Hellerau - Gelebte Innovation durch "Power of Pull"

Am Montag, den 28. August 2017, fand die alljährliche Innovationskonferenz futureSAX an einem bemerkenswerten und geschichtsträchtigen Ort der Tanz und Baugeschichte statt (Englisch review to be found here). Das Festspielhaus Hellerau, einst entworfen von Heinrich Tessenow als kultureller Mittelpunkt der noch im Enstehen begriffenen ersten deutschen Gartenstadt Hellerau (Website des StadtwikiDD) "vor den Toren der  großen Stadt (Dresden)", die sich vor über 100 Jahren zu einem Innovationshub zu entwickeln begann.

Jedem Besucher Dresdens sei an dieser Stelle ein mehrstündiger Gang durch die verwinkelten (eher gebogenen) Straßen des Stadtteils mit seinen unterschiedlichen Architekturstilen empfohlen. Am besten geschieht die Anreise rein elektrisch (ganz im Sinne des Bestrebens der Landeshauptstadt Dresden künftig "Modellstadt der Elektromobilität" zu werden) mit der Straßenbahnlinie 8 unter Mitnahme des "Streifzug 3 - Hellerau, die erste deutsche Gartenstadt" (auch als gedruckter Faltplan bei den Mobilitätszentren der Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG erhältlich) der DVB AG (übrigens eines der innovativsten Unternehmen der Region, oft unterschätzt in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung).

An besagtem Montag trafen sich rund 550 TeilnehmerInnen, um von frischen Innovationen Startups, etablierten mittelständischen Unternehmen oder Projekten visionärer Köpfen des Freistaats zu erfahren und die Besten zu küren (hier geht's zum Livemitschnitt der Preisverleihung - Ausdrücklicher Dank geht an dieser Stelle an die Kollegin des SMWA, die dies möglich machte).

Doch worum ging und geht es bei Veranstaltungen wie diesen an solch außergewöhnlichen Orten wirklich?

p. 99, "The Power of Pull"

John Hagel, Faculty Member von Singularity University, hat es bereits in seinem Buch "The Power of Pull - How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion" beschrieben und nennt es "Shaping Serendipity" (vereinfacht auf Deutsch gesagt: "gute Gelegenheiten schaffen"). Jeder von uns kennt es, man ist auf einer Konfernz, man plant Besuche einzelner Stände und  interessanter Gesprächspartner. Doch dann kommt alles anders! Man kommt in ein Gespräch, findet etwas außergewöhnlich Interessantes und kommt zu ungeplantem Wissen und Kontakten.

• wähle die Umgebung, in der sich Menschen mit ähnlichen Leidenschaften aufhalten
• werde sichtbar und bleibe dies auch für Menschen, die relevant sind
• beeinflusse deren Projekte und verstärke ihre Wahrnehmung
• entdecke und tausche dich mit den richtigen Leuten zur passenden Zeit(en) aus
• mache das Beste aus jedem Serendipity-Erlebnis 

Ist das Festspielhaus Hellerau ein solch "guter Ort", wo Menschen und unterschiedliche Ideen aufeinandertreffen und zugleich dem Ort eine positive Energie innewohnt, die mehr als nur das flüchtige Gespräch in der Pause ermöglicht?

Definitiv und ein klares "Ja"!

Und wieder ist es der Tanz und die performende Kunst, ob als Rhythmik, zeitgenössischer Tanz, Ballett oder die von der Dresdener Breakdancegruppe The Saxonz in Kooperation mit Hellerau - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste Dresden ins Leben gerufene Veranstaltung "Floor on Fire - Battle of Styles" (kurzer Trailer zum Format), Impulse für Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft gleichermaßen setzt.

In diesem Sinne darf man auf das kommende Programm "Rekonstruktion der Zukunft" in Hellerau gespannt sein, das sich um das Bauhaus, die Zukunft und last but not least Adolphe Appia, Bühnenbildner und Architekt, der vor über 100 Jahren Innenraum und Bühne des Großen Saals im Festspielhaus gestaltete.

