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Food, fire and fun
What do these three words have in common? They determine the energy usage of human beings. In reality they are the three essentials of life.
Food is obviously used for nutrition, needed to provide us with the necessary energy to grow to adulthood and function as a living organism.
Fire refers to every means of combustion that we need to heat ourselves, cook, produce or automate our mobility.
Fun is the most difficult to understand to the full. Most of our appliances at home are related to making life comfortably easy. It takes our attention away from the troubles and gives us time to fulfil our lifetime with joyful things. It has become quite an industry.
What people forget is that fun is a direct derivative from the molecular frequencies of attraction that connects matter in a purposeful and living manner (see my blogs about the secrets of life). The way we smell, talk, look, taste, feel, sense, behave and interpret perception, triggers the energy of motivation around feelings of love, fear, attraction or repellent.
Fun has a bigger impact on the human nature than anything else. It is the energy that makes us reproduce, create partnerships, care about things, experiment or take risks.
When we refer to sustainable human progress nearly all global leadership attention goes to food and fire because they can be commercialized and politicized in an economic system. Yet our productivity, peace, creativity and progress is not determined by food or fire but the amount we smile!
Measures of progress are not determined by how good we feel but how much fun we have!
Global issues, local solutions, global application
Last week I met with Caroline Hummels, director of the department of Industrial Design of the Technical University of Eindhoven. She gave me a copy of her inaugural lecture “Matter of Transformation, sculpting a valuable tomorrow” in which she refers to the transformative global development of economies. She had used the views of Brand and Rocchi, two senior management directors of Philips, who describe an organic move from industrial to transformative economies.
Interestingly (but not surprising) the 4 steps of Brand and Rocchi coincide with my 4 fields of human complexities even though I see them as all inclusive and not just linear
This linear transformation of economies would be motivated by various global issues. The industrial era has globalized and standardized massive manufacturing and logistical processes, creating a uniformity across the world of retail and consumption. It has been a strong growth arena for financial and business dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, not because of their long forgotten era but their oversized dimensions that will become extinct at the first hiccups in the global economies. In my own model of human complexities I refer to this as the area of “greed”. In the “secretes of life” it is the area of natural unlimited growth.
Growth is only unlimited until it meets competition. Global competition then started to place the focus on the consumer through marketing and positioning issues. Rather than massively producing products the turnaround was that they had to fulfill a need too, connecting to emotional values of a target group. The customers became important and sales got more complex than mere distribution. In my own model I refer here to chaos through competition where Darwin’s rules of the strongest, fastest, most aggressive, etc prosper.
The third phase is that competition hardly produces profitable scenarios anymore. Value has been eliminate through all kinds of techniques while focus had been placed on volume sales and growth. This is never unlimited so a new impulse was needed. Brand and Rocchi call this the “knowledge economy” which in fact we see occurring everywhere now. When competition does not work anymore one needs to become smart and adaptive. Smart means that one needs to seek for ways to be different. In my own model I refer to this as the phase of adjustment. It calls for inner reflection that reaches out to rational but also emotional awareness and applied wit. Business become greener (emotional awareness though applied ethics) and use design and local content (rational awareness though applied intelligence) to distinguish themselves. Local gets into the picture again as opposed the long period of globalization. Terms like glocalization, or my own Local 4 Local 4 Global, appear.
Stop!
So far so good. In all these three natural steps of the evolution of economies we see one commonality. They all develop in a transactional world. The amount and quality of the transactions determine the success of the company and economy. On each transaction tax is raised on which the governments depend for financing their local issues around structuring infrastructures for maximization of transactions. Even though industries have been drawn (forced by public awareness and government regulations) to ethical values such as global warming, pollution, safeguarding natural resources, etc it are still the transactions that rule the game and give rise to manipulation, foul play and criminal practice.
The next step is that the transactional structure of the world economies break up and make way for the transformation economy. This economy is not transactional but based on the acceptance of key responsibilities. The increase of complex local issues of human drama, health problems, climate change, water and food shortages, natural and unnatural disasters with the related societal transformations, call for local attention and applied intelligence. All the technological and scientific knowledge is needed to create local ecological and social harmony when the risk of public unrest or disaster becomes big. I called this the era of search for harmony in carrying joint responsibilities through ethical values of responsibility. The motivation may well be less romantic in the cold calculating worlds of business and politics as they also agree that people without work, without perspective or health are poor consumers and unreliable voters. The institutional self preservation calls for taking responsibility even is this has been contrary to their original nature of institutional self interest.
Global issues need to be addressed locally developing local solutions through applied innovations that can find their way into the world as local dramas and needs elsewhere call out for them. This world is then not just transactional anymore. It is a world where ethical values call for responsibility, cooperation and solving existentialist issues locally first. Solutions that no one has created before and cannot be created by any of the fragmented specializations.
This type of economy is inherently different because it has no transactions to address or taxincome but a common purpose to deal with using the available specializations and authorities. You can’t buy a healthy or safe city, you have to co-create it. It is an investment in awareness, wit, vision on sustainable progress, innovation and togetherness.
