crucial features of digital information is that the copy can be just as good as the original. This has opened the floodgates of copying and obviously made it a lot more complicated for anyone who has invested in creating digital content to charge money for access to it.

But what if the copy is even better than the original? If the one who copies does more than that – and actually adds to the original by adjusting, redesigning, tweaking, remixing…

At a system level, this is exactly what you want copying to lead to – enhancement, development, the emergence of new value.

This is the promise of a free exchange; to move beyond the original. Not always, but sometimes.

All copying is not alike. There are plain rip-offs, passive, even degrading copying. And there is copying as inspiration and re-combination.

It’s hard to draw the line exactly. The latter is a fundamental mechanism of evolution. We need it to stay fit for life. So you don’t want to stop the creative type of copying.

Der bliver trængsel i senior-afdelingen

Analyse-instituttet DREAM laver en årlig fremskrivning af sammensætningen af den danske befolkning. Ifølge deres 2010 fremskrivning ser det sådan ud frem mod 2040 - jeg citerer:

"Hovedårsagen til, at antallet af personer uden for den erhvervsaktive alder er steget, er, at der er blevet langt flere ældre, mens antallet af børn – med undtagelse af en kort periode fra 1940 – ikke er steget. Således er antallet af personer over 64 år steget fra knap 200.000 i 1900 til ca. 900.000 i 2010. Denne udvikling ventes at fortsætte i de kommende år, således at antallet af ældre topper omkring 2042 med 1,47 mio. personer. Det vil sige, at der om godt 30 år skønnes at være ca. 600.000 flere ældre end i dag."

"Der forventes en relativt større stigning i antallet af ældste ældre end i ældregruppen som helhed. Således skønnes antallet af personer på 80 år og derover, at blive fordoblet fra omkring 228.000 til 464.000 personer i løbet af de kommende 30 år"

"Fremover forventes der at blive færre i den erhvervsaktive alder og flere uden for den erhvervsaktive alder. Det betyder, at der omkring 2040 forventes at være 4 erhvervsaktive til at forsørge ca. 3 personer, der ikke er i den erhvervsaktive alder."

Coping with poverty

Just read a bunch of reports about the strategies people have for coping with poverty. It obviously takes considerable effort to get by. Here's a couple of quotes from the report "Just coping" from the Kent city council in the UK:

”Life on a low income is characterised by deep unpredictability. Just one unexpected bill – a new school uniform, or a bank charge – can disrupt the entire weekly budget. The families we met were operating from day to day, in a way that often felt very out of step with the patterns and rhythms of financial help such as tax credits and housing benefits”.

”Men were notable by their absence. Poverty is without question a gendered experience, and it is often women on whom most of the coping work falls”.

"In order to describe the money situation faced by the families, the research team came to use the term ‘Milkybar economy’ after noticing that several of the families seemed to have a predilection for that particular chocolate bar. There are two facts to observe here: first, the ‘Milkybar’ chocolate only costs 15p (about half the price of other chocolate bars) and, second, buying them was a deliberate, economic choice. The cheaper price allowed parents to buy children a sweet or treat with the small change left over from other shopping without impacting too much on budgets.
Of course, not all of the families ‘bought Milkybars’, but these kinds of small margins were a consideration for all."

And here's a quote from the report “You just have to get by - Coping with low incomes and cold homes" from the Center for Sustainable Energy in the UK:

" Overall, 62 per cent of low‐income households had cut back on their heating costs in the previous winter by turning their heating off or down, heating only one room, or using their heating intermittently. However, their experience of cold at home also depended on the effectiveness of any strategies they used to compensate for their loss of heating. These included wearing more clothes, wrapping up in blankets, staying in one room, going to bed early and having hot drinks. The most income‐constrained households were adept at juggling these options as part of their wider strategies for coping on a low income.

The low‐income households who experienced cold homes reported adverse impacts on their mental health, physical health and social lives: nearly half (47 per cent) said the cold had made them feel anxious or depressed, 30 per cent said an existing health problem had got worse, and 17 per cent did not feel able to invite friends or family to the house."

Frugal solutions - IKEA are the masters

Currently, I’m researching on a concept we call ”frugal solutions”.

Danish companies are usually inclined to compete by developing ever more sophisticated new features, moving up the value chain in order to stay out of commoditization and low margins. The problem with that strategy is that you loose sight of another, potentially much larger market. In the coming years it’s very likely that a lot of consumers will demand products that are a lot cheaper. They will focus on need to have, rather than nice to have – out of necessity. High unemployment, aging society, polarization of incomes and a welfare state with budgets under severe pressure will translate into a much larger lower end of the market. And Danish companies are not used to operating in that space, so there is imminent danger that foreign, lower priced companies will move in with their offerings.

