Erik Händeler: The culture of collaboration determines competition.

Erik Händeler: The Culture of Collaboration Determines Competition Those who believe we simply have to wait for the next upturn will wait a long time: Until we succeed worldwide in handling knowledge more efficiently. Because this is where the greatest productivity reserves lie: Differences of opinion escalate into power struggles, and the parties involved no longer reconcile until retirement; even their successors as department heads inherit the unresolved conflicts. What really costs us money are elbows, thinking in terms of cost centers instead of the bigger picture, a destructive culture of conflict instead of fair competition for the better solution. We haven't suddenly all become worse people, leading to more conflicts that exhaust us. Rather, because we have to combine more competencies in knowledge work, we have more interfaces - and therefore more reasons to argue with others. We are thus experiencing the structural transformation from the industrial to the knowledge society: Electronic machines have long been working autonomously. Work takes place in the realm of thought - planning, organizing, advising, seeking knowledge, processing, thinking through and solving problems. However, since individuals can no longer oversee the flood of knowledge, we are increasingly dependent on the knowledge of others. Suddenly, everyone becomes important for overall success, with fluctuating status depending on the competency demanded on a daily basis. This new paradigm is changing behavior patterns in the workplace, hierarchies, and social behavior. Productive handling of knowledge necessitates collaboration at the same eye level, transparency, willingness to reconcile, authenticity instead of status orientation, cooperativeness, and long-term orientation. When looking at past structural cycles in which the steam engine or the automobile drove the economy, it becomes clear: at certain times, specific patterns of success determined productivity and prosperity. Economic crises are therefore not caused by dark forces in the financial markets, but rather reflect the pace of change: it was not that all bankers worldwide suddenly decided to become greedy and gamble away our prosperity, leading to a crisis in the global economy. Rather, because the computer no longer made us significantly more productive after three decades, there was no longer anything worthwhile to invest profitably in; the time saved and resources gained through IT were diminishing. Therefore, interest rates dropped to zero, loans were recklessly granted - but in this sequence. This is the cause of the current situation, similar to 1873 after the construction of the railway or 1929 after electrification. Economist Nikolai Kondratieff (1892-1938) described such long economic cycles in the 1920s. A deep crisis may not occur if we manage to unlock the next structural cycle: new markets have always developed from scarcities in the work process. Changes emerge from scarcities that unlock the next level of prosperity. This perspective of the Kondratieff theory helps shape the future: scarcities in the knowledge society mainly concern social behavior and the health of knowledge workers who have been trained over a long period and will work longer under new conditions with less pressure. The focus now is on investing in people. Only a culture of collaboration can increase prosperity in the knowledge society. The way out of the financial and debt crisis is a preventive healthcare system and a better work culture in companies. Could the world be getting better after all? The Keynote Speaker Erik Händeler is a book author and futurist, specializing mainly in the Kondratieff theory of long structural cycles. After completing a newspaper traineeship and working as a city editor in Ingolstadt, he studied economics and economic policy in Munich. In 1997, he became a freelance business journalist to bring the consequences of the Kondratieff theory into public debate. In 2010, he was awarded the Bronze Medal for Economic Work by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Books: "The History of the Future - Social Behavior Today and the Prosperity of Tomorrow" in its 10th edition in 2015, "Kondratieff's World of Thought" in its 6th edition. For more information about our Top100 Speaker Erik Händeler, visit: https://www.speakers-excellence.de/redner/erik-haendeler-zukunftsforscher.html