Last year I was invited to talk to a delegation of the Russian scientists/entrepreneurs from the Skolkovo Foundation near Moscow (to my knowledge, it was their Nuclear cluster). Earlier in 2010 we tried to organize a somewhat similar study tour/game for the team from Skolkovo, but perhaps it was too early: the foundation was just established, and a trip to Eindhoven wasn’t perhaps among the top priorities. To my regret, my later efforts to organize such a trip faced an unexpected resistance from the possible local hosts: neither Philips people nor the guys from Brainport or the local city hall.

But fortunately, someone managed to finally arrange such a trip, and to convince – at least some people from – the local organizations to attend such a meeting. (For the record, this someone was Ger van Zantvoort, from MeduProf-S, former Fontys International Projects. The event went quite well, with people coming from the TNO, the High Tech Campus, and even Summ()n.

I made a presentation about strategic innovation practices at Philips Design, and a bit about Summ()n’s projects; it was a bit weird to speak in Russian in the very middle of HTC, former Philips Research, one of the Philips’ most closed and secretive places of just ten years ago. Perestroika came even to the Netherlands. However, and because of the peculiar audience (i.e., Russian, not ‘future research’ professionals, and not even ‘innovation’ professionals yet), I had to adapt the story, and to start from some very basic things. At the same time, I couldn’t just present the cases either, and had to make a certain sense-making framework. This double pressure, to both simplify and condense eventually resulted in a very nice and useful scheme, or indeed a framework, that could be very useful for Summ()n and our partners/clients in general. This scheme reflects the changing nature of Summ()n itself, and at the same presents a new range of services we have been offering for some while already.

To explain it, I will have to also start from the basic things, basic components of thinking . As I was talking many times, the very concept of ‘future’, how it is understood and dealt with (at least, in the Western way of thinking), could be illustrated by a foggy road (we have many of such images here in the Netherlands lately).

The process of (business) development is seen as driving over a high-speed road, while sometimes having a foggy cloud ahead. Such a fog is obviously an annoyance, often a danger (imagine a sharp turn, or a car suddenly jumping from the mist); that’s why the business is ready to spend significant efforts (and money) to ‘clear the fog’, to hopefully gain more certainty about the ‘future’.
Interestingly, all these activities somehow doesn’t question a set of basic assumptions about the situation: about the ‘road’, the ‘driving’, the very ‘you’. It’s believed that the ‘future’ will basically be a very similar version of the ‘now’ (may be a bit brighter).

What you seek is a lens of some sort, a magnifying glass, a beamer that would highlight you this ‘bright future’, preferably before your competitors will see the same. The future is already there, just laying and waiting when you will come and pick it up. The world around won’t change; you won’t change either.

Needless to say, these are exactly the presumption we try to work (and overcome) at Summ()n, helping people to discover not only ‘unlikely futures’, but also develop the new ‘them’, new ideas and ways of thinking, and of doing things. We betted on ‘playing’ with the futures, and succeeded to run a few interesting projects in this directions. But the truth is, the play is only one component of the total set, and we had to incorporate few other to make the whole system work.

Referring to the earlier projects of Philips Design, I constructed this new diagram of ‘exploring the futures’ (aka developing the future I-s):

Notice that the ‘I’ here is placed in the very center of the ‘thing’. And the purpose now is not to ‘highlight’ the road in search of the ‘future’ laying there, but instead to develop a more complex, multi-dimensional I (=selves). This new complex, future-shaped (and thus future-proof) systems of selves emerges after looking into (and through) each of the useful ‘mirrors’, and then by integrating all these projections into on a new level of I.

PS: I am playing with this ‘mirror’ metaphor because of my long-term research into the mirrors (both their history, and the futures), but this specific insights came from the famous Chamber of Mirrors by Leonardo da Vinci. He believed that mirrors can help to a man not only physically see himself in such a chamber, but eventually gain a deeper understanding of himself, thus power to self-transform.

I was lucky enough to get into a very interesting gathering event last week, so called Future Sketching held by the Foundation biELAt (an agency facilitating the development of the cross-border ‘triangle’ region, with Eindhoven, Aachen and Luik (or Liège) in the corners. There is a very good website providing the details about the background and the process of this event, but however nice, the process pictures do not convey the real atmosphere of the event.

