Pluralist Economics - Growth or Degrowth? It's not an either or

It must have been a social media post mentioning the announcement of the 3rd Summer Academy for Pluralist Economics that caught my attention some months ago. The thing that let me even dig deeper was the fact that the Club of Rome (initiator of what became quite a famous research study on the current state of the earth, climate change and how business should be done, "The Limits to Growth"; anyone who'd like a quick overview on the book check out the interview between Willem L. Oltmans and Jay W. Forrester, the creator of the field system dynamics and initiator of the report, which gives a quick glimpse into the book and its concepts that hold largely true still today in the 21st century).

Having participated in "Transforming Capitalism Lab", a sub-prototype of the MOOC "u.lab - Leading From the Emerging Future" that runs again this September for the 6th consecutive time since 2014, applying for the Summer Academy felt like something "not not to do!" I applied and a few weeks later got the notification that I am in. Can't say how excited I was, especially as my "economics days" were 25 years ago, and focus of work and interest had changed since quite a lot.

What really had drawn my interest was the fact that for the last ten years, since returning to Dresden right in the middle of the bursting Financial Crisis in late 2008, and seeing that "economics 101" neither had produced the "green meadows" of Eastern Germany nor enabled entrepreneurs and visionaries to pursue their dreams for the betterment of society in the region (the complete journey of mine in this context you find here).

Reading into the agenda of the Summer Academy and the previous ones, fond memories of myself sitting in front of Reuters monitors in the trading room of the bank where I did my apprenticeship between 1986-88 and seeing my held stock plunge into a "pit black hole" when the Black Monday happened on October 19, 1987. Not much explanation took place after that time (pretty much like what happened after the Financial Crisis in 2008). As a direct consequence I found myself studying economics afterwards, yet not getting satisfied by the classical curriculum at the university which (back then as still these days) focuses on trying to analyse the developments of the past, missing out the deeper exploration of the "Why?" consequently. Since these days in the late 80's, also experiencing a complete economy (the former GDR) in a massive transition over the last three decades, and having lived in Saxony for half of that time, I am trying to understand and explore other ways of the "natural" growth paradigm which has many "unintended side-effects" that we can see everywhere.

Garden of the Protestant Academy of Thuringia

So the question came up, "Which workshop to take?" amongst almost a dozen ones ranging from Marxist Economics via Feminist Economics to Complexity Economics. To get a glimpse of the variety of economic theory see here the overview at Exploring Economics. It turned out to be "Entrepreneurship and Diverse Economics", making the most sense. Arriving in Neudietendorf and meeting the workshop class on Saturday morning I could not be more thrilled to meet students from various fields (law and medicine including), consultants, policymakers coming from countries such as Colombia, Uganda, Germany, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. The picture you see is the outdoor area which was going to be filled with people discussing the workshops, exchanging thoughts, playing chess or just having a great lunch or dinner outside over the next couple of days.

The core question that followed our workshop over the week was the following, "Does it always need growth or are there other paths of economic progress and well-being of society?"

However, what we see and quite naturally come about in conversation with colleagues and friends it is all about growth (without any mentioned boundaries). "Bigger is Better" seems to be the thing that drives society and the economy, all around the world - yet there are other approaches for companies.

After we had digged deeper in the theory and different concepts, often overlapping in some essential aspects such as giving back value to the society/community and strongly valueing sustainable processes, we learned about some examples of such companies. More of that including companies/projects to be found in this overview from which we drew much of the basis of our conversations in class.

Package of Amarelli liquorice

However, after returning from Neudietendorf and my mind buzzing with the inputs it gained over the week, memories of the past came back once opening the cupboard holding our tea and coffee: a box of liquorice manufactured by Amarelli. While on holiday in Italy we happened to visit their company, where we learned about the peculiar making of liquorice (Lakritz). The most stunning thing was that this company is in family hand since its founding in 1731. Even more so it is a member of a global community of family-owned businesses that had been founded more than 200 years, called The Hénokiens. What is so amazing about those companies (the oldest, a spa in Japan in family hands for 46(!) generations since the 8th century) is that all have grown to a certain size, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand employees.