This is where ”frugal solutions” come into the picture. The idea is to create solutions that can meet a demand at a radically lower price, but with little or no compromise in utility to the end user. The infamous Tata Nano car from India is an example; The M-PESA mobile phone banking system from Kenya is another. Generally, a lot of frugal solutions seem to emerge from emerging markets.

But there are Western examples, too. Discount supermarkets, low price airlines, the Swatch watches are some of them.

My favorite Western example, though, is IKEA. Visiting one of the blue and yellow warehouses is like an exhibit of brilliantly executed frugal solutions.

I have no doubt that there are plenty of details and system that are invisible to the casual visitor, but let me run through some of the elements that are obvious and easy to observe.

Let the users do some of the work: This was the original IKEA revolution: knocking down furniture into flat packages that could be transported by customers and assembled at home. IKEA has made it as painless as possible. Their manuals use no words, and they are impressive examples of clear communication. Just try any another manual for assembly, to appreciate how well they work. Obviously, this is not by co-incidence, but because the company has invested in developing the entire experience – not just the furniture.

One could say that IKEA has created a whole language or logic around their products. If you have tried assembling a few different models, you will be familiar with their special screws and fasteners.

In the warehouses, IKEA has moved a few steps further. Consumers go to the storage racks and fetch the packages, and they check out themselves, scanning the barcodes and paying with their credit cards. In the cafeteria, the logistics are similar: You are clearly instructed to follow the line, picking utensils, glasses etc.

Modularization: Many of IKEAs lines - kitchens, closets, book shelves… - are modularized, allowing end-users to configure a highly individualized result from standardized parts. This is not unique to IKEA, of course, but never the less part of why you can offer a satisfying experience at a relatively low price.

Democratic design: Clearly, IKEA has been able to create designs that a lot of people like, and make it available to just about anyone. Having IKEA objects in your home is nothing to be ashamed of. Fancy home decoration magazine will show homes with things from IKEA alongside other designer objects many times mores expensive.

Sometimes, IKEA in fact comes up with their own, new classic designs – and of course, at least as often, they create their own low price version of competitors models that they can see are popular in the more expensive shops.

Massive scale. Good design and massive scale of production translates into sometimes amazingly low prices. It's one of those great factoids of the times that the IKEA catalogue was printed in 197 million copies in 2010 - 3 times more than the bible.

Simplified design and cheaper materials: Some IKEA furniture – shelves, tabletops, cabinet doors… - are really almost just cardboard and a hard coating. Clearly, there is a constant strive to simplify models and use only the materials and the amount of materials that really contribute to the user’s experience.

At the moment, IKEA is replacing their many, many wooden pallets for transportation and storage with a new, lighter and disposable pallets made of cardboard.

Understanding the end-user’s context. For several years it’s been a main theme of the annual catalogue to show solutions for maintaining order and comfort in very small spaces. IKEA has developed lots of furniture that makes it possible to cram more stuff and functions into a tiny flat.

The interiors in the catalogue are not all vast, spacious rooms, but small, cluttered, real. An example is the STORÅ bed, on pillars, so you can place a sofa and a table underneath (see the video above).

Decency. Even though IKEA boast of their focus on low price, they also make extensive efforts to operate as a sustainable company. Sourcing wood from decent producers, cutting down on waste and toxic ingredients etc. Again, proof that a low cost solutions need not be morally corrupt.

No jobs - but so much that needs to be done

Weird how we've set our self up. Millions of able and eager young people looking for a job - and at the same time there is so much work that needs to get done. So much decay, neglect, halfway finished projects, looming problems - yet we pay people for being passive. And not just a few - an amazing part of the working age population have no job. In Denmark, 2.050.000 people live on welfare, pensions and student grants. 2.769.000 people have a job - although the salary of 92.000 of those is partially paid by the government (løntilskud).

Tatooes or what?

Here's a slightly unsettling video. Zombie man going back and forth between looking normal and looking absolute tattooed freak. At some point (1:25 or so) things start to blend - that's where it gets interesting.

When I'm 80 we'll all be old

I'm preparing for a stint as a moderator at a conference about the future of health care, arranged by the Danish Engineering society. It's amazing to read just how dramatic the aging of the Danish population will be, in our own life time.
With some luck, I'll be 80 years old in 2041. By then, 8% of the Danish population will be 80 or above. Today the figure is only 4%.
19% of the population will be above 70 years in 2040.

Another stat: By 2020 - in less than 10 years - there will be 2 million Danes with chronic diseases - out of a total population of 5,5 mio.

Source: IDA og Det Nationale forskningscenter for Velfærd.

