 At the moment we are just like single intelligence units and there may be some AI intelligence separately, but when we connect this intelligence on a global scale and we learn how to better connect our brains together and then it will be such an exponential growth of intelligence. Nils Müller is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas. Nils' spectacular keynotes, pioneering journeys into the future and always well ahead of our times. Nils is a future visionary and with over 700 keynotes on international stages, one of the most experienced and versatile inspiration speakers in the entire future industry. Always you can join him on an exceptional and interactive expedition into the future. His next stop is 2030. Nils is the CEO of Trend One, which he founded in 2002, has managed ever since as the market leader for trend research and innovation consulting in German speaking countries. Trend One defines today's standards for targeted future orientation in a rapidly developing world with a view on markets, industries, and societies. With the help of the global active network La Futura, Nils Müller brings together leading futurists and visionaries at an international level. A global network Nils sets enthralling standards for multimedia based journeys into the future with active audience participation, with his journey into the future and the brand new creator's keynote. Welcome Nils, it's so great to have you on the show. Whoa, I'm so happy to be here with you Mark today. Thanks so much Mark, thanks so much. It's good to see you and as always you're bubbly and smiley. I'm so glad to have you here. How have you been? How has this last little crazy pandemic time for you been? For me it's really an exciting time because it's a massive push towards innovation. You know all my clients now feel that they suddenly arrived in 2030. When you look at their workplace, at their leadership, at their spaces where they usually work, suddenly they are in 2030. In normal times it would take 10 years to come here but now we arrived in 2030 and that's so great. So they feel that they can innovate fast because they did. They feel that they must innovate faster because the whole world is accelerating. We have like a global shift towards innovation from Europe to China. China is really leading innovation now. They invest in so many interesting future fields and they feel they have to innovate and they see they can innovate faster. That is so exciting. It's a good time for me also. It's a good time for you. Yeah, it's a fabulous time for me and you know it's sad and we have to respect the pandemic and the lives lost and what's happened but it's really for what we've been talking about you know as a sustainable futurist and as a futurist someone who follows trends and innovation we've been talking about these things for years. We've been working in the future trying to innovate and make our offices, our home zoos, our lives into one that is pushing towards the future of a better world. And so those who didn't heed our words or didn't listen in the past are really knocking down my door I believe your door as well saying hey we need some help. We'd help us make that curve. We didn't listen, let's get going. What do we need to do? And it's been a real great time in that respect definitely. So I'm glad to hear that you weathered the pandemic pretty good and I figured nothing less. As someone who does a lot with trends and the future foresight did that all prepare you for this moment in time so that you weathered the pandemic pretty well or can you tell us what you've been doing in the past that really would you say wow that really prepared me for this moment in time that it's affected me in a positive way than a worse way. So we had in our trend universe we published it every three years. We had global pandemic in 2007 in the trend universe. So it was already clear that something like this will happen but not exactly when and where but now it's there. And I was really happy that my company is ready first to work remotely, to work collaboratively. We have all the tools ready and also that this new mindset helps us to innovate better and to also for us. I mean it's not only at our client side it's also at trend one we transform on. Usually we do around 250 events per year which is like future spaces, keynotes, all the stuff. And now in March I was sitting at Frankfurt airport and seeing all the Asian people wearing the masks and sitting there and saying what is crazy time. And a friend from Switzerland called me and said Niels we have to have to set up a virtual cloud based event engine where thousands people can this is the right thing now. And I said okay let's do it. So we started to build up virtual event platforms in March and now we have a stage city called and stage city is a virtual event environment where 5,000 people can meet and enjoy keynotes, networking, interaction, keynotes, exhibitions. So I'm also happy that we had the power internally to transform so we walked the talks. We transformed our business model from real world to virtual world. The same we do in our consulting unit where we do like physical workshops every day now we do all this online workshop and other people learn from us. And it's a good time for future innovation and also for sustainability I think because a lot of things happening now are really playing into sustainability and also changing the mindset of the future leaders and consumers all goes in direction of clean, green, safe and fair. I think these are the four components which really shape the consumer and leadership and employee mindset at the moment. There's a lot of acronyms and buzzwords out there and sustainability has been the discussion for years. It's really environmental social governance. It's these different type of business models that really future proof your companies, your organizations so that during hard times that not only can they sustain themselves over time but also so that they have this really resiliency in their models. With innovations and future, we talk a lot about these moonshots and these innovations that could take us to space. That's the term of this moonshot thinking, this moonshot type of big, hairy, audacious goals and sustainable innovations. The thought behind that is really how can we go to space or to the moon and come back safely, breathe, eat, work and live in space safely and