Staying for generations in family ownership says one thing for sure, "Growth in numbers is not everything!"

Why not take some of the Hénokien wisdom into account when starting your company or leading an existing one?

For further research and learning around degrowth check out the following links:

• Degrowth in Movement
• New Systems - Possibilities and Proposals
• Club of Rome Summer Academy 2017

Hellerau - Where Art and Tech Dance Together

Yesterday the final presentation day of futureSAX - The Saxon Innovation Conference took place at the Festspielhaus Hellerau, an iconic building in the smallish suburb Hellerau on the edge of the globally known city of Dresden.

The area of what a little bit more than 100 years ago just heath land with scattered woods became an entrepreneurial and dance hotspot shortly after its founding as the first German "garden city" in 1909. The visionary entrepreneur, Karl Schmidt (link to "German History in Books and Images" by @GHIWashington), envisioned not only a new furniture production site but also a suburb where working, education and living would jointly go together in the most natural form (literally embedded into the landscape of that strip of land).

The prosperous business owner and his outstandingly new ideas attracted famous architects of the time to this new "venture" and furthermore pulled in artists like Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, a Swiss musical pedagogue, who finally became the initiator of creating the Festspielhaus Dresden to perform rhythmical gymnastics.

So it made more than sense to choose this location to showcase some of the amazing innovations, like startups scaling up and projects in the making, as well as established regional companies that have gone to take exponential technologies to transform there sometimes centuries-old business models. As 100 years earlier not only local and Saxon players, but also attendees from Berlin and other locations found their way to Hellerau. BTW, the location is most conveniently reachable via eMobility as a tram line (No. 8) operated by the local public transport corporation DVB AG has a stop ("Festspielhaus") nearby with a direct connection to downtown Dresden.

Saxony once again showed, that despite the edgy position within Germany, it has houses a high number of passionate and clever minds who are not just talking about shaping the future. They have dared to hand in their ideas, projects and startups putting their future on the "dance floor" where once Gret Palucca (and others) brought modern dance to the public.

To cut the story short, the prize ceremony has been banned on "digital tape" namely Facebook Live by technology passionate members of the SMWA_SN (Saxon State Ministry for Labour, Economics, and Infrastructure). Prior to the prize ceremony, a group of young dancers of the Tanzraum Dresden performed a wonderful that in some way resembled the struggles entre-/intra-/extrapreneurs face while working on their innovative ideas to see the bright light of success. It may take quite some time, not days, not a week, rather years or even decades.

Looking forward to the next edition of futureSAX in 2018 and the path there, rich of shaped serendipity encounters (here a short clip with John Hagel, co-chair of the Deloitte Center for the Edge on shaped serendipity) along the way.

Wrapping up on a day full of surprise encounters, meeting new and old friends one sentence captures what innovation is literally all about:

Innovation is like performing arts, you passionately have to stay with it through training, repetition until the idea becomes a reality. 

In short, the review on yesterday's experience will be captured what was coined #PresencingStatus back in the "early days" of occDD (Open Coffee Club Dresden, an idea we brought back from Boston back in 2009):

1. Good - perfect location; dense, somewhat crowded place (enabling serendipity encounters); meeting friends from Berlin who are also in the #ExponentialTechnologies space; most inspiring conversations
2. Tricky - 5 GHz WiFi networks may lead to connection problems (h/t to Hellerau's guest network that worked flawlessly over the whole time); noisy crowd during the pitches 
3. Learned - Humble Inquiry (a concept Edgar H. Schein, Prof. Emer. of MIT Sloan School of Management with family roots also from Bad Schandau, Saxony as he writes in his autobiography "Becoming American"; "Are you at futureSAX in Hellerau today?") really led to a most surprising and rich conversation with someone who had not been aware of futureSAX 
4. Action - Doing what we always do, weaving the various threads of information, events, and persons together into a bigger picture of Saxony that is truly more than what can often be read in the media outside Saxony  

