Cooperation is a practice. Individual actors and perspectives come together to create a new vision. Each actor adds their own original point of view. Each can solo or layout, as best serves the work. Each time we cooperate, we are exposed to different ways of working and problem-solving.

Cooperation is not to be mistaken for competition. It is not a power struggle to get your way or to be proven right. Competition serves the ego — cooperation supports the highest outcome.

Think of cooperation as giving or getting a boost to see over a high wall. there is no power struggle in this act — you’re simply finding the best route to a new perspective. It’s a disservice to the project to weigh our own contribution to it. Believing an idea is best because it is ours is an error of inexperience. The ego demands personal authorship inflating itself at the expense of the project. It can reject new ideas that seem counter-intuitive and protect familiar ones.

The best results are found when we are impartial and detached from our own strategies. We all benefit when the best idea is chosen., regardless of whether it’s ours or not.

Word.

The post Co-operation appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

Since business model innovation comes down to making changes to how a business earns its revenue, incurs its costs, and manages its risks, it should be seen as a continuous process rather than an organizational project task. Additionally, the procedural aspect comes another pre-condition for sustainable business model innovation: decentralization. Decentralization entails the non-existence of a central authority that aggregates power and defines all decision-making and the necessity to collaborate. Working in a decentralized network, all participants must co-ordinate their individual responsibilities and work packages. They have to agree upon a governance framework that defines the network’s rules and processes.

At first sight, decentralization is nothing you would expect to take place in a typical enterprise. Typically, companies or other organizations are hierarchically structured, with strategy and major decisions defined by an executive level, and lesser important aspects organized downwards in the org chart. Some organizational structures, e.g., the matrix organization, have implemented elements of decentralization. However, you won’t find a traditional organization besides cooperatives that would do without a top-down command chain. 

Since I have never been a huge fan of classic centralized structures, Blockchain technology has been warmly welcomed. For the first time, a foundational technology allows for decentralized structures and processes in the real world — by leveraging its inherent components of trustlessness, immutability, and security. For me, Blockchain is the paradigm shift needed to build and develop future businesses aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. In decentralized systems, enterprises become part of an overall protocol to add their organization-specific elements, s.a., brand, expertise, products, and services. Mechanisms ensure that each participant receives a fair return on investment into the network, depending on their contributions.

The Next Level Of Business Model Innovation — The Decentralized Network

On the basic level of a decentralized system, all participants collaboratively build, develop, and maintain foundational aspects of technology, legal, regulatory and organizational affairs. On the second level, participants cooperate in running transactions in the decentralized network. On the third layer, participants can compete with one another, building their individual applications on top of the jointly created platform. This 3‑layered Network Model is sustainable and resilient against economic downturns. However, it is far from being easily created. The challenges of setting up such a model mostly lie in overcoming the traditional beliefs of many top-level and most middle-level managers in enterprises, who try to preserve legacy organizational structures and processes. For them, terms, s.a. open-source, decentralization, or collaboration sound harmful to the economy. At least they are signs of weakness: who would collaborate or share IP if profits should be maximized when used proprietarily?

The simple truth is that the size of the economic cake isn’t fixed. And, the more enterprises collaborate, the lower their fixed costs. In other words,  collaboration pays-off. It does not only pay-off but is an indispensable presupposition for environmental-friendly, sustainable businesses. While many large enterprises have learned that cooperating on individual levels makes sense, only a few of them are ready to move to the next level and integrate not another model in their organization, but — vice versa — integrate their organization in a new (business) model. A generally more negative economic outlook, combined with the actual COVID-19 pandemic, will motivate more enterprises to think about entering the new level of business model innovation and joining decentralized networks in their respective industries.  