Innovationen benötigen stets den passenden "Brutraum", um ins Entstehen zu kommen und das Festspielhaus Hellerau ist ganz sicher einer davon in der Stadt Dresden - ein wenig "versteckt" am Rande in der Heide. Wer einmal den Weg gefunden hat wird ihn sicher noch oft gehen, so wie selbst geschehen als ein Besuch und Führung in einem bis dato unsanierten Ensemble vor reichlich zwanzig Jahren auf dem Besuchsprogramm stand.

http://hellerau.org/rekonstruktion-der-zukunft

.... und zum Abschluss #PresencingStatus AKA Kurzreview:

1. Good - Festspielhaus Hellerau ist ein wunderbarer Ort an dem Innovation, das Neue, Kunst und Kulturen aufeinandertreffen (seit über 100 Jahren)
2. Tricky - Nutzung des futureSAX Veranstaltungs-WLAN nicht möglich, da Smartphone-Antenne keine 5 GHz Signale verarbeiten konnte
3. Learned - Es gibt immer eine Lösung, die weiter führt :-) Inspirative Orte, wie z.B. das Festspielhaus Hellerau, den Lichthof im Albertinum oder die Gläserne Manufaktur gibt es zahlreich in Dresden - einfach noch mehr und digital darüber sprechen 
4. Action - mehr als neugierig auf #inarowfestival und #RekonstruktionDerZukunft geworden 

Physics - Layer of Future Innovations for Society

On Sunday March 31, 2014 more than 5,000 highly trained physicists, students, PhD students, post docs, professors and industry representatives started to flock into the rather deserted campus of the Technical University Dresden (TU Dresden).

Spring time at HSZ, TU Dresden

Once again TU Dresden was hosting a meeting of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG), this time it is the DPG Spring Meeting 2014 of the Condensed Matter Section (SKM) which is held every three years in Dresden. And spring time is always a perfect time to meet in Dresden as the picture on the right hand side shows. Crops are just about coming out, and nature is getting colored once again.

During session SOE 17.6

One would imagine that this would be a physics-only event. Quite not so, as the sessions on biological physics (BP), physics of socio-economic systems (SOE) and the working group on Industry and Business (AIW) indicated. So certainly the offering to a wide range of interested participants, even outside the global physics community was amazing (all talks and presentations are held in English - for any curious participant a crash course in English as a "side-effect"). It wasn't that clear that system dynamics would play a role at all, as "stock and flow" was brought into the discussion by Hans Danielmeyer [German Wikipedia]. The connection to system dynamics becomes clearer as he visited Lincoln Laboratory in 1974 just around the time when Jay W. Forrester, who as an M.I.T. trained electrical engineer, conducted the research which finally led to the famous book "The Limits to Growth". This is what serendipity is called, and most likely occurs when attending a conference about a field one is not personally an expert in.

Working through the 500+ pages of the printed program is rather confusing for the first-timer, yet certainly sophisticated for the insider. Short abstracts explain all sessions that are offered, from plenary talks by known experts, such as Prof. em. Mildred Dresselhaus (here an interview in the New York Times), MIT, to PhD students presenting their ongoing research work to the audience. Of course the digital version is also available right here.

What became amazing during the five days, of which I only could focus on three days, but which showed once again (after my 2011 attendance) that new media is slowly trickling into the science community. It is still a tiny creek, but growing - three years ago I was the only one covering in real-time on twitter on the event, and possible "side connections" to other fields like arts. This time a team of HZB (Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin) had sent two people dedicated to cover some of their own sessions, and more.

Closing with just four short questions (called #PresencingStatus) and personal thoughts:

What was good? Once again a myriad of sessions that were not only exiting for the experts in the field of physics but also showed what physics is about; hashtag #DPGsm14 was put prominently on the press office door and on the website of the DPG Spring Meeting 2014 [h/t to press officer Dr. Michaela Lemmer]

What was tricky? Just a handful of visitors dedicated to use social media (but growing (!))

What have I learned? Physics is really more then physics !!! Once you get the motion just listening to the sessions (of the field you are not expert of), you see broader connections to fields you are personally involved

Next action? Spread the word about this conference, and come back in 2016 to Dresden; draw the connection to the #ISDC14 (the International System Dynamics Conference organized by the System Dynamics Society and the TU Delft in the Netherlands)

A few digital coverages (more online you know of - please let me know, and I embed these as well) about the DPG Spring Meeting 2014 in Dresden:

Storify by HTxA - High Tech x Agency
Storify by HZBzlog

Good Bye and see you in 2016 

All is Possible - Sometimes we Have to Look Back to Really See

First of all, it may sound odd, but most often you step across the most amazing things, paths or learning while searching intensively for something else. That is called SERENDIPITY (I personally didn't know about it until coming back from a conference on organizational learning in Muscat, Oman, in April 2008).