Grasping Beyond the Stars and Landing in Saxony

Space technology is not just since live streams of the relanding (CRS-11 Landing aerial view) of the Falcon 9 rocket, and several resupply missions to the ISS (International Space Station) made possible by the team around serial entrepreneur Elon Musk in the news. Planetary Resources, a bold start-up with the mission to mine Earth-near asteroids, co-founded by Peter H. Diamandis (he is also the co-founder of Singularity University, a visionary think tank with the mission to teach and empower leaders about the power of converging exponential technologies through various in-person and digital formats, whose chancellor Ray Kurzweil gave an outstanding keynote at the 4th Dresden Future Forum in 2010).

At first sight one would not expect Saxony, or more specifically Dresden, to play a significant role in this context. And yet, it does. More subtle through the person Prof. Hans Müller-Steinhagen, Rektor of the Technical University of Dresden (TU Dresden), who not only led the university to its current heights being one of 11 top universities in Germany with the "excellence status" in 2012. This even pulled in the interest of the New York Times which put a story up on this achievement in January 13, 2013

Dresden, once the home of the East German passenger plane industry in the late 50s and beginnings of the 60s, has transformed this legacy into being a viable part of the Airbus-family with the Elbe Flugzeugwerke EFW that is specializing transforming passenger aircrafts into freight liners. Even though situated on the edge of Germany, and even on the edge of the City of Dresden, there are many "hidden champions" in the aerospace industry (see the post "Engineered Serendipity Shaping the Future") and which can be found in the Cluster LRT Sachsen/Thüringen.

On top of this, the TU Dresden is home of the Institut für Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik, and one of the largest science communities in the field of Aeronautics in Germany, mainly at the former GDR Aerospace campus in Dresden-Johannstadt with international ties to ESA, NASA, and the International Space University (another startup by Peter H. Diamandis going back to late 80s when he and two buddies at the MIT founded it, now it has its permanent headquarters near Strasbourg, France).

Looking back five years in time when IEEE TTM (IEEE Time Technology Machine) took place right in the historic center of Dresden, SpaceX had just completed its first successful re-supply mission to the ISS (see "Boundaries Across Boundaries, Technologies, and Cultures") it makes perfect sense for another bold step. And it was there to come, not too unexpected as the curious observers of the developments would certainly confirm.

The DLR (German Aerospace Center) the national aeronautics and space research center the Federal Republic of Germany decided during its Senate Meeting end of June the establishment of seven DLR institutes across Germany. One of which is based in Dresden, at the TU Dresden, and it will focus on the "Research into the digitalisation of aviation"

#DLR opens new Institute of Software Methods for Product Virtualisation in #Dresden https://t.co/csd3Iqspxq pic.twitter.com/nwzldcnUqJ

— DLR - English (@DLR_en) 3. August 2017

making not only use of the excellent software industry base, the scientific research community, but also of the high-performance computing capabilities that the TU Dresden provides (and which other potential users are connected to such as the MPI-CBG which opened the Center for Systems Biology Dresden lately).

Today the inaugiration of the Institute of Software Methods for Product Virtualisation in Dresden has taken place and more about the event and first impressions, interviews, and statements are available through DLR's Twitter account through which the exciting news were announced on July 26, 2017,

Am 3.8. eröffnen wir das DLR-Institut für Softwaremethoden zur Produkt-Virtualisierung in Dresden.Wir twittern währenddessen via #DLRdresden

— DLR_de (@DLR_de) 26. Juli 2017

and the specific hashtag #DLRdresden which has been in use since.

We congratulate all people, institutions, and companies who have made this amazing step possible, and with the #DLRdresden and its team most successful scaling into a prosperous and exciting future.