When local solutions have been found then they can be globalized through the common practice of growth. Local for local adjustments may be required but the inspiration has been delivered as well as the way to address the commonality of the issues which has a global nature applied locally.
We are in the starting phase of the transformation from a transactional world to a transformative one where both are forced to coincide. The word “transformation” may then lead to confusion because the purpose that is being dealt with demands local transformative solutions that transform the local community itself not just products. But to make it happen also the economy itself needs to transform from transactional to collaborative. This affects the way local government, taxes, legal formats, etc work. It is hence much more complex than the previous fractional transitions and natural selections of companies that adjusted better or faster to the new era intelligently using instruments of growth, competition and adjustment. Now they are called to work together in a new format with new rules and manners. They do not interact anymore through the transfer of products, services, taxes, subsidies, policies. They need to interact together around a local purpose in a multidisciplinary way.
Success is more than just “growth”
That is why I refer to the new type of this collaborative local for local for global society as a “Sustainocracy”. It allows participants to distinguish between the various simultaneous transformations, the societal, economical and the functional that they need to deal with. For a long time, maybe even for ever, the transactional and collaborative structures with co-exist. All participants need to get used to these worlds and the fascinating relationship between them that will cause yet another shake out among organizations and the appearance of new ones. The entire functioning of a society will transform including the way its economies work. A totally new field of organizational intelligence appears that introduces a totally new era referred to as the global shift, a mayor break through in human progress.
In Eindhoven we experiment with Sustainocracy in AiREAS (air pollution and human health) and other purpose driven cooperative ventures. I of course invited Caroline, her students and the University to participate. For them it will be challenging because not only products, industrial designs and infrastructures will transform with their insights. Also society, all institutions and the way labor is organized will undergo changes. Educating students that develop a transformative attitude through self reflection, awareness and professional specializations of change, will demand for other types of labor relationships than currently available in hierarchical structures of volume driven dinosaurs. These youngsters will be the new leaders of change in the setting of sustainocratic ventures that will spread across the world following the global issues for local solutions.
Key responsibilities are taken together!
Jean-Paul Close
2013
Press release: Eindhoven’s unique citizen’s way to address air pollution and human health
Eindhoven August 14th and 15th
http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/en/2013/08/14/J001.htm
These days world’s first ever multidisciplinary worldwide organisation without budget, personnel or buildings, dedicated solely to creating healthy cities, AiREAS, will install world’s most advanced low cost, real time, intelligent air quality measurement system across the Dutch city of Eindhoven.
35 Airboxes in a network will deliver real time air quality information into a cross reference database. Unique about this is not just the technology used or the desire of this city to do something about the world’s most alarming problem, air pollution. It is the way AiREAS has come about, works and takes integral responsibility for human health, something none of the individual partners can do by themselves. AiREAS is unprecedented, developing itself as a true contribution for sustainable progressive democracies and well worthy to be made know to the world now. Let us sum up some of the uniqueness of AiREAS:
1. The high tech installation of a fine maze intelligent measurement system (ILM) in Eindhoven is the first accomplishment of AiREAS as a cooperative venture initiated by citizens and involving the complete set of institutional members from the key operational disciplines in a modern society, such as the local government, technological innovators, local city quarter citizens for social innovation and scientific research specialists and universities to prevent the cooperation to try to invent the wheel again and provide true progress.
2. The data obtained through the ILM network will be used for multiple purposes. Ideally instant feedback is given to the local city’s citizens and enterprises for immediate air quality and health improvement actions. AIREAS is going to experiment with communication in different ways, with different content presentations, using scientific insight on human perception to see what results into best health support effects among the local population.
3. The detailed data about air particles, measuring PM 10, 2,5 and (ultra) fine dust as well as NOx and Ozone, is being instantly cross referenced with information from different sources and content, such as historic health data, traffic information, etc. Scientific specialists define research objectives including the specific contribution of their studies to the healthiest city objective. They also help define and optimize the ILM infrastructure, modulation patterns and measurement locations to ensure the effectiveness of data collection using present day knowledge.
4. Local citizen’s participate in AiREAS in order to be able to take entrepreneurial action in their private and professional life’s and take their own responsibilities in their neighborhoods. Or directly negotiate health related infrastructure priorities with the local government. The fact that government participates directly in AiREAS too makes human result driven interaction and decision making direct and instantaneous. Local citizen’s complaints to government officials about air pollution went down by 100% since the announcement of AiREAS.
5. The local government participates among other reasons to back up costly infrastructure decisions with heath indicators as well as the measurement of the results of policy decisions according to norms and objectives of the establishment.