Very cool invention - a fridge made of clay

The Miticool fridge is a wonderful example of creating frugal solutions that are both cheap and which fit local conditions very well. The fridge is made of clay and it is kept cool by water which drips down the side from an upper chamber and evaporates.
No electricity needed, no maintenance. No Noise.
And very different from what a Western company would come up with.

School of one - sounds amazing

Anyone interested in how to improve the efficiency of schools is likely to be fascinated by the School of one concept - an experimental program used in New York City. The program is based on targeting online exercises and instruction to students based on their moods and style of learning - using algorithms that are similar to those used to personalize music on internet services like Pandora.
It's presented in this episode of Freakonomics radio. Maybe the presenters gloss things over a bit, but it does sound like School of one is on to something.

Where Apples come from (is not a pretty place)

An excellent, thought provoking and very different podcast piece: Mike Daisey, an American stand up storyteller and Apple fan goes to Shenzhen in China to understand where those beautiful machines are made. It’s simply a guy telling a story of what the city looks like, what the workers told him, what the factory floors and cramped dormitories and endless hours are like, how workers are crippled by repetitive motions and toxic chemicals… Very bleak, very stirring to hear about – and remarkably, even entertaining to listen to.

I can certainly recognize his description of Shenzhen and the particular harsh and repressive side of Chinese culture that you see such places.

Mike Daisey may be a bit colorful, and certainly his mission is not to try to give a balanced view. It’s emotional, but the producers of the radio show, which aired his report – This American Life – have tried to fact check everything he told. In the second half of the program they talk to experts and rattle off regular journalistic data that largely supports the first story.

It takes an hour to listen - it's very well spent.

Ipencil - the complexity of a making a simple pencil

I stumbled upon a very interesting, classic essay: "I, Pencil: My Family Tree". The author, Leonard E- Read, traces the many steps that are necessary for manufacturing a pencil: Cutting wood, producing the saws to cut the wood, cooking the coffee to warm the loggers, mining the graphite, processing it, producing the lacquer, the label, the eraser and the metal holder of the rubber. It goes on and on - the point of course being to demonstrate how incredibly widely connected and interdependent an industrial process is.
As Read puts it: Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make a pencil. It takes the cooperation and skills of thousands and thousands.
The essay was first published in 1958, and since then the complexity has reached a whole different level. Think of an I-phone compared to a pencil. The phone is useless without being in ongoing connection to a network of communication, software, songs, news feeds - all of that. It's useless without regular charging from the electricity grid. Its value resides both in what producers have created, and in content created by the users that are connected through it. Read ends his essay arguing that the fact that so many people can come together without detailed instructions to make such a complex happen shows that we must leave men as free as possible to let the invisible hand work its magic. I would draw a different conclusion: The interconnection of everything and everybody is perhaps the most important trend shaping our future. it proves that we are increasingly interdependent. Our fate is common, we have shared interests. We should think less in terms of local, individual and short term gain - and more according to a planetary community. You could write a whole book about it - in fact, I did.

AsiaNBC i Deadline på DR-TV

Jeg var en tur i Deadline på DR-TV igår for at præsentere Universefondens AsiaNBC projekt.
Indslaget ligger her.
(forneden i rammen kan du klikke dig direkte hen til interviewet: det er den fjerde hvide pind):

AsiaNBC website is online and kicking

For the past couple of years I have coordinated the Asia New Business Creation project at the Universe Foundation. We have compared companies in Denmark, China, Singapore and Korea and their approaches to innovation and business development. The differences should be an inspiration and a challenge to any Western company concerned with their place on the markets of the future.
You can read all about the conclusions - and a lot about Asian business in general - at the new website.
You can also download the booklet which summarizes the findings - right here.

An upgraded tuk-tuk

Bajaj, the Indian maker of the three-wheeler "tuk-tuk" that is ubiquitous in India and other developing countries has launched an upgraded version - a "four-wheeler".
Top speed 70 km/hour, 35 km. pr. liter.
We'll see if it fares better than the Tata Nano, which for all of its surrounding hype still lacks sales.

Same words, different meanings

Fascinating, how many of the core words that define our culture have very different meanings, depending on who you are.

We use words like growth, quality, community, democracy and creativity to describe our aspirations, but we hear different meanings behind the concepts.

You can describe very different realities with the exact same words.

Shanghai: Fast forward, large scale

The Atlantic brought two photos of the Bund and Pudong in Shanghai - one shot in 1990, the second shot in 2010. A very clear illustration of large scale change.

HERE I AM, HERE I AM

An Abu Dhabi sheik has written his name in the sand of an island he owns - in letters that are two miles wide. This makes them plainly readable in Google Earth. As you can see on Google Earth, the letters were created by digging canals in the dessert and pumping them full of water.
Very creative way of spending your money.

