Category Archives: The Day After Tomorrow

A Scaffold for an Avant-Garde Business

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Cobra Manifesto page-1

Cobra Manifesto – Image from Beinecke Digital Collections

As many of you know, I am a big fan of Cobra, the avant-garde art movement established in 1948. The movement only existed for three years, but forever changed the landscape of postwar European art. 

What would an avant-garde business movement look like? 

How could we scaffold that?

In my Sep 2022 update, I briefly introduced The Scaffold. 

Today, I would like to share some more details about The Scaffold

The Scaffold is a brand-new transdisciplinary learning studio for the never-normal. 

A Scaffold: a temporary structure to let emerge something new

Transdisciplinary: for each client project, we curate a transdisciplinary tribe of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, artists, and philosophers to reflect and speculate about your better futures

Learning: this is not learning by teaching, but learning through conversations, acting, and doing

Studio: the keyword here is critique: individual, group, and formal critique

The Never Normal: the ever faster changing environment we operate in. The best metaphor is that of the kayaker in wild water.

Older metaphors like the speedboat (brute force), tacking the sails to the wind (adapting with the destination in focus), and surfing the waves of change (staying before the tsunami of disruption) don’t serve us anymore. 

Today you are in the water. 

You have to sense faster and better what is, sense faster and better what can become, and take action – right there – in the middle of a system in full motion. 

I often hear that we need more data, data is the new oil, and we need powerful AI and Machine Learning to discover patterns in the data, so we can make better and faster decisions. 

But data will bring us only so far. 

Data tell us something about correlation. 

Correlation is not the same as causation.

And also rational cause-and-effect thinking and planning are only part of the story. 

The Scaffold is imagination in full play: not knowing all the dots, and having to keep multiple lines of inquiry open at the same time, without coming to a conclusion, ànd feeling comfortable with that.

Orchestrating and activating collective intelligence (both human and non-human intelligence)

WHAT DO WE HAVE?

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

WHY ARE WE GOING THERE?

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

WHAT RULES DO WE FOLLOW?

WHAT IS FORBIDDEN?

HOW DO WE SPEAK TO EACH OTHER?

WHAT WORLD ARE WE PLAYING IN?

WHAT DO WE REALLY WANT?

The Scaffold asks questions related to the narratives that motivate individuals and organizations from the inside. These motivations have nothing to do with marketing from the outside. These motivations share the desire for societal, moral, and aesthetic advancement. 

The experiences that we design can be in-person, and others are 100% online or virtual, or a combination thereof. Our experiences are high-touch and highly facilitated. We use world-class facilitators. We apply live scribing, live video editing, and live note-taking. We use technology in support of the content, not to impress nor to create a spectacle. We challenge each other through individual and group critique. We experiment, explore, tinker, and dare to change in flight. We use physical and virtual channels/containers of experimentation & distribution 

We believe in the long format. Transdisciplinary impact groups learn by working, doing, and acting together during an extended period of time. This approach increases trust, bonding, candor, the release of real or perceived vulnerabilities, and the discovery of unintended opportunities.

The Scaffold is your PEPA

Play – Experimentation – Participation – Activation

The Scaffold is about dreaming & imagining big with your eyes wide open for reality. 

More inspiring quotes are here. 

More details at https://petervanstudios.com/the-scaffold/ 

The Scaffold is made possible through strategic partnerships with https://www.nexxworks.com/ and https://collectivenext.com/

Powered by a coalition of exceptional individuals as advisors for The Scaffold. A unique mix of strategists, futurists, engineers, entrepreneurs, experts in classic and contemporary arts, masters in narrative environments, philosophers, and a licensed architect and VR developer.

We are very curious about how this resonates with you. 

Who could be interested in such an offering? 

What is great, mediocre, or missing? 

Let’s chat

Hope to welcome you soon!