Engineered Serendipity Shaping the Future

It is been a while, on March 2, 2017, the Economic Development Corporation Saxony (Wirtschaftsförderung Sachsen GmbH) invited the press to their yearly press talk on the achievements of the past year and a lookout for the future.

Saxon State Minister for Economics, Labor and Transportation, Martin Dulig, SMWA, and Head of Wirtschaftsförderung Sachsen GmbH, Peter Nothnagel, welcomed the media and gave a broad overview of the activities and successes within the past year 2016. Despite the fact that the projects that the WFS facilitated a similar number of investments over the course of the year 2016 compared with 2015, the average invest volume was about half compared with that of the preceding year. Peter Nothnagel, "Auch kleine Projekte werden zu großen." (English: "Also small projects become large ones"). What at first sight might look as a not so positive outlook into the future might also be an early sign of focus shift from traditional industries towards advancing technologies. Such include space-related and exponential technologies such as additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing or AM) and other business fields that are massively impacted by the rising digitalization (e.g. e-Mobility, autonomous driving, life sciences, IIoT) and economic activities around emerging digital business models.

Extruder for probe picking
(prototype)

In general, it once more became clear that the WFS is a major "anchor point" between Saxony, its scientific communities, the established and emerging SMEs (though mostly small in size, nevertheless big at highest quality levels) in the region, and the international business community. The event took place at the headquarters of Hoch Technologie Systeme GmbH (HTS GmbH), a small yet unique supplier and service provider specifically for the aerospace, space and rail industry with 33 employees and currently led by its founder Dr. Wolfgang Göhler who had founded the company in 1996. One of the reasons not only the wide array of well-trained engineers streaming out of Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) but also the unique density of companies and a cluster in the field of aerospace in the region.

In 2016, HTS GmbH had its 20th anniversary of operations,  RUAG Space, the space division of the Swiss RUAG Group, had announced the take-over of HTS in order to build on their long-lasting business collaboration between the two companies which started in 2002 and has been successfully fulfilled projects around several space missions by ESA and players in the field. Quite surprisingly RUAG Space is involved in the project OneWeb. This ambitious project is supported also by serial entrepreneur and space enthusiast Sir Richard Branson and is aiming to position several hundred satellites around the Earth to provide internet connection to all regions of the world, especially remote ones as stated by Invest Switzerland on Twitter in late 2016.

from left: Dr. Axel Roenneke (RUAG Space), 

Dr. WolfgangGöhler (HTS GmbH), 

Martin Dulig (SMWA), Peter Nothnagel (WFS GmbH), 

Jakob Kania (Support Q GmbH)

As Dr. Axel Roenneke, VP Marketing & Sales of RUAG Space, stated at the press conference things are like to change dramatically in the space industry as it gets more industrialized.

Presently most of the equipment for space missions is small in number and unique, often made by craftsmanship. Whereas in the past building of a satellite took about nine months, processes, also supported by emerging additive manufacturing technologies in metal as well as in ceramics, now constructing three satellites per day (!) is one of the bold goals. Industrializing production processes, and keeping the highest standards is a challenge and an opportunity at the same time, bringing the relevance of lean (LAI, Lean Aerospace Initiative (1993-2012) by MIT), Industry 4.0 and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) into perspective. In this context, it is also worth to mention the conference on Industry 4.0 in Dresden, called "Industrie 4.0 - Sachsen stellt sich auf" (#SachsenIndustrie40).