Giddens on a new kind of growth

Just stumbled on this piece written by Anthony Giddens in Huffington post as part of the launch of his new book on the politics of climate change:

"Jobs will be created not so much through renewable technologies themselves as through the lifestyle changes that coping with climate change and energy security will bring about. Sensibilities will change and with them tastes. The new economy that will emerge will be even more radically post-industrial than the one we have now. It will be up to entrepreneurs to spot the economic opportunities that will come about with expansion -- much in the same way as ways were found to revitalize dockland areas where shipping industry has evaporated away.

Pondering what form recovery from recession should take should cause us to think seriously about the nature of economic growth itself, at least in the rich countries. It has been known for a long while that, above a certain level of prosperity, growth does not necessarily lead to greater personal and social welfare. Now is the time to introduce more rounded measures of welfare alongside GDP and give them real political resonance. Now is the time for a sustained and positive critique of consumerism that can be made to count politically. Now is the time to work out how to ensure that recovery does not mean a reversion to the loads-of-money society.

The period of Thatcherite deregulation is over. The state is back. We will need active industrial policy and planning, in respect to economic institutions but for climate change and energy policy as well".

President who?

It seems telling that the first president of the European Union is likely to be someone I've never heard of.

De første 3 kapitler af min bog er nu online (!)

Sorry, this is in Danish to announce that the drafts of the first 3 chapters of my book in progress are now online.
Det er skitser, som det vil fremgå. De hænger sammen, men det er første vrid, så det er stadig lidt råt.
De kan læses her

No wonder things are tight

No wonder things are tight, if everybody cuts spending and redouble their sales efforts

Our new website is online

We just launched the new design of our website at danfossuniverse.com/impact

Microsoft's Craig Mundie on managing privacy

Among the sessions at this years Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum was a panel on "The new digital experience". Interesting stuff. In particular I think Craig Mundie of Microsoft has a very succinct description of the real issue regarding managing privacy:
"The technology will result in us collecting and remembering a huge amount of data, and over time we will ultimately find beneficial ways of using this. People can certainly speculate that there are evil ways to use and exploit data, and the question I think will become: how can we find a manageable way for people to declare their intent about each class of data and each class of service that they subscribe to?
And to the extent that we can get that agreed on and that becomes platformized, so you’re not facing a hundred different ways to express that intent, then I think these issues will come under control.
There are definite business tensions, because it’s easy to build certain business models that presume that you have almost surreptitious collection of information – and of course government intelligence business, that’s what they do for a living.
So at some level you have to realize the world is going to be a sea of data, and the real question related to privacy is going to be, how does the user get to specify what they think their ownership rights are in that data - no matter who collected it.
And I think these are questions that are not clear in the law and in the policy and that’s really gotta be the focus of the discussion. "

Here is the link to the podcast

Don't copy Lessig

A little observation: Lawrence Lessigs latest book "Remix" is not creative commons licensed.

Fast Company names Danfoss Universe "architectural wonder"

Fast Company magazine has named the Cumulus exhibition building at Danfoss Universe one of ten "architectural wonders of the world" in 2008. I guess that proves that you can make a mark globally, even in Nordborg, Denmark.

(Lots of) Keywords for my book

My original intention was to write this coming book in English, but thinking closer through the practical issues I've decided to start out in Danish, and then hopefully it will be such a massive hit that the English will kinda happen automatically...
So at moment the script is a weird mix of Danish and English. The "skeleton" of the book; my list of all the headlines for paragraphs, is still mostly in English - and I've posted it here.
I've also written a 5-page abstract. The Danish version is here. The English version is here, or you can read on this blog a few postings back.

The trajectory of information

The way things are going:
Our information will be
- hi-res
- real time
- connected
- stored
- searchable

Konference: Energiløsninger til klimarigtigt byggeri

Her er en invitation til en lille konference jeg er igang med at arrangere:

Danfoss Ventures afholder i samarbejde med DONG, TS build UP og Project Zero en mini-konference om
Energiforsyning til klimarigtigt byggeri
på Alsion, Syddansk Universitet i Sønderborg,
mandag den 12. januar, kl. 10.30 - 16.30.