efficiently and return back home safely. And so this moonshot thinking has, well, a lot of people don't really know, a lot of resilience in it. So how do you use energy as efficiently as possible? How do you store your food and your energy so that you can survive and make that round trip without dying, killing yourself? How do you pee in your spacesuit? And that type of a model is also very applicable here on this earth with future technologies and future thinking. It builds a resiliency into your business model. And during this pandemic time, we've seen that ESG indexes and investments and divestments have all outperformed their conventional counterparts as far as better business models, better investments and better returns on your business. One other thing that I wanna see if you've experienced this as well, the leaders, the futurists, those who are already running on these models for a while, they were all coming back to me saying they were put in a unique position to be able to help others who weren't prepared. They were be able to deliver food, they were be able to deliver digital services to help them get their company offline to online how they can do the social distancing and set up home offices. And it's kind of a different model. Did you have any good stories or experiences during that time where client or somebody called you up and said, yeah, yeah, we can help you with this or that kind of shows that the model is one that really works. I love the moonshop metaphor because I think this is so important for Europe. Also, we have this moonshop for Europe. And this is so important because especially in Germany and Switzerland and Austria, we are still stuck in this R&D engineering world where we make the world a little bit better every day, like increasing with engineering skills. But moonshot thinking goes beyond this, goes like on a new level of innovation, on a new horizon of innovation. It helps people to imagine the future in 2030 and 2040 when you live in space, for example, and you have to grow your food and you have to be careful with your energy and all this is disruptive thinking on horizon street. And of course you need this engineering skills on the level one, on horizon one, to make it a little bit better. But also you need to imagine as a company what could be future markets, future technologies relevant to my company. And this is super important for Europe at the moment to really go this step because a lot of these moonshop projects are running in the US and in China and maybe also in South Korea. But I think we have to stop just relying on our R&D and F&A, we have to start thinking more in moonshots. But sadly at the moment this is not happening because due to corona, the companies, the corporates more focus on cash flow, more focus on the relevant innovation now to digitalize the workforce, to digitalize the customer journey. So this is the homework of the last 20 years. Some of them didn't do probably and they have to do it now. So a lot of corporates at the moment really stuck on innovation horizon one to deal with the situation and they don't have the resources and the brains and the freedom now to think about moonshots. That's a bit sad. This is special in Europe and in the US it's very good that they have the power to connect science to business. They really have new scientific approach like quantum computing, 5G, AI and they have the power to put this to business also with the connection between science and business and with a lot of money they put into. And in China this is the same with the big roadmaps of the government. The government has this long-term five year plans and they have 5G in there and AI and sustainability and they are prepared for moonshots and horizons free. And I'm a bit worried about Germany and Europe that's not so easy for us to go the step. Yeah, I have to agree with you there. I was hoping that you could maybe tell us maybe some more positive stories where companies would really, were ready or took a tool or trick of your trends or your preparedness to help them make that transition or that they weathered this time better to be able to help others whether you have that or not I don't wanna put you on the spot but exactly on what you said I wanna touch on something on that. So foresight modeling, talking about the future about moonshots and about this moonshots for Europe and you mentioned the third horizon and that a lot of people are not aware of that and especially in the business world you know what we're thinking about the future we're thinking about the trends or the innovation I especially about sustainable innovations that have that built-in resilience in them and there's these three horizons and you can even say there are almost different dimensions of attainment that everyone really needs to go through to be able to reach that and there's different curves you know there's the S curve, the Gaussian curve the diffusion of innovation processes that journey takes you in those three phases as you are trying to get your company into the future those processes really began years ago when we started to talk about the digital revolution that we needed to make that transition and a lot of companies and organizations have been giving it lip service and not putting a lot of actions in that transitional phase which really needs to happen but I wanna give you some examples that maybe we can discuss as well of some companies during the pandemic that had implemented some procedures way before the pandemic and they were on this roadmap towards the future already and they were working a plan and just to be clear for all our listeners that roadmap is not an incremental roadmap it is an exponential roadmap there is through KPIs through knowledge performance indicators those are past performance indicators you will never get over 10% incremental growth no matter how far out in the future you push it and that's not a moonshot and that's not innovating and taking not only the risk but the risk towards attaining the future of a resilient secure business model that will lead your company well into the future and those companies are Tesla, Amazon many of the other affiliated companies of Tesla during the pandemic, during the lockdown phase Tesla, Solar City, Neural Netlink, Starlink, Broadband and all of the other companies of Elon Musk they continue to meet all their deadlines because that was also the