During the event and afterwards it came up several times in personal conversations that the region, and especially Dresden with its legacy in material sciences, additive manufacturing expertise (the Fraunhofer Campus in Dresden is about to become a major research and applied research hub in the field)), the aerospace legacy and other technology fields may play a larger role than is presently visible in the space industry that is currently becoming more industrialized and scaling up. In this context, as scaling production processes need enlarged quality management efforts, Jakob Kania, founder and CEO of Support Q GmbH, was introduced. Support Q GmbH, based in the most eastern part of Saxony focuses on services enabling suppliers to deliver products, especially to the automotive industry to high-level quality standards. Jakob Kania had attended earlier last year a market research tour by WFS to Mexico where during one of the meetings during the tour a conversation with the head of the Mexican Automotive Supplier Association took place. This rather "unexpected" conversation pulled up a new potential market chance in Mexico where the automotive industry is currently scaling production, and with it as well as driven by rising production in the U.S. OEM plants, suppliers are coping with rising quality challenges with ramping production.

The key learnings from this press talk that might be useful for other industry leaders as well:

1. take a long breath when working on something visionary (e.g. space technology)
2. focus on core competencies and specific capabilities where you are a master in the field
3. take opportunities (even when the outcome cannot be clearly defined)
4. never underestimate the value of an organization or region due to its size and position 
5. observe closely how industry reality shifts swiftly with exponential technology advancement

Update per 2017-10-25
- Bauteile für Luft- und Raumfahrt aus dem 3D-Drucker, idw

Update per 2017-06-28 

- Satellite mega-constellation production begins via BBC  

- OneWeb Satellites eröffnet Serienfertigungslinie via Airbus Press

The Singularity and Exponential Change - April 20-21, 2016 Where is More to Learn

In "The Singularity Is Near" futurist and now Google's Chief Engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts a not so distant time in the future when computers have more computing power than humans, and will actually bring it on the road.

The metaphor "The Singularity" is taken from physics where it is used to describe the unpredictable chaos that is following the development of a "black hole".

What seems to most of us as a purely Sci-Fi dreamlike utopia or even dystopia can be felt already some forms that things are changing around us so fast that we as individuals and especially organizations often haven't learnt extensively how to cope with it.

Whole industries and their key players are threatened by digital competitors like the film industry with Kodak once being the "poster child". Despite the fact that an engineer at Kodak developed the first digital camera, which of course back in the day showed the concept, and the starting point of an exponential process that started at such a low level that the company denied any substantial progress on its development only to see itself filing bankruptcy for Chapter 11 in early 2012 (in 2013 Kodak rose again, though with a much smaller workforce, as a technology company).

What does it tell us?

Exponential technologies enable new-comers in the traditional business and industry fields to take advantage of digital technologies outpacing the business models of the traditional players, as Instagram, Pinterest and others did with Kodak.

Should your industry, and organization fear the same fate? Why, if you are open to see what is happening now already and where the exponential trajectory may lead impacting your own business models.

What till now was possible to learn at on a super-fast learning trip to Silicon Valley's unique think and do tank Singularity University either on a 10-week summer course or various shorter workshop offers at executive level now is coming to Germany with #SUGermanySummit (hashtag) in Berlin from April 20-21, 2016.

Most often we are stuck in our disciplinary boundaries. As a cartographer might not reach into #Industrie40 space and yet layout digitization might be a huge improvement factor in future production scenarios. So why not cross-learn what exiting technologies are around that might have positive impacts on our industry and work field. Engineered serendipity as described in article stemming from the Aspen Ideas Festivals 2014 might be exactly what participants (especially newcomers to the Singularity University community, as it is their first official appearance in Germany organized by SU Ambassador for Germany Stephan Balzer) will get.

Be open. Get overwhelmed. Take the relevant knowledge out of the conversation.

Even if you can't be in Berlin in person connecting via digital technology, namely in the communication such as Twitter, Facebook or else and check out the speaker line-up, and program on the SingularityUniversityGermanySummit website.

Two Conferences Seen Through One Digital Hole

The world is a continuum, circling around itself, and around the sun and we as individuals have often the feeling being stuck in one single place.

Certainly that has been the case for centuries when we in our small villages seldom got notice about what happened such outside our hunting area. Inventions like the wheel, telegraph, telephone and lately the World Wide Web have changed that world view immensely. Not that we as a species have adapted to it yet fully. Of course place still matters, and small communities where we feel a kind of safety, and common understanding.