A Foundational Layer for Micromobility

I’m quite positive about the GAIA‑X Federated Data Infrastructure for Europe initiative that we, with Datarella, have joined recently. Its general approach is a truly decentralized one: (competing) enterprises and organizations from different domains come together. They are asked to join forces to create a n open, non-discriminating data infrastructure. In the mobility space, this will be used for all kinds of efficiency improvements, such as a better utilization of parking space, and for new offerings, such as shared micromobility services that allow for a seamless travel experience even in densely populated areas, both with significant positive environmental impacts. In 2021, we will see whether the GAIA‑X participants will make the open, decentralized intent come true!

The post Next Level Business Model Innovation — The Decentralized Network GAIA‑X Could Become appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

Media outlets switch from the term climate change to climate crisis because environmental developments have to be addressed urgently if we want to keep our planet habitable. Politically, we notice a strengthening of parties at the far-right and far-left spectrums and increasingly irrational behavior of leading politicians who seem not to be aware of their responsibilities as heads of governments. Due to environmental, but also economic reasons, there is a mass migration underway that brings millions of people from the southern hemisphere to Europe and other rich areas. — a migration caused by poverty, wars, and other conflicts with the refugees’ single hope for living peaceful, secure lives. This inflow of immigrants also results in huge challenges for governments and people living in rich countries having to somehow share many aspects of their rich lifestyles with millions of new arrivals, most of them not used to western conventions and democratic mores.

At the moment, convincing strategies to meet these challenges are missing. Now and then, some politicians, scientific task forces, or entrepreneurs come up with bold plans, such as installing bases on other planets in order to relocate humankind when planet earth has stopped functioning. Then there is AI, a technological development that awakes the same amount of enthusiasm and belief in the future as skepticism and fear of an uncontrollable behemoth that will subjugate human beings based on its superior intelligence. And there are thousands of mostly grassroots-driven, well-intended activities, many of them somewhat extreme or solitarily designed and therefore rather impractical.

Language And Storytelling

In his fascinating book Sapiens, Israeli historian Yuval Harari describes language and storytelling as the most differentiating abilities of homo sapiens compared to other mammals. For him, modern man has successfully survived and displaced other hominins because of this Cognitive Revolution. The language was the tool to suppress speechless contemporaries and to easily pass knowledge horizontally within huge populations as well as vertically from generation to generation. Unfortunately, wars of religion, autocratic jurisdictions and the more modern phenomenon of fake news have uncovered the flip side of language and storytelling: simple stories make people around the globe kill each other, allow governments and religious leaders to dictate terms for correct clothing and enable democratically elected presidents to trick and deceive as only con artists do.

Beginnings Of A New Era

At the end of the 19th century, there were first indications of a new era in understanding human capabilities. When, in 1890, Harvard psychologist William James published The Principles of Psychology, he was praised in America and Europe both by academics and lay readers. Some declared it a classic and likened it to Moby Dick. James transformed both, psychology and philosophy by popularizing his thesis of pragmatism, a way of thinking that argues human beings must test their beliefs and decisions by results. James invented the phrase “stream of consciousness” to describe the workings of our minds. For him, our thinking is not orderly or logical, but chaotic, and our moods constantly and inexplicably shifting. Without the knowledge of modern neuroscience, the synapses that connect billions of neurons, and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and oxytocin, he wasn’t able to peer into the brain. Still, he was (one of) the first to state that human beings should be aware of the combination of their mental and physical abilities that by far exceed their physical abilities, alone.

In the past, development in most parts of the world has been regarded as a primarily technical development — first in terms of hardware and, with the advent of the computer, increasingly in terms of software. Any conference, task force, or scientific study that addresses “the future” mainly covers technological developments. I think, this is — an absolutely necessary — but entirely insufficient strategy to ensure the survival of homo sapiens on planet earth. It is my belief that humans living in the 21st century must meet a very individual challenge first, in order to commonly survive as a population: we must start the Mindful Revolution.