Around the time of the making of the video below (actually, it is more something like a full version movie, which carries lots of learning along the two hours) I was studying economics at the University of Bamberg. The "Iron Curtain" had fallen just some years earlier and as Bamberg is only 50 km away from the closed former East German border quite a few visits pulled me "over the border".

What I could see in the villages, and towns as well as talk to locals there was a social and economic system almost on the edge of collapse (quite what is the topic of the conversation in the movie with the makers of "Limits to Growth" (published in 1972, the link is to the original book version) Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows and Jørgen Randers).

"Beyond the Limits" Global Tomorrow Coalition (1992)

https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?25617-1/beyond-limits

20 years later living now in Eastern Germany, to be more exact in Dresden, now one of Europe's major hotspots for semiconductors (two major chip factories are found within city limits) and other emerging technologies such as plastic electronics, nanotechnology, life sciences, the mind flashed back to the days back in 1992 sitting in lectures, and hearing on how the economy of former East Germany could be sustainably transformed. Lots of effort was put into place, money flowed, and companies pushed out their products which the people eagerly bought as they lacked to have them over decades. All seemed possible.

Where do we stand now over 20 years later?

A question everybody of us has to ask her-/himself.

For me personally, the flow of action was as follows: while still in Bamberg I caught a copy of "The Machine that Changed the World" by Womack/Jones and somehow combined with what I had learned in my economics studies was hooked on what is called "Lean Thinking". The essence in short is to create more value with the given resources in a sustainable way, and at the same time enable all members of the workforce (from C-level to shopfloor) to cross-collaboratively learn to achieve the goal (more value with given resources) together.

Over the years I found myself in Dresden, where I moved right in the midst of the Economic Crisis of 2008/2009 with a dream my Finnish friends (whom I had met earlier in 2008 in Muscat, Oman) sort of whispered over via their blog. Google just had started a global competition, and people were asked to hand in their visions of the vision. I handed in what in version 1.0  was called Team Lea(r)ning Experience (something similar to what I had seen in Finland at Team Academy, a "management school without teachers" (as Peter Senge used to call it). Just a few months later in the spring of 2009, this vision became a name that sticks since then:

LockSchuppen - FutureLab 2056 - SingularAcademy - CollabSpace

Vision: bringing together citizens, students, businessmen, and researchers to give their special skills/ knowledge/ networks to enable something similar to what Singularity University has established in 2008 and to make a difference. This could be to create a startup with the help of others, bring new knowledge back to their companies, share the challenges that they face in their organizations and get new innovative solutions from the teams at LockSchuppen

Mission: create a place where the emerging future can be seen, touched, and used (through prototypes of new technologies and applications) - moving the learning from reading to "tactile learning" across all genders, ages and disciplines

How can it be achieved?

It probably needs more than just a group of dedicated people eager to work on the vision, some tools, and structure. A framework on how to achieve such bold goals is what is useful to set the course. An example of such an approach called u.school gives Otto Scharmer who started in a similar direction in 2008 first on his blog, and then with Presencing Institute.

Currently running is a MOOC called "Leadership MOOC" (website not active any longer) which is co-organized by the Presencing Institute and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), is free of charge and has the title:

"Leadership for Global Responsibility"

Feel free to attend (it started just this week, and we are already three attendees from Dresden - maybe you are the next). In case you are more orientated to learn for yourself new ways to tackle really complex challenges have a look at "The Systems Thinking Playbook on Climate Change" which can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the GIZ.

Have a relaxing Sunday, and enjoy with your friends, look out for a bright future, and appreciate the diversity around you. We will meet Egypt tomorrow here in Dresden, quite by another serendipity encounter, a call from Cairo yesterday. 

Everything is connected, and everybody makes it valuable together.

BMW Werk Leipzig - Semperoper - Starbucks Altmarkt

Quelle: eigene

Was können die drei Orte gemein haben? Auf den ersten Blick nicht erkennbar. Doch während ich hier im Starbucks Altmarkt in Dresden sitze und arbeite, gehen mir die Worte eines Freundes durch den Kopf "Das ist wohl Dein zweites Wohnzimmer?".

Was ist das Verbindende von Wohnzimmern? Sie sind in der Regel größer als andere Zimmer in Wohnung oder Haus. Wenig Möbel und freier Blick - "offener Himmel" für freie Gedanken.