window of launch dates in the United States the window for launch goals because other times of the year aren't that ideal for launching rockets out into space because of temperature and conditions and all sorts of other factors which may change in the future but all of those dates were achieved so we went from going toward from the old Apollo to the space shuttle mission instrumentation to a new Dragon Falcon rocket that took two crew members to the ISS space station that went from a 12 button, three touch display panel totally flipping the entire space industry on its head not only by having rockets return but on how automated and how futuristic their panel was that movement into digitization and into the future was really there plus they met the goals and the standards of rocket launching the rockets and satellites and doing all the tests launching the new Cybertruck the other vehicles that they're launching and doing all these milestones plus they pivoted on a dime and were able to build respirators and help people in need during that time Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a commercial for Tesla and that's not my thought or purpose because there's a lot of controversy as well about their, I believe it was their Fremont plant not shutting down or opening too soon before all the measures were in place but that is a company and organization that has been working on the future Amazon wasn't locked down during the pandemic they were delivering essentials there was one delivery driver handing a package with a mask and gloves on or whatever handing it over to one person and in the center where they packaged those it was either fully automated or it was social distance to pack up boxes and that process continued to turn to give us what we needed and so those companies that didn't make that transition and are waiting for the future to happen to them are closing their doors, they're laying off people they're realizing how are we gonna get our employees up to speed from working at home and so on and I really kind of bring that up because I wanna see if you've noticed that as well that those companies that implemented those plans years ago are sitting in a better place and if you've had new customers or old customers knocking on your door saying, boy we really need to get on the ball can you help us to get there? Do you have any stories like that? I think there come two components what you're explaining with Tesla is a great example of visionary leadership so there's a person with a purpose, with a vision with a big picture and the power to do it and this is visionary leadership, this comes from the top and there are so many people who like to follow because they like to work for this purpose and for this vision and this is visionary leadership and I really miss this in Germany and many big corporates where I say where is this visionary leadership where is this future readiness where is this future anticipation and this hunger for future and also the purpose of Tesla is in big fields is decarbonization, it's just decarbonization and this is everything they do it's related to decarbonization and this is maybe the most important goal of all and this is such a big thing and such a great story you're telling and I also don't want to advertise on Tesla and saying but it's such a good story to explain visionary leadership and having a purpose and to get all people in on this purpose and I'm missing this in a lot of big German, German corporates they are also doing good things but it's all more incremental and usually in Germany we wear the society of the inventors when you look at the top 100 inventions on the world in the last 100 years I think a lot of them came from Germany but we invented like Solar and MP3 and Atom and everything but maybe somehow we lost the way to bring it to the market and I think the American companies are great in customer experience also the Chinese companies are so good in customer experience and delivering this innovation it's invention as successful business models into the market and this is what I like in the story and I see a lot of my clients doing great things in circular economy and huge chemical companies and reinventing the felt because when they come circular they are not just a supplier of additives and plastics they are the platform of running circular business models so they also start there and it's also good for sustainability but maybe the pictures and the visions are not so strong I would like to do an assessment on the top boards of the 30 companies how future ready are they and it's not only about future readiness of the organization this is one story but the future readiness of the top management this would be an exciting assessment I'm really surprised because I've gotten an insight into several organizations just during this pandemic I work with a lot of Fortune 1000 companies tons of Fortune 1000 companies and advise them and consult them mainly on environmental social governance trying to restructure their business model to not only have sustainable innovation in it and that's kind of future proof business model so that they can have the resilience so that they can have the efficiencies and the return on investment long term but honestly they are actually pretty front running organizations so I work with about 21 different airline organizations that are all working on the future of flight and the future of flight I can promise you will be here no later than 2026 in a way that is unimaginable for most people it's similar to like if you were to ask me 10 years ago will there be autonomous vehicles on the Audubon or on the highway I don't think I could have really truly understood or imagined how quickly that would come and even ride in one of those vehicles and not have to really truly watch the road in that same respect we've also got these five passenger taxis Uber and Hyundai and Ilium Jet and many others as well as KOM and Airbus and Boeing working on some larger commercial units the batteries are coming down in size there's new hydrogen jet fuels out there so another big message I have for clients and those is that please don't wait for the future to come to you because it will be too late you'll be left in the dust meet the future and prepare for it by revamping your business models and preparing for a brighter, resilient, desirable future this big issue that we have is a lot of