6. Local and multinational technological enterprises bring in their technologies and innovative ideas together. They each add a fragment to solutions that are assembled to contribute to the healthy city objectives. These contributions, when they indeed provide integral health improvement results, receive the AiREAS case reference and living lab proof of concept. These companies can expand their contribution on a world wide basis with these references. Expansion occurs through traditional sales channels of all international participants contributing in this way to a healthier world. Another option is to help establish Local AiREAS ventures elsewhere in the world by taking Eindhoven as an example.
7. Eindhoven has become a true purposes driven living lab with enthusiasm of all involved.
8. Organisations and entire regions are invited to come to Eindhoven to get acquainted with AiREAS, consider accepting the invitation to participate in the venture through their own talented inclusion, or undertake steps to create a Local AiREAS of their own with the help of AiREAS.
9. Even though AiREAS itself has purely a complex human value objective, without relating directly to economics, the individual partners represent their own self interest which can be expressed in many ways. They translate the values obtained to their own (economic) goals. In a way AiREAS feeds a new health driven economy based on addressing human values world wide.
10. AiREAS is a new citizen’s way of taking responsibility for complex key sustainable human values. It is called Sustainocracy, an evolutionary step in our democracies. It refers to the acceptance that some key issues, such as human health, security, wellness, applied knowledge, environmental conditions and self sufficiency are no political or economized options nor democratic choice that can be delegated. They are common self aware responsibilities of any person, organization and community.
11. AiREAS was initiated in 2011 by two local citizens of Eindhoven, Jean-Paul Close (definer and initiator of Sustainocracy) and Marco van Lochem (specialist in transforming idealism into practical reality through projects). They invited the local population and cooperative members to its sustainocratic mission, asking for the multidisciplinary commitment covering the entire society, expressing the results in technological, social and organisational innovations, regional sustainable progress and measurable human values.
12. AiREAS has no personnel or buildings of its own and works entirely with the combined result driven resources of its partners. The two initiating citizen’s are not on the pay roll either to ensure their independence and impartiality. Both are just as result driven as the rest of the cooperation.
13. AiREAS has no initial budget. It starts with the healthy city objective and all the necessary partners to make it happen. When priorities are discussed and projects defined also the issue of investment is raised, related to reciprocity. Every member than contributes according to its own means and expectations. Money is only part of all the means that can be invested to support the venture.
14. The partners in AiREAS represent the four operational pillars of a modern (sustainocratic) democratic society and economy: the local government (territory), technological innovators (tools), scientists (knowledge) and the local citizens (culture).
15. The inner cooperative values of AiREAS are: the commitment to the higher cause of AiREAS through membership, mutual respect and integrity, equality and trust. The membership is free of charge, not free from responsibility.
16. Any region or city in the world can now create a Local AiREAS with the assistance of AiREAS. AiREAS offers the experience, structure and objective with certain key partners already involved. All that is needed is a commitment from the local government, a local independent “sustainocrat” and the willingness to allow the region to developed itself through value drive public participation and cooperation.
Note: On September 20th Jean-Paul Close hosts an international seminar in Eindhoven to explain Sustainocracy.
The Local AiREAS Eindhoven consists of:
* Government: The local city council and the province of Noord Brabant.
* Innovative business enterprises: ECN, Imtech and Philips. Also many local small and medium sized businesses participate.
* Scientific and educational institutions: IRAS (Utrecht University with expertise on respiratory and lung research), ITC (Twente University with expertise on modulation and measurement infrastructures, space observation around climate and allergies), Academic Medical Center (Amsterdam University adding heart and vascular medical expertise and research). Various other universities and disciplines are already participating awaiting their own institutional authorization for formal membership.
* The local citizens of Eindhoven.
“The world upside down” a city official said when the two initiating locals citizens walked into the city hall two years ago. They had invited the local government to take co responsibility with them for a healthy city. “Unprecedented!” and “My first time in 25 years of executive work” top R&D executives of participating leading multinationals said. They referred to the way the top of local governance, acknowledged scientific experts and high tech industrial multinationals were challenged by these two citizens to take responsibility together, and accepted, for one of the most serious problems of the last century, air pollution and human health. As a result the citizens of Eindhoven soon receive their own high level real time data on air pollution as a very first step in co-creating the healthiest city of the world. For AiREAS this is just a start. The healthy city is the goal and so is the challenge to show the rest of the world how it can be done, helping other cities to do the same.
Note for the journalist and editors:
AiREAS website: http://www.aireas.com
More information on Sustainocracy and AiREAS as citizen’s challenge: Jean-Paul Close T:+31 654326615 E: jpclose@aireas.com
More information about the ILM measurement infrastructure: Marco van Lochem T:31 655712874 E: mvanlochem@aireas.com
More information about the measurement technologies used in the ILM: René Otjes (ECN)
More information about the database management system: Carl Wolff (Imtech)
More information on the government implications and commitment to the venture:
City of Eindhoven – Hans Verhoeven
Province Noord Brabant – Edwin Weijtmans
More information on the various scientific cross referenced research programs and participating universities: Marco van Lochem and Jean-Paul Close (contact details above)
More information on citizen’s program: Jean-Paul Close
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 