Warmest,

Petervan’s Delicacies – 5 June 2022

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delicacies

As usual, an incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

If you can’t get enough of these and want more, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

5 books to help you understand (and profit from) global trends

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The time that we could organise our companies without acting too much on global evolutions lies long behind us. Leaders understand more than ever that tackling world challenges not only creates a better context for all of us to live in but also presents fantastic business opportunities. It’s why am thrilled to be one of the curators of nexxworks’ Mission NXT program, designed to help leaders turn global trends into opportunities.

For those who are truly passionate about fostering this type of outside in vision, here are five (zero bullshit) books that fundamentally changed and formed my thinking in the matter over the years.

Benjamin Bratton – The Revenge of the Real (2021)

The pandemic showed us that we are completely unprepared to cope with our current deeply entangled world. According to Bratton, we need a “positive biopolitics” and an AI-based instrumentation of the world. He offers a refreshing way of thinking about sensors which is quite different from the worn out song about the surveillance state.

Ann Pendleton Jullian and John Seely Brown – Design Unbound (2018)

Read this if you want to understand how you can design for emergence in the Never Normal. You’ll need your full attention (it’s not a ‘light reading’ project), but in return you’ll receive two volumes of unique and well researched insights to help you better see what is and what can become. This is truly one of the most important business books I ever read.

Bruno Latour – Down to Earth (2018)

Latour calls for a third way in climate politics which is left nor right: a path between libertarian globalism, and leftist localism. One that is anchored in planet earth. Read this if you want to get to know one of the most important philosophers of the 21st century.

Jenny E. Sabin and Peter Lloyd Jones – LabStudio (2017)

Sabin and Lloyd Jones tackle the concept of the research design laboratory in which funded research and trans-disciplinary participants achieve radical advances in science, design, and applied architectural practice. The book demonstrates new approaches to more traditional design studio and hypothesis-led research that are complementary, iterative, experimental, and reciprocal.

Christopher Alexander – The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems (2012)

This real life story of American architect Christopher Alexander designing and building the Eishin university campus in Japan serves as an analogy for the battle between two fundamentally different ways of shaping our world. One system places emphasis beauty, on subtleties, on finesse, on the structure of adaptation that makes each tiny part fit into the larger context. The other system is concerned with efficiency, with money, power and control, stressing the more gross aspects of size, speed, and profit. This second, “business-as-usual” system is incapable of enabling the emotional, whole-making side of human life, according to Alexander, who then goes on to present a new architecture.

Warmest,

This post was originally posted on the nexxworks company blog, on the occasion of Mission NXT, which I help curate

Your nexx work at nexxworks?

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From time to time, I do a freelance gig for nexxworks, the company co-founded by Peter Hinssen. I am always amazed with the positive, welcoming spirit of the team.

This is a fresh, ambitious company, specialised in inspiring and connecting their customers about the Day After Tomorrow. Inspiring with examples of exponential change, immersing people in front-seat experiences with top innovators around the world, all while guiding and facilitating the questions that can activate this ambition into action.

And now they have eight (8!) open positions with quite attractive packages, including flexibility to work from home, interesting fringe benefits such as an electric company car, a sharing mobility solution, (e-)bike, laptop,  budget for a smartphone, international phone subscription, insurance packages, meal vouchers, etc.

If you are looking for a great job at one of the coolest companies in Belgium, this may be your chance. They call the world their home. If I was not retired, I would not hesitate a minute.

The nexxworks’ office building is in the middle of the student district of Ghent (Overpoort/St Pietersplein), close to sport, shops, public transport, lunch spots, … The completely refurbished iconic building was designed in 1930 by architect Fernand Brunfaut (°1886-†1972) for the editorial HQ of the newspaper “Vooruit”. Cool office space, kitchenette, meeting places, there is even a video studio for A/V productions.

Have also a look inside:

Some great team values as well:

  • Witty
  • Go-getting
  • Open-minded
  • Challenging
  • Positive

Eight vacancies. Maybe one of them is your nexx work. At nexxworks.

All info here: https://work.nexxworks.com/