Emerging and Including - The Next Transformation

A #Renaissance Moment this year - opening speech at the start of #NEB initiative for #designing sustainable cities at the Swedish Research Institute RI.SE, June 3 - with Charles Landry, Danhill, Ambra Trotto, Janet ?gren and Andrew Dubber.

My thesis: #Inclusion by #Design - as as value - will evolve to be Design by Inclusion - as a method. The next generation of #innovation will be as radically different from todays #OECD definitin of innovation as carbon-based from carbon-free economy!

https://www.ri.se/en/events/design-for-sustainable-cities

Thanks for inviting me - below you find my whole speech I held at the digital conference:

Emerging

The first iphone was announced 2007 - the same year EU-President Barroso announced the very first report on the Economy of Culture. Since then culture and creativity has taken all eu policy areas by storm - with the latest highlight in may this year: cultural and creative industries are included as one of the 14 strategic growth sectors for the future of Europe - not to mention the New European Bauhaus and Horizon Europe, with its first time program for Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society.

After this breakthrough of CCS in policies, new coherent policies are emerging and baby stepping from silo to coherent policies: The Pandemic is - ironically - a driver for more coherent and cross-govermental policies, while CCS is one of the most hard hit sectors.

Parallel to the political breakthrough, there have been many breakthroughs in the creative industries themselves - from technological innovations such as 3D printing of houses to social innovation, but most of all the new global culture is from the creative industries: it is gaming.

Yes - there are 2.9 billion gamers and not only a young man domain,

48% of the gaming audience is female

It is huge market - but even more it is a new future force

whose social possibilities for climate change are only just being discovered - again, just Emerging

Backlashing

The culture and creative successes of society at the end of the 20th century led to counter-movements - we all know about renationalisation in Poland and Hungary, Brexit and Trumpism in the US. But we all don't realise enough that this was preceded by the attack on artistic, media and academic freedoms - and finally facts and truth.

Just a weeks ago the German foreign Minister explained: "Journalists work is being restricted under the disguise of fighting the pandemic, debates are being prevented, misinformation is being spread“. 46 journalists died because of their work, 400 were imprisoned last year.

This is not happening at the hands of a nation OR popoulation but of individuals and companies pursuing their interests. Entrepreneurs and billionaires, like Dyson, Zuckerberg or the Koch brothers: just as we have lists of companies that are destroying our planet, we need transparency of companies that want to profit from the destruction or inhibition of democracy. We do not want hate markets.

It is not only politics and regulations that is needed here, but every artist and creative person who can work freely because there is a liberal democracy. The 21st century is the century in which artists and creators must make politics their business more than before - and I am sure they will. Run for city councils and national parliaments! That must be our contribution to save democracy.

Breakthrough

Now at the beginning of the 20s we can see a next stage of development that is evident in a wide variety of seemingly unrelated contexts , here are a few of these:

• when the World Economic Forum ranks creativity among the most important skills
• when the European Green Deal is so closely linked to the creative industries
• when 3 lines of a speech turns into a European movement within days, that surprised and overran the speaker and speech writer - thank God.
• when in courts and in youth climate change is not another crisis but becomes a fight for survival NOW
• when in Germany 2 years ago the Rhine dried up for a few days….the public awoke.

This has led to new principles - also in a wide variety of contexts, to name of few:

The question is no longer how experts get their way, but how everyone can participate. The question is no longer how we avoid waste, but how every waste becomes a resource. The term "waste" is on the brink of extinction. Everything becomes Useful, full of Use and Re-Use. The question is no longer how external costs are compensated or repaired - whether in the environment or in the community. we no longer want to damage and then repair. Externalities should no longer arise.

In short - we see in the mix of emergening, backlashing and breaking through a structure, a structural analogy to the Renaissance.

This simultanitiy of crisis and re-birth - I am sure we are just wittnessing a New European Renaissance.

Including

This European Renaissance is taking place in a wide variety of contexts and sectors - this diversity makes it difficult to recognise and to believe in. It also makes it difficult to promote - and yet I believe there are some similarities beyond all the diversity of the phenomena.

• These commonalities are expressed in
• The Circular Economy
• The Doughnut Economy
• The SDGs
• Data driven Economy
• Common Eurpean Market for Data

to name the very obvious.

They all connect what was not connected before - or even opposing each other before.

They all see interdisciplinarity, cross-innovation, cross-border, cross-cultural, cross-sector and diversity not as complexity, but as serendipity - a space of possibilities for the new, if we make inclusivity the principle of our heart.

My thesis:

Including is Innovating - that is the reality today. Innovating in the future will be built on Including by Principle, by Design, if I might say so.

THE NEXT TRANSFORMATION

From Green, Digital, Democratic and all other Transformations are all based on Inclusion

or we just might call it simply:

The Inclusive Transformation.