Alt tyder på at kravene om energi-effektivitet i bygninger vil skærpes markant i de kommende år. Med 150 dollars pr. tønde olie, fik vi for nylig en forsmag på hvor voldsomt energipriserne kan stige. Den globale efterspørgsel efter energi vil næsten uvægerligt presse priserne i vejret fremover - dertil kommer udsigten til Co2 kvoter og Co2 afgifter, og en stramning af lovgivningen omkring energi-effektivitet. Der er brug for væsentligt forbedrede energiløsninger i byggeriet, både indenfor nybyg og renovering.
Samtidig betyder finanskrisen, at netop bæredygtige og energirigtige løsninger kan vise sig som et af de få vækstmarkeder indenfor en ellers temmelig truet byggeindustri.
Ved konferencen vil en perlerække af førende danske firmaer fortælle om arbejdet med at udvikle nye, gennemtænkte og banebrydende løsninger på energiforsyningen i bygninger.
Nok så vigtigt er dagen også en mulighed for at udveksle faglige erfaringer og vurderinger, og en lejlighed til at knytte nye kontakter på tværs af brancher.

Blandt dagens indlæg er:
• Peter Hesseldahl, Impact by Danfoss, ridser baggrunden for dagens tema op og styrer dagens debatter
• Anna Kathrine Bisgaard og Lars Kvist, Arkitema, taler om ”Energi til mennesker – holistisk arkitektur”
• Rie Oehlenschläger, arkitekt, taler om passiv huse og bæredygtig byplanlægning
• Tim Mondorf, IBM, fortæller om Smart grids
• Danfoss fortæller om udviklingen af mikrokraftvarme-anlæg baseret på brændselsceller
• Anders Dyrelund, Rambøll, fortæller om Varmeplan Danmark
• Velux fortæller om arbejdet med model home 2020
• Carl Bro/Grontmij præsenterer SIB Zero+ huset, og fortæller om Re-think city konceptet, der medtænker brint i energiforsyningen
• Teknologisk Institut præsenterer deres Energyflexhouse-koncept
• Henrik Sørensen, fra Esbensen Consulting, vil tale om Integreret energidesign – når byggeri ses i en helhed.

Deltagelse koster 890 kr. ex. moms, inkl. frokost og forfriskninger i pauserne.
Tilmelding senest 5. januar til Dorthe M. Lyngsø på dorthe@tsbu.dk

Nærmere oplysning og detaljeret program på: www.danfossuniverse.com/energiogklima

A synopsis of my book - Skills for a complex economy

This book talks about why we need to think in a different way in order to thrive in the future. It will go through the new skills that are called for, and describe the background conditions, which determine the competences that are going to be crucial to posses.

My starting point is the long-term trend of humans, machines, cultures and economies to connect - tighter, more often, in greater detail and over larger distances. Occurrences in wildly different realms and areas increasingly interact and impact each other - and on top of it change is accelerating in the global system, as each new technological development enables us to make the next step forward even faster.

We are going through a paradigm shift. The culture of the industrial age is receding and new ways of cooperating and organizing are becoming the new normal. All of this demands a different mindset, which is more relevant to the conditions of the years ahead.

It's not an absolute shift. Large parts of the old culture and the old rules still apply and the norms of the past remain useful in many contexts. It's not like we are ripping out the whole cultural foundation and starting anew, but we need to rebuild, add new features and understandings, and prune away some assumptions that are no longer in line with the new reality. We are in a transition phase where mindsets are clashing. The most interesting places to examine are not the extremes of completely new models. Rather, I'm fascinated with the areas where the old and the new overlap and converge. The grey zones, where you can see all kinds of hybrids emerge.

In an organizational context, for instance, we can observe the softening of the borders between the traditional roles of a ”manager” and ” employee”, between ”producers” and ”consumers”, and between ”partners” and ”competitors”.
Likewise, we see a blending of the hitherto sharp distinction between the individual, personal interest and the interest of the greater good. In technology we experience a blurring of what's ”here” and what's ”there” as everyone and everything comes online.

I call these converging areas the power zones, because that's where the action is. They are dynamic. This is where you find fast growth and development, this is where the business model of the new economy are created, and this is where you can observe the demand for new skills and mindsets - and see the need for new kinds of organization and cooperation.

The enormous increase in material wealth that we experienced during industrialization was made possible by standardization and mass production. Moving forward, we need to think in terms of customization and a much greater focus on the demands and needs of the individual.

In the era of assembly lines, it took large amounts of capital to create new products. Only a shrinking handful of big companies could compete on the market for cars, refrigerators, sewing machines or Broadcast media.
Today, the most important means of production is a computer connected to the Internet. Incidentally, that is also one of the most important platforms for consumption. Knowledge that was exclusive to specialists can be accessed by anyone in 0.14 second using Google, and most teenagers take it for granted that they can upload photos and videos to youTube in an instant.

Both the means of production and the access to knowledge has become radically broader, and this democratization is changing our roles in society. Rather than being passive consumers, the majority of us will become participants and co-creators. In an increasing number of contexts we will no longer accept things as they are. We will demand influence; we will interact and engage in the continued developed of the objects and processes which we use.