people really are waiting for the future to act upon them waiting for it to occur to them but that's a failing model and it's one that's not very sustainable and you're more reactionary and it's not a proactive type of approach in a reactionary approach if we get a pandemic then we do social distancing measures we have face masks we tell our employees that 50% of them have to work from home and the other 50 from the office or we say 100% and we come up with these new things but they're all reactionary models not getting us we don't want to get back to business as usual but what we want to do is we want to work in the future that we've been talking about for years so a good friend of mine, Tim Leiborech wrote the book Business Romantic have a good friend, Frederick Lalu he wrote the book Reinventing Organizations and also Holocracy I've had a lot of people in my circles who are talking about the future of business and what it will look like and what we need to do to get there but there's a lot less actions being taken by organizations to make sure that we can be prepared and get there and what that causes and creates is this reactionary model so then when a pandemic happens we react and try to put these measures in place but there's no prevention for the next time because there will be next times and the only way to do that is is these business models and kind of the discussions of the trends that we talk about with our employees and that you've been talking about for years what would you say for 2020 regardless of the pandemic is the biggest trend or AHA innovation or foresight that you have that needs to be implemented that will have the biggest return on investment for organizations to get them into that next horizon that we're talking about? First, you said it's good to really if you are like a proactive leader and if you proactively create the future and not wait for the future and I want to agree on this and I think you need two things maybe one is the mindset and sometimes you have a lucky punch like a leader from Tesla and Elon and he just has this mindset and he's just in his DNA too but you also need future education because it's like running a business you need some kind of education and foresight what we do at trend one and innovation consulting this is kind of you should be educated in to anticipate the future to understand the trends to build positive and pictures of the future and visions and working with trends and building visions and imagining the future and playing with this future and finding future fields in this vision this is the thing you can learn and we are using trends to build this picture of the future to build future scenarios and to imagine how will the world be in 2030 how will the world be in 2040 and what are our business chances there and what are the innovation fields there and then you can start a back casting and say what from this vision what can we do now to and also using our company assets what we have and skills and resources and capabilities to be successful in this future and maybe what do we have to build up new and what partnerships do we need to be successful in this future and this can be educated but the leaders of today don't have this education they learned MBA and PhD and statistics and accounting and they had all this in the university but foresight to anticipate the future working with trends, building scenarios this is the universities don't educate this so much especially in the past now maybe it's starting a little bit there are some professors on foresight like professor Nadine Robeck or professor Heiko von der Graht or some in the US and some in Brazil and Lisbon and but there are not so many and I think more people should be educated in anticipating and working and creating futures and also kids of course in the school and the university because it's so important because the future is faster than you think we now feel it the future comes sometimes super fast changing your business model within three or five years and as a leader and also as a manager you need this ability to anticipate and create the future and this is what makes it possible what you said to be a proactive leader and not just wait and react but create but you were asking for the overall trend now during the pandemic and I think and that's good news for you we call it planet centricity we've seen that a lot of companies are now dealing in their innovation R&D and future business models with a planet as a central stakeholder on the table so in former times they were just thinking about profit or about people or about users but now when they create something new in their brains or in their workshops or in their management meetings it's like the feeling the planet is sitting on the table as a stakeholder with his planetary needs and his planetary benefits and his planetary wishes and this is the big change and the meta trend now we call planet centric innovation where everywhere you're looking on innovation project planet plays a big role and every corporate strategy you are now looking when you look at Adidas, Audi and you go the whole DAX you look to the strategy papers of the companies or to the corporate reports sustainability is on number one or it's on number two but it's somewhere there this was not true five years ago five years ago was sustainability was CSR department somewhere somewhere it happened let the others do and greenwashing it but now it's really on number one and this is now true in 2020 planet centric innovation is the key meta trend and I think this will go even further we will create new companies that are only doing good for the planet and this is not NGO something this is something like Climeworks Climeworks from Switzerland they do carbon dioxide removal so they filter the carbon out of the air and because we need negative carbon because we have too much carbon and this is the company with the innovation and the business model just for the planet they don't build cars or a machine they just innovate for the planet and we will see more of this companies you remember when Facebook was growing when Amazon was growing when WhatsApp was growing all these leaders were laughing at them they don't make profit they don't make profit it's true they didn't make profit they were just caring about the user and now we have companies they don't make profit they don't care about the people and about the users