For me it started in a misty morning near Genk, at the former mine now converted into business and art center C-Mine; I was somewhat puzzled with the scope of the event, and also with the list of the participants (from more than 30 different regional businesses). The event was called ‘Open Innovation’. I’ve been to quite a few of those ‘open’ things in the past, and the majority of them were quickly turning into distrustful and mutually suspicious (thus, resultless) business gatherings, so I had a few pinches of salt in my pockets.

This one, however, was very different, and from the very beginning. I guess, the ambience played a big role too: all these heavy industrial machines didn’t support the usual blah-blah, but stimulated a rather practical, working attitude.

Plus, the whole moderation was also down-to-earth, sleeves-up and no-nonsense. But I think the most important was the presence of the so called ‘owners’ of the problem, the companies who did need to come up with something innovative, yet also who also understood very well that they can’t make it alone, especially in the current, pretty gloomy context. This all created a very energizing and stimulating atmosphere.

I know that ‘energizing’, ‘stimulating’ etc may sound as those obligatory buzz-words, and it’s difficult to express what was different this time. Perhaps, I can refer to my own feelings: I do like to take ‘creative’ pictures, but very rarely do it during the ‘business meetings’ of all sort. Here I managed to take dozens of them, and the whole atmosphere was on par with the best design workshops I’ve been in.

Also interesting was the ending of event: of course, there were project presentations, and well-deserved applause

but then there was also a very intense session, a true psychodramatic enactment of the ‘open innovation’ process with one of the (very brave, I should add) participant.

All in all, it was a great day, pleasant and memorable but also seeding a lot of future thoughts and actions.

Too many meetings and event, and too little time to write about them here! Besides, we are working on the new website for Summ()n, so my energy goes more to the ‘future’, rather than to the maintaining the current flow of information. But some of impressions are too vivid to skip, so I will try to post at least the visual impressions from the last two weeks or so.

Glow is an annual festival of light and art in Eindhoven, and it tends to be always good. This year’s edition has definitely exceeded the expectations, and presented a large number of magnificent works. The one above was not really a new work, it is a remake of the now famous installation ‘Burning Van Abbe Museum’, by Xavier de Richemont. It worth to watch a video to imagine how it all looked in reality.

Multimedia installations Lichtschilderij (‘lightpaiting’) on the Stadhuis building by Artslide & Spectaculaires (above) and Charm on Speed on the Catharinakerk by
Projectil (below) were both new and not so new. The exact compositions were novel, but the overall experience is somewhat similar to the previous years.

But the entire area of TUe campus was a masterpiece – from the Glowing Carpets’ at the Nabij Kennispoort to the lighting poems on the main building, and to the smaller installations all over the places, all was one great inspirational feast.

My favorite installation of this year is Prometheus, that combined – not even light, but lightening – with music and video. People were silent in awe and admiration when listening these mini-performances and then bursted with applause – to both the might of nature, and the might of culture. Again, the video can give a better feeling.

I wonder if they will bring aurora borealis next time?

There will be an interesting event at the Club of Amsterdam tomorrow, an evening conference called The Future of the Future; the very title is already quite provocative, and I look forward to interesting presentations – including by Andrea Wiegman from Second Sight, Arjen Kamphuis from Gendo, and Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University – as well as for the open debates.

The latest issue of the Lapham’s Quarterly is nothing but future (still ‘the’ one, and without ‘s’, but a good start anyway). I wrote about this publications about a year ago or so, when they published the issue on games, and playing. But back then the content was not available online; this time the majority of the articles and other materials can be found on their website.

As always with the Lapham’s Quarterly, it’s a great collection of very diverse accounts – of writers and artists, of philosophers and scientists – who thought about this complex matter of ‘the future’. Often very paradoxical and unexpected, these stories and pictures are both inspiring and informative; but ‘informative’ not in a sense of updating about the latest ‘trends’ and ‘foresights’, but rather on the different ways of thinking about the future(s). Good food for thought.

Jonas Bendiksen – Rocket debris near the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan (2000)