Creativity is a key word in this context - but the word has acquired a new layer of meaning. Creativity is no longer a somewhat elitist, artistic activity. It has become a basic, necessary skill. Creativity is an imperative. It has become a demand on us in our everyday life that we are able to develop and add something new to the processes we participate in - whether it is on the job or as a consumer.

Being creative, however, does not necessarily imply creating something new from scratch. It is as much about remixing; combining existing elements in new ways. In short: Creativity has become more of a continued, collective process.

It's not like consumers are completely taking over the production of goods and services, but consumers are increasingly involved in determining what the final product looks like. Consumers become participants in creation; they configure, they contribute data and content, they provide feedback and they help spreading knowledge of the product to others.
Consumers are thus in a tight interaction with the producers - and vice versa. That interaction is a precondition in order to create exactly what an individual needs or demands in his or her particular context, here and now. The focus moves from producing finished products for passive consumers, to designing tools that empower the end users to contribute to solving their individual needs.
Producers that aren't capable of involving and listening to their costumers run the risk of commoditization; that is, ending unable to differentiate your product by meeting the individuals needs of the costumers. Then you can only compete on price.

The trend towards participation affects our notion of responsibility and power. If you are a co-creator it follows that you must see yourself as co-responsible. And this is a major cultural shift. Rather than just doing
what you are told by those higher up in hierarchy, we must learn to take an initiative and be proactive in using the opportunities we have been given to shape our circumstances.
The divide between the upper and the lower tiers of our future society will be marked by those that assume responsibility and are pro-active, and those that remain passive. Arguably that was also the case in the industrial society, but the difference is that in the past century only the privileged few had an opportunity to be creative and to assume responsibility. Today it is a fundamental demand in most jobs.

Leaders, too, will need to adapt to the fact that the nature of power has changed. As competency and initiative moves from the center and out into the network, the function of leadership shifts. To telling employees ”why” and ”where to”, rather than telling ”how” the organization should work.

The progressive coupling of everything and every one implies that we will need to consider ourselves as part of a larger context. No one can really see themselves as independent or self-sufficient any more - neither individual persons, nor companies, organizations or nation states. We are intensely interdependent.
Climate and environmental issues are perhaps the clearest illustrations of how the interests of the individual and the interests of the greater good are converging.
On the Internet we can see the so-called Web 2.0 services - like Wikipedia - as examples of how egoism and altruism are becoming harder to distinguish as motivation for the creators.
In business there is a strong trend towards more integrated and complex products and services, and this in turn means that a single company is unlikely to have all the skills in house that are needed in order to deliver a complex service. In order to be competitive, companies need to cooperate, create alliances and platforms that invite others - companies or consumers - to contribute. The utility of a product or service will depend on the extent to which it links and re-enforces the value of other products and services.

In networks where the stakeholders are interdependent and the interaction is continued, you can get a sense of how to behave in order to create mutual value by studying the field of game theory.
It's all about creating win-win situations, in which the result that emerges from cooperating is greater than the simple sum of the individual contributions.
The scientific research into game theory has indicated some of the factors that can enable so-called “plus-sum games”: You should be initiating cooperation; you should show and establish trust; you should connect, engage in networks, and send your creations into circulation and interaction.
It's very close to what's called “open innovation” in a business context.

And it sounds pretty - but it's not simple or easy. All kinds of noise and disturbances tend to erupt when we are integrated in new contexts. In Europe the debate on integrating immigrants is an obvious example, and it raises the questions of where the border to our community runs; who will we include, and under which conditions?
The European Union itself illustrates the issue: In principle a union is in the interest of the greater good, but from a local perspective the union implies an often controversial surrender of sovereignty.

When the circle, which delineates our sphere of interest, expands it is not always in sync with an expansion of our circle of empathy. And it is by no means certain that all stakeholders agree on the borders to the area of shared interests.

This also affects our concept of openness. When you are cooperating and working for a common good it makes sense for all stakeholders to make their resources freely available to each other, so they can be integrated in the co-creation process of new utility. But often, cooperation is only partial, not complete. There's a grey zone with some cooperation, and some sharing - and some consideration about where to draw the limits to openness.
An example: Excessive enforcement of patents and copyrights can lock up the raw material for new development. Individual inventors and creators want to be paid for the efforts and ideas, but it may come at a cost to the greater good if new products - technological or cultural - are not developed as fast as they could have beeen if all knowledge and tools where freely at the disposal for everyone to utilize and build upon.

