Humberto Schwab

The 19 October took place in Barcelona a substantial business event of a new partnership between www.zanox.com , Axel springer and Publigroupe. This global alliance wants to monetize the internet worldwide. I was the socratic moderator, and it was interesting to see how in the hardcore money corner all are looking for the right approach of the autonomous consumer. We are talking about a 60 biljoen market in internet sales. The basic formulae of zanox is the performance based internet market, which gives anybody or any individual he oportunity to earn money with internet. The relation between the innovative zanox and the old publishing medium axel springer is of course a hybrid combination, which looks very promesing. The performance based market could be a chance to enhance cooperation in stead of competition. Open intelligence is a business tool to create value. The important point I want to stress is that the real consumer- as- a- producer- approach could be the key for strong open and transparant communication between the client and the alliance. Transparancy will be a key value for the worldwide business. Integrity will be easy trackable by consumers as easy as consumer behaviour is trackable and object of focused advertisment. Maybe the quality of the advertisment will increase and the quantity decrease. Interesting is that the classical BILD has to be bought at the kiosk everyday again: the social behaviour of the consumer is integrated in the buying behaviour. Half of Germany goes out everyday to get the news. Trustworthy and loyalty are also strong values for inormation media.

We also established some certainties and uncertainties to develop some future scenarios.

The socratic aspects of the event were very minimal, but the interaction between the leaders and the interaction with the audience showed once again that there is a lot to win with methodologies (like EurolAb and socratic discourse) that enhance collective intelligence and collaborative thinking. People were very satisfied to engage in common brainstorms. The business of the future has socratic governance as a mark.

We have an inclination to associate learning with school. We have also the inclination to associate with school, negative feelings of boredom in the classroom and positive feelings about the outside classroom. The point is that we do feel that learning is boring and something concerning your youth. The quality of life however is dependend more on our learning activites then on our activities in for example work. Learning we have been taught, is something you do to acquire a skill, withw hich you can earn money or reach a better job. This total rationalistic view on learning, darkens the essence of learning which has more to do with breathing and living as an organic creature, than reaching goals.  This basic human ontological essence is the secret for a human enlightened life. The learning mode is the mode in which we the full experience of richness in being. It is the way we can exercise value, create value and give value. Learning and art are the values that a democratic society should promote for beings of all ages in all levels. Learning is not a tool, it is living.

Doing some training with some CEO’s of the agricultural fruit and vet industry, was quite motivating. They are good in philosophizing new horizons, mainly beause they work in a strong traditional context. The traditional aspect in this branch is dominant, so you could see it yearns for innovation. Especially the question what to eat is a fine example of the importance of traditional knowledge. We have practically destroyed our ability to use the experience based knowledge of our ancestors in good food. In Holland the “huishoudschool” was an example of bad innovation. All women of lower and middle class families were send to a school where they were forced to copy an universal approach of cooking, cleaning, ironing, caring etc. This led to the so called “curriculum disease”, some guys want to have it all standardized in standardizable  chunks. So all the Dutch households experienced the exact same way of cooking the vegetables or the meat. The main target was hygiene, the rules of health. That is why there is no Dutch culinary tadition left. We have still a big inclination in Europe to have sterile foodproducts. But bacteria are vital to create a bit of taste in your food. The fabulous Dutch butcher Rodriquez made his meat with stinking bacteria a halucinating experience. He had to shut down his business.  Anyway thanks to the “huishoudschool” we now have overcooked vegetables and potatoes. The guys rom the foodindustry innovated by simply restore the knowledge which was still smoldering in the hearts of some elderly people.

Innovation is always about the elements of the quality of life, we have destroyed a lot of tribal knowledge about the way to have a quality life. That is why for a big part we can go “back in the future”.

As a moderator I chaired the Energylab of the Club of Amsterdam in Girona held 17 and 18 april. It was really an exciting experience: we had gathered  experts from nucleair energy,  biofuel,  nanotech, fuelcel technology, politics and academia. We redesigned the questions om energy and worked from a standpoint of oportunities in stead of problems. We did a lot of socratic brainstorms and used the scenariomethod (so we did the Eurolab method). The exchange between experts on a philosophical level is bares lots of fruits. The cross disciplined brainstorm needs socartic approaches.

We really emphasized the fact that values should be at the base of the reflection on energy:

Children, free access, the quality of life, open dialogue, the person as part of the community and energy as en enabler to realize goals. We do think that considering human beings as fundamental embedded in communities, is creating models of quality which can lead to meaningfull goals for individuals. Energy is then the enabler.