However what would you do if you'd year in two "global villages" there would something happening some thousand kilometers away, 9 time zones apart and where you perhaps don't even know a single person, and you even can't visit the one merely a 120 km away due to other restrictions?

Would you go?

Just imagine for a minute you'd be in the year 2020.  Technology would be so advanced that on your room wall there would be an oversized OLED flat-foil-screen that would instantly connect with the conversations happening in both locations. You could follow what is being talked about, learn to know new people by sheer serendipity (as something catches your eye, and an instant later connects with some thoughts on your mind, or another occasion you'd talked about this topic months before).

Utopia?

Not quite. The world we live in seems to be in a lot of turmoil, and yet something is slowly emerging. The first time this caught probably everybody was in late 2008 when the global economy was hit by the financial crisis. The disconnect between real value creation, and what the banking sector (at large, including hedge fonds) was setting the bets on in order to grow the global economy in ways that seemed outrageous at this time. This is now almost to the date six years ago. Still it seems it is all about making more money, more profit for the sake of it.

No, two conferences at quite diverse locations - one in Silicon Valley right in San Francisco, and the other one not far from so-called "Silicon Saxony" in Leipzig - deal with on how to invest, and do good at the same time building up a sustainable social capital (SOCAP14), and the other tackling the questions in order to change the economic growth to rather a degrowth (Degrowth14).

The most precious resources we as humans own is the time of life, and so there is a trade-off every time we have to decide to go to one or the other conference (in general between several activities that give value back to us).

So perhaps the best of our times in terms to engage with two conferences at the same time are the boundary objects that social networks enable us to create in order to facilitate, and ease the conversation across disciplines, in time & space, and accelerate the knowledge flow allowing us to create the serendipity bumps that often are the most memorable moments in life, where we have learned more than we could have imagined before they had happened.

To give an idea what it could be like see for #SOCAP14 and #Degrowth14 just now on your screen.

10 TED Talks Predicting the Future

Predicting the future, shaping it with language! 

The Future of Serious Stories

It's a kind of serendip(ity) - with an open mind not
fixed on certain special fields of interest, one often
explores new fields an future comes in via surprise.

Storytelling in the serious sense can be very useful
in the business context. Instead of just reading the
number in a balance sheet the mutual conversations
between persons enable a flexible flow of thoughts.

What stories do you remember well from around your
workplace that helped you to understand processes
or human behavior?

Opportunity Space Entrepreneur

The entrepreneurial spirit is probably the most important driver for a future economic drive. The world is changing too fast in forms of new competitors, new markets, new needs, new challenges (facing the world). Entrepreneurs look for the new find solutions where nobody else is looking or taking the future chances for real.

And yet the entrepreneur often tends to present the "real" chances of her/his innovative approach. PeterDrucker in his 1985 book "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" writes about the German chemist who developed Novocain the first local anesthetic. But the doctors he approached didn't want to change from full anesthetic to this.

Then suddenly dentists used to practice this - and liked it. He got made on that and traveled up and down Germany to give speeches about not using Novocain in the dentist field.

The learning from that: you don't like what you have not planned for. Even as an entrepreneur (!)

What could be the reason for that: when having found something interesting to build a business around one often closes in just to not let the information spill in the larger mass and focuses on just a single field of use. The fear of scaling it up, or having worked for the "wrong" purpose sets entrepreneurs under stress - still 25 years after Peter Drucker's writing.

The way to overcome the "thinking stuck": talk with people who are not your possible competitors, ask people in the restaurant, train, conference what they may think of the idea of encounter this or that (the innovation you have in mind) - spread it in as widely context you may can.

Especially if it is a new idea, not yet in use you may feel uneasy telling people about an idea.

Just dare to do - you can only win :-) Some call it  S E R E N D I P I T Y or Innovation on the Edge