Likewise with privacy. There's a very strong trend towards recording all details of our lives and making the information available to others. It's a Faustian bargain, because the data makes it possible create services that help us very effectively and in an individualized fashion. For the greater community the information about our actions also means that society can hold its citizens accountable in every detail - for better or worse.
For the individual, however, it feels intimidating and abusive when we experience that our sphere of privacy is intruded upon and we lose control of our personal information.

Nonetheless I believe we will go on connecting everyone and everything ever closer. It's the arrow of time; a trajectory of evolution which we have followed since the big bang, simply because cooperation and alliances provide an evolutionary advantage. We are becoming one global system, and, given time, perhaps one collective organism.

Historically, we have understood the world and the mechanisms behind it, by splitting it into pieces and analyzing the individual components. For good reasons. Until recently we didn't have the technology to examine systems holistically and while they were running.
Not only do we now have the computing power and tools to visualize enormous data sets, but the issues that are crucial to us and the systems with which we are interacting are now of a nature, which we basically can't gauge if we just reduce them to their components.
Whether it's physical phenomena like urban traffic, eco systems or climate change, or if it's social phenomena like civil war, fashion or online services, we need to approach them with a perspective that is holistic and which considers the interactions and the relationships between the many components of the system.

This is where complexity theory enters. If a multitude of components are coupled tightly and the interaction between them becomes sufficiently rich and fast, that's more or less the recipe for a complex, dynamic, adaptive system.
You may never have heard of the concept before, but once you learn about them, you start noticing them all around us. Despite the fact that physics, societal change, ecology, economy etc. are governed by the mechanisms of complex dynamic systems, we tend to only understand those issues in terms of the traditional, Newtonian, linear and mechanical paradigm which was the underpinning of the scientific and philosophical worldview of the industrial age. This is no longer sufficient.

In the 21st century having a deeply internalized understanding of mechanisms such as feedback, self-organization, non-linearity, probability and evolution will be crucial in order to understand and act intelligently in an increasingly complex reality.

By examining the mechanisms of positive and negative feedback we can explain why some systems are inert and resistant to change, while other systems can easily be drawn into rapidly accelerating and self re-enforcing processes.
Knowing about self-organization we can better grasp the qualitative leaps that happen when many elements start interacting. We get a sense of what it takes to harness the collective intelligence and the wisdom of the crowd. We can also analyze the drivers behind the tragedy of commons, in which choices that are perfectly rational at the individual level add up to a collective madness that can be fatal to the entire community.
With a better awareness of non-linearity and chaos we can appreciate that complex issues rarely have clear-cut, certain answers. We learn to think in terms of probabilities, rather than certainty. We accept that we cannot have absolute control of complex process.
Finally, complexity theory teaches us that evolution never stops. Circumstances change, and we must change with them in order to remain fit. Diversity is the raw material for continued development; we need to let variations and mutations try their luck with reality. Those that thrive will carry the torch onwards. This goes for biology, for ideas, as well as for products in the market place.

It's fascinating how these patternes and mechanisms can be observed across all types of complex systems and networks. Systems theory is a basic understanding, which can be applied across disciplines. Like reading, writing and arithmetic, systems theory is a fundamental literacy that gives access to and strengthens ones understanding of all other topics - be it economics, ecology, marketing, micro biology or music.

… And so what?
To stay in the terminology of evolution, one could consider the future as a fitness landscape. Those, which are best adapted and equipped will thrive under the conditions in the landscape - the rest will not make it to the next round. Companies that aren't capable of adapting to the new circumstances will face an uphill battle - while those that have a better understanding of the trends and drivers will experience that their knowledge and the solutions they develop are exactly what the market is asking for.
The same is true for humanity and our way of living. If we manage to leverage the possibilities that massive connectivity offers us; if we find ways to live comfortably within the constraints of the ecosystem - well, then we can hope to keep reproducing. Otherwise, we will join the hundreds of thousands of other species before us that tried but failed to get a foothold on existence.
It is absolutely crucial that we learn the skills for a new, complex reality and, likewise, that we rid ourselves of past habits and mindsets that have now become counter-productive and are standing in the way of our chances of thriving. The sooner, the better.

Some of these skills can be thought of as a return to behaviors that used to be perfectly natural for humans - like being creative and explorative. Others of these competencies require us to train and adapt to a mindset that can seem counterintuitive at first. But we must learn it, just as we had to learn the skills that were relevant and necessary when industrialism happened.
We have been raised with the logic of hierarchies, clear-cut roles, black and white answers and a fundamental approach to life as a zero-sum game in which every one is fighting each other over a finite, limited amount of resources. With that kind of background, it is not easy or natural for most of us to start reaching out, showing trust, assuming responsibility or embracing uncertainty as opportunity. But, as I have argued here, these ways of acting make sense and create advantages in the age of the network.