After The Cognitive Revolution Comes The Mindful Revolution

For me, the Mindful Revolution is the logical next step built on top of Harari’s Cognitive Revolution. A common feature of both revolutions is that neither one solves any major problem per se — but each one provides human beings with a toolset that can be used to leverage the abilities of individuals and populations to the next level of life. As with language and storytelling, mindfulness isn’t something that has been invented quite recently, but something that has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Whereas some scientists believe that Neanderthals living 300,000 years ago, could speak, Gutenberg invented the first printer quite sometime later, around 1440. That machine allowed stories to be distributed efficiently for the first time. The first signs of mindfulness appeared with the advent of Buddhism, in the 5th century BCE. In today’s Tibet, China and India many scholars teach behaviors and attitudes such as compassion, self-compassion, altruism, and others. In Western sciences of recent date, these teachings have been regarded as esoteric or folklore, measured against modern scientific frameworks. This chasm has started closing due to the fact that more and more knowledge about and results of mindfulness practice has been confirmed with scientifically collected and computed data gauged by high-tech medical gear.

High Demands On Ourselves

At the beginning of the 21st century, we know for sure that human beings know little about themselves, that we only use a tiny fraction of one of our mots important endogenous resources — our brains. In other words: we run the show — i.e. ruin our planet and kill our fellow human beings — without knowing ourselves in-depth, utilizing just a fraction of our capabilities. This must not be our expectations. As a humanist, my expectation must be to learn to know myself, to feel self-compassion, and thereby compassion for others. As an enlightened academic, I must utilize my endogenous resources in the best possible way — and I must not accept to capitalize on only 10% of my skill set.

What is the Mindful Revolution?

In short, Mindful Revolution means that human beings know themselves (gnothi seauton), feel self-compassion and compassion for others. The Mindful Revolution enables mankind to capitalize on the maximum of each individual’s physical and mental abilities. The Mindful Revolution enables human beings to develop a new, much broader perspective on life in general and on themselves and fellow human beings specifically. The Mindful Revolution allows for more tolerance, compassion, and understanding, enables people to develop ways and tools for cooperation and collaboration, and in the best case, a new way of jointly saving ourselves and our planet.

Mindfulness is a change that starts within and stays within the individual. By changing oneself, a person becomes more aware of herself, her sensations and capabilities, and, in the next step, more open for her environment including her fellow human beings. Without creating strategies, developing tactics, and planning details, the mindful person opens herself up for any external input. She experiences more sensations on a deeper level and is able to act and behave intuitively in a seemingly effortless way. There are more good things that happen to her, people treat her in a friendlier way, finding solutions to problems becomes easy. The reason for a better flow in life is not any kind of magic of randomness — it is a better utilization of the individual‘s resources, especially her brain. I am not speaking of anecdotal evidence — these effects have been measured and quantified in many scientific studies.

Whether it’s about schoolchildren with experiences in mindfulness practice, inhabitants of retirement homes, athletes, or the average working person, mindfulness results in a quantifiable improvement,ent of a person‘s lifestyle. In recent years, more and more individuals have learned about these positive effects of training without side effects. If this knowledge could be spread further and faster, more people, groups, and, finally, populations could benefit. We should teach our children, and we should integrate mindfulness into school curriculums. Mindfulness should become a mandatory subject in any kind of educational institution. In 2013, Ohio congressman Tim Ryan took this challenge seriously and started Mindful Nation, a non-profit foundation and education outlet teaching mindfulness to everyday Americans.

Mindfulness beats AI

Mindful human beings don‘t have to fear any kind of malicious AI. Whereas AI can easily take over computable tasks from human beings and outperform us in calculations, it should take ages before an AI would be able to emulate our mind. The human cortex alone has 30bn neurons and is capable of making 1 million billion synaptic connections, i.e. at least 10 followed by a million zeros. Knowing that the universe consists of 10 followed by 79 zeros particles, it becomes clear why mindfulness beats Artificial Intelligence, easily.

Beside all meaningful activities, and living a peaceful and eco-conscious life — we have the ability to and must start the Mindful Revolution — now!

The post After The Cognitive Revolution Comes The Mindful Revolution appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.