Was das Social Web im Unermesslichen bietet (und damit so manchen Zeitgenossen schockt) bietet sich im kleineren Rahmen rund um uns herum. Manchmal nehmen wir es als gegeben hin und denken gar nicht darüber nach, warum wir uns eigentlich an bestimmten Orten wohlfühlen.

BMW Werk Leipzig (beim Video handelte es sich um ein Videoclip des GoetheInstitut aus dem Jahr 2003/2004, das jedoch vor einiger Zeit auf "privat" gestellt worden ist), wo ich das Glück hatte über fast fünf Jahre inmitten des Zentralgebäudes, von Zaha Hadid entworfen, zu arbeiten. 700 Mitarbeiter in einer über mehrere wie in eine Landschaft kreierte Büroumgebung, waren die Inspirationsquelle, die meiner Arbeit als Innovateur von Logistik- und Kommunikationsprozessen entgegen kamen. Der Blick ist teilweise über 200 m frei - zoom-out und zoom - Perspektive und Gespräche in ständigem Wechsel. Details in der Nähe und der Überblick in der Weite, in schneller Folge hintereinanderweg, wie beliebt.

Quelle: e-concierge.de

In der Semperoper ganz ähnlich - 40 Vorstellungen von der 5. Reihe bis 4. Rang Stehplatz. Doch wo habe ich das Gefühl am meisten von der Bühne, dem Publikum und dem "Feld" des Raums mitzunehmen? Es ist der 4. Rang, nicht gebunden einen Sitz, frei die Perspektive zu wechseln, von links nach rechts, vielleicht sogar einen freien Platz erheischen oder die Treppe.

Beim Blick aus dem Starbucks überkommt mich ein ähnliches Gefühl. Sollte dies einer dieser magischen Orte in der Stadt sein, der so viel mehr birgt als "nur" den amerikanischen Kaffeetraum?

Riding the Innovation Wave

In a world where information is freely floating from East to West, back and then South, only to build up a cobweb of personal connections.

Haven't you gone through an overwhelming information wave that felt like you were going right through a big crashing wave on the beaches of Hawaii or the Italian Adria in a storm? Of course one get dizzy, when one tries to swim through the wave with normal breast stroke.  A few meters and you probably would struggle and stop.

This overboarding sea of information, especially fueled by social networks like Facebook, XING, LinkedIn and alike seems like crashing on us where we used to swim in calm waters of life and business.

http://bit.ly/cJOoGT

JohnHagel and JohnSeelyBrown (both to be found on Facebook as well) tell the story of the surfers on Hawaii in their new book "The Power of PULL - How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion".  Crazy guys on the waves and yet being pulled by their passion to learn more to cope the "perfect wave".

What seems like a brain-overloading for some, is enjoyable fun for others. Quite different as the surfers on the surfs of Hawaii, the "web surfers" however are among the others in a sea that is called "Internet".

So let's not blame them to be different or crazy, even though we maybe don't understand what they are up to. Perhaps they are inventing just the new social innovation for the good of society, corporations or their community.

Let's them explore the waves we don't dare to ride - let their passion drive you as well.

A surprise visit to Finland

One week ago, while on the way to a job interview in Brussels (the world is going global;-)) my interview partner mentioned that he would be going to Finland to see the "Arrival of the Penguins".

Probably you frown your forehead as I did and ask, "What do you mean? Penguins in Finland around that time of the year? What are you talking about?".

Pretty soon it became clear what he meant: "Penguins" are the new students at Team Academy who were due to arrive in Jyväskylä on Monday, 25th of August 2008.

A phone being held to me with a peeping sound - the number of a Team Academy guy had been dialed already- made it all too clear: I was invited to come up north joining in the Team Academy Experience.

What to do? No ticket, no stuff for the cold north, no idea what was coming.......questions over questions.

The only thing that was clear was: THAT IS A CHANCE OF A LIFE TIME!

Sitting in a small restaurant south of Brussels with my interview partner, Charles van der Haegen, I decided: Check it out, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is not too far away and on my way to Amsterdam.

...and so it became true: landing on Finish soil on Sunday night around 11pm, arriving at the hotel downtown (where already some other folks heading to the same destination had taken their rooms earlier that night), and getting up the next morning around 5:30am in order to meet the others and catch a train up to Jyväskylä at 6:30am.

A mere three hours later the felt dream became reality: welcome to TEAM ACADEMY!

....and it has been taken on new hights, connections, friendships, learning, reflecting ever since:-))