The hardest part of this mindset to learn is probably also the most pressing. We need to find an understanding of happiness and meaning which is not so narrowly connected to an ever-expanding material consumption.
For this, we might find some inspiration in the skills, patterns and mechanisms I have described. Seeing your self and ones actions in a larger context; thinking in terms of plus-sum games; being accommodating and creating connections; being creative and assuming responsibility, adapting to new circumstance… Those are the skills we will need in a new, complex reality.

More Power Zones

Here’s another couple of ”power zones”; areas in which the convergence of realms that used be seperate creates some interesting and challenging new results.

We are not at the point where our machines our truly conscious, but a lot of smart systems seem to have moved way beyond simple, mechanical and linear computing. They have a certain new quality; one gets the sense that there is ”something” in the way the machine works that was not explicitly installed there by an engineer.
Likewise, our systems have started to show traits that we would traditionally only associate with organisms that are alive.

Googles clean energy vision

In this podcast, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google speaks for 30 minutes about his vision of the future of energy supply. He provides an excellent summary of the general vision of “de-carbonization” which he shares with a large part of the Californian clean tech venture capital community. This includes an intelligent power grid, massive investments in solar, taxes and quotas on CO2 emissions and a tax policy that doesn’t support the fossil fuel based logic of the past.
All in all a very good example of how hard American entrepreneurial spirit in combination with great amounts of capital can pull, once they catch a glimpse of the Next Great Thing.
Eric Schmidt does not dismiss that Google could enter the energy generation or distribution business – he compares a future intelligent power grid to the internet.
Thought provoking, inspiring – and a reminder that cleantech is moving forward fast.

Power zones

So, I'm working on this book, and one of the main themes in it will be the idea of "power zones", where the old and the new paradigm is converging.
Our industrial culture is fading, and new ways of organizing and cooperating are becoming more relevant in order to thrive under today's and tomorrow's circumstances.
But it’s not a complete change. The old ways are still with us, and they are still useful in many contexts. What’s interesting to study is not so much the extreme cases of way new behaviours. Rather, it’s the areas where the old and the new overlap and converge that are most important. The zones in which there’s some of both.
I call them the power zones, because that’s where the action is.
They are dynamic. This is where you find fast growth and development, this is where the business model of the new economy are created, and this is where you can observe the demand for new skills and mindsets – and a need for new kinds of organization and cooperation.

So here are some of the power zones of convergence:


Producers/consumers
Consumers are not taking over the entire production, but increasingly they have a say in determining what gets created. They participate in the creation, they configure, contribute content, give feedback and spread the word to others... They interact with the producers – and vice versa - in order to get exactly the product or service they want in their current, personal context.
Producers who fail to involve and listen to their users are more at risk of commoditization; rather than competing by meeting individual demands, they can only differentiate their product on price.

There is still a place for expertise and professional skills and experience, but amateurs, who are passionate about their interest, are getting the tools to create to standards that used to be exclusive to professionals. Companies are finding that the greatest experts on their products are often the fans and users, rather than the employees.



Topdown/bottom up
Not a complete rejection of leadership and hierarchy but an increasing share of inputs and initiative come from the periphery rather than the center of the system. The network manages itself, but there is still a need for leadership and vision in order to align.

Competing, yes, but cooperating as well. Co-creating in order to establish a greater platform to do business on.


Me/we
Not entirely altruistic, but conscious that in a connected world of tightening resources, the well being of the system is in the individuals’ own interest – and that any harm or defects to the system quickly translate into negative consequences for the individual.

Not a complete surrender to the collective, still motivated by personal goals and gains, but with an understanding of increasing interdependence and the value of cooperation. The circle of empathy, responsibility and accountability is widening, but there are clashes at the boundaries.

Not letting go of all secrets and possessions, but moving from a completely protected and closed mindset to one of reciprocal sharing – enabling rapid innovation and learning for the benefit of all players.

Not giving up all privacy, but finding a new balance where accountability to the system gives you better service and guards the majority against the excesses of the few.



Here/there
Not gone entirely into a virtual world, but simultaneously present in both the virtual and physical reality. The experience of the local physical reality is augmented, but also distracted by a digital layer of information.

Physically present here, but communicating and acting with consequences elsewhere. And likewise, not just acting on what’s taking place here, but affected by information streams or events that are remotely controlled by others.


A merging of disciplines
Not giving up deep knowledge of a subject, but augmenting your understanding with insights from other fields – transferring systemic features, cross fertilizing disciplines. In many cases because the context and the problems that need to be solved are so complex that the solutions require knowledge from a range of disciplines.

Hybrid taxis

Stockholm has a lot of Toyota Prius hybrids running as taxis. Nice touch. As usual, we can learn from the Swedes.