We have four scenarios which can be situated as bottom up society in an emerging country (harvesting energy), a top down society in an emerging country (central energy planning), a top down society in a developed country ( caps and tax) and a bottom up society in a developed country (communicating energy). We see different routes for different countries, but we will end with a bottom up scenario in accordance with the web 2.0 developments in the world. The file will be published later.

You can sell your wine to anyone who is willing to pay for it. It takes a lot of effort to make a  good wine. I am not only talking about the work “en el campo”, it is the selection process, the fermentation process and the final phases all need a lot of perseverence and love. It is then a little bit akward to see others earn a lot of money (200%) out of your loveproduct. It is normal for raw materials  - used in different product - to generate a lot of more money then the costprice. But wine is like a lovebaby, it has personality and feeling, it is only available at a certain local aerea  and the caracter is the most important aspect of the wine. In a value orientated businessplan, you do not sell to just anonimous persons, you will share the wine experience with friends and with people who wants to follow your taste and your interpretations of quality. In this way you create value in society by selling a product. So a good businessplan is to make an association with real fans of your wine, you can then sustain your energy.

We are raised in a century of cumulating freedom. It started with the restoring of democracy in Europe. The postwar industrial high provoked a richness which still is growing in unheard intensity. The embarassing of richness is the cause of a lot of unhappy rich lives. Yet the most strong movement of all, triggered by the widespread rich consumers society, is the freedom movement. This movement was in the hearts and minds of youngsters and adults alike. This freedom is strongly interpreted as the absence of rules, duties and chains. It means strongly an abolishment of any regulating restrictions, be it religious, political, legal or cultural. This “I want to break free” movement suggested an end of slavery but in real was the starting of a new slavery.

The abolishment of cultural and religious restrictions left people with the ideology of post modernity or of “the anything goes’” ideology: it resulted in the feeling that in order to be modern or post modern you should be completely free of any determinating factors in your live. It errased all sort of ignorant and blocking traditional values and parctices. The new citizen will decide for himself what values and which traditions he will absorb. The innerworld got empty.

The synergy between the abolishment of constraints and the enrollment of the consumers society lead to a strong hybrid vulcano of free choices in the market dimension. This market driven and money driven system did gave free space to inhale all the aspects of a pleasure driven paradise. We talk then of course about the western industrialized society. Free from any constraints, the only value that keeps the whole thing together is this freedom of choosing your consumers life. Yet probably we overlooked the impact of these swap on our innerworld and on the growth of the innerworld of youngsters. We see immnes social, ecological problems now, but we have weakened our characters with pleasure satisfaction, relativistic approaches, cool fantasies. Maybe we weaken our internal system by the way we organize our extern world that triggers us. We need proudness, honour and compassion yet we see fear for anything. We see a consumer society that is completely obsessed with risk avoidance. We have so many people useless because of their richness or because of their poorness. We have so many systems that simulate for people their thinking, acting and feeling; systems that take away from them any risky action. Systems that suggest that you can buy your happy live buy buying insurances as if it were consumersgood. We forget that the happiness of people lies within their inner experiences. At the same time we need now strong characters, we know the context that engulfe us now. Probably we need to create again meaningfull context in which we make ourselves stronger. We cannot do this on our own. Just like animals stick togther to beat external natural dangers, we should stick together to beat our common internal dangers. Social contexts constrain you and at the same time give you the medium to evolve to a social character that gives and receives meaning from the fellow social characters. In the end we want recognition from other social characters, we want to be seen by other eyes, we want to be respected. The funny thing with consumersgood satisfaction is that it is fundamentally a yearning for recognition and a way to mimetise the ideal character.

We have to rethink our money driven system as opposed to the traditional value system. Probably we have to integrate again traditions in our public life. Traditions are treasures of community wisdom, that is why we can make new traditions. Designed traditions should entail industrial and consumers values, it should put people in risky human horizons.

We can put education, governmental health and jusitice and safety aside as contraproductive system buttons; we have to design a society around personal growth . Put learning, good life and responability in a model of honour and proud.

Yes Africa has maybe something to offer in this aspect.

How can we combine innovation and tradition to achieve an active life?

An active life is a life in which you are in control of your own life. In which you dare to dream your dream, and not just execute your utilities. Not just satifying your needs.

People who dare to dream don’t work to make money, they create energy for themselves and the people around them. If everybody dares to dream we don’t need these stupid interfaces we call institutions. You just look for your fellow dreamer and work it out.