that's their only stakeholder and this is so amazing and that's the time now it's a born of a new industry just focusing on the planet this is 2020 that's fabulous one thing I want to kind of go back and unpack a little bit more trend one has thousands of trend scouts or you have trend scouts that are actually working for you all around the world and then you have a form of a system that goes out and finds those trends can you tell us a little bit more about that yeah this is happening since 2003 we were starting with a global trend scouting network and writing trend reports every month publishing this reports to our companies and we have since 2003 we were always working cross industry and globally so we were never a consultancy just for one industry there are many just doing retail innovation or car innovation or automotive now we were always cross industry and always global because innovation you know this it already happened just somewhere else and that's it exactly so we have to look to Canada to find the newest carbon dioxide removal technology you have to look to Taiwan to find the latest phase detection technology you have to look to Australia to find the newest trends and start computing maybe and that's true so we need this global scale of trend research and we are always very picky on this to say really cover China, cover Southeast Asia and this is the permanent process so it's getting better and better the trend scouts send us the trends we pay them for the trends if it's a good trend and we take the trend so it's a self learning system always getting better also with the internal trend research team and so we publish 250 trends per month 250 per month on a global scale cross industry since 2003 so now there is a database Trend Explorer so because we don't sell PDF anymore we sell a trend database subscription database and this has more than 44,000 micro trends daily new trends and you can search for your trends in your industry new just business models just technologies, just startups just regional focus so this is a great Google for trends in future and that's a really good inspiration I also use it every day when I build my presentations I just say okay what is the topic of the presentation maybe food sustainable food supply chain and I just enter there filter sustainability food supply chain and I get all the trends so this is really easy to use tool to create anticipate the future that's nice I mean I really like that and I wanted to unpack that for our listeners but then also touch upon so now you got the trends and then you also mentioned back casting and I want it my listeners are very intelligent but I also want to unpack that for them so you find the trend also there's a date and time in the future that that trend will peak will emerge will be there and then from that vision of the future whether it's movie magic or innovation that will come by that time then you do what's called back casting you take the back cast from let's say it's December 2030 which is similar to the sustainable development goals and back cast from that point in time to present to your point in time now and with that back cast you get the monies the data the goals the actions that need to be done in order to achieve that by that date you have all the data you need all the wherewithal market population resources size monies everything that are needed to achieve that by that date time and therefore it can be worked towards it's like a plan it's a goal and you know that I'm an advocate for the sustainable development goals and they function very similar how they were developed not only with goals but targets and indicators in the hundreds and that they were also formed through a date and time back casting and using dynamic systems modeling to achieve that I really like that you not only use the foresight but also the other tools that have been around for a long time in our industry for science and mass to actually help us achieve those innovations and that's even though I didn't come right out and say it and we tickled the surface with what I was mentioning with Elon and also if we look at any other innovators in the past they had a rocket launch yesterday they've been they had a back cast they had a vision a goal a plan and then they've been working towards that relentlessly nonstop and over time that growth that trend starts to grow exponentially and those timelines and deadlines start to be achieved and almost a critical mass to reach that future that we want so that things that you've kind of said there but I don't even think that just the lay executive would say I understand that or I understand what they're talking about and wow I need to apply that to my business that's where you said we need to educate them so that's really what you do not only with the trend reporting but you go out and advise and have this education process as well for our consulting unit it's really working on the projects with the clients to use trends to anticipate the future to create pictures of the future like scenarios to find innovation fields to do back casting and pathways towards this innovation fields and this whole discipline you can call front end of innovation and front end of strategy because this comes before corporate strategy this comes before innovation because when you innovate you should know where to innovate and the front end of innovation and foresight helps you to anticipate the future fields you want to innovate in and to understand them and to evaluate them in terms of readiness, timelines business models, benefits you can work with this future fields as future business models and then the strategy starts then you can say okay now we have a strategy department you can build concrete strategies how to achieve this future then the innovation starts where you can say okay now we put design thinking and agile scrum methods to work towards the future to deliver projects paying to this future but before this is the front end of innovation many companies forget this innovation is ideation if you google innovation process you can try it now there are 20 pictures from science books that explain that the innovation process starts with ideating but this is stupid where should we ideate on and if you ever did ideation workshops you know you have a great time you have so many great ideas and you love this culture of ideation but then it ends in your file server and nothing happens because this idea does not do not pay into a big picture into a big innovation fields which also are aligned with corporate strategy with the sea level with the innovation department so the front end of innovation also helps to align the teams to say okay we get the top 20 stakeholder or sometimes in Switzerland we had a workshop with 500 stakeholders from one company let's take the top 500 people and try to anticipate the future for their business models and try to find relevant innovation fields and this helps them to align and agree on specific future they want to achieve and this is the front end of innovation and there should be no strategy and no ideation or innovation and there should be no thinking project without doing this before the future is so complex it's made up of so many systems and we really need to understand that how it works and that education is so vital it really ties nicely because honestly we haven't really gotten into the first question that I wanted to ask you today but it was a nice lead into where we want to go and that lead in is do you feel like you're a global citizen and how would you feel about a future where there were no borders walls, nations or divisions of humankind in any respect first I want to answer what you said that the future is so complex because it's such a complex system and sometimes it's so easy to question about carbon and decarbonization because when we think about the most important future fields I think first is decarbonization this is one super important so just build business build innovation build technology for decarbonization this is not complex it's all clear in science we have all the IPCC reports we have all its scientific proof we need decarbonization this is the aim and we do and also for resources we had a lot of discussions that we need to save resources and sustainability is just possible when we save water and resources and I think this is not a resource problem we have it's a problem of our technology we are using because when you think about the paper industry like when we both grow where have you grown up in UK no between the United States and Algoid Germany so Southern Germany and how was paper recycling when you were growing up there you were reading newspapers and what did you do then back that I can remember it was almost non-existent we used it to burn in the fireplace a lot of the time and sometimes as kids we'd use it as a project we would take old newspapers and use it as some kind of a paper mache or school project in one way or the other we also used it to I grew up on a farm so we also used it for other uses every day that what we could use upcycling I want to see your artworks where you are working paper is a good example 95% so in the end when you close the loop you can consume as much as you want without giving pain to the planet because paper just it just can circulate faster and then you can have as much newspapers, packages, books as you want when it's a closed loop then we don't have a resource problem we need to advance technologies on plastic recycling and all this to close the loop and then it's so I think this is the second big picture beside decarbonization is to close the loop in circular economy and then we can have endless consumption imagine you can have endless consumption on paper products, plastic products electronic products because the loop is 100% closed circular economy we're thinking one planet living we're realizing that there is no throwaway use everything efficient it's actually the same model as moonshot thinking so how do you you not waste resources energy when you're in the cold depths of space so you have to conserve and try to reuse that that's the same thinking here on this planet so that's absolutely vital now I'm going to hold you to the fire to answer the global citizen question yes and I was thinking about this when I talked about circular and decarbonization maybe the same experience when you travel you connect with the world and I think in my in my life journey we both travel so much and we've seen all continents and meeting all the people and having so many friends and for me I really feel home everywhere of course I have my home in Blankenese where I live with my kids and my wife and these are my roots and I'm happy to have this but when I'm in Miami or when I'm in New York I feel home and I love the people and I'm so open to all this cultures and for me it's such a benefit to meet all this international I feel so much better when I have international people around me and different cultures and a lot of diversity around me makes me happy and I'm totally feeling bad when I go to a Elton or something and there's only less like 50 year old people and this is also about the management board when I look at the ducks company and there's a management board and they are only 60 year old man sitting with bellies like this and this is true, this is really true sometimes I have presentations in engineering summits and I look to the audience and I see people with blue shirts and bellies and all our men and all our 60 or between 50 and 60 then I don't feel comfortable I feel comfortable when I have diversity international cultures everything transgender everything around me and then I feel this is a good time I want to stay here I want to be part of this human experience experiment yes but I also think sometimes it's good to have this regional differences I like to travel to Switzerland and to have this Swiss culture and you know what I mean and this is also so nice so I don't want the borders to disappear of course we should all be free and travel and working together but it's also nice to have this regional culture of Switzerland and Austria and Denmark and the Nordics are so nice people and then you go to Italy and it's a total other world it's also so nice so I like this regional cultural differences yeah well that's great I'm glad that you feel like a global citizen and you like that diversity I believe it's important as well I believe that cultures and those experiences are very much needed in our world that diversity in some respects those don't go away but that there should be a form of much higher global standard as global citizens that can give us a better more innovative or more secure operating system for humanity as a whole there's a topic that's coming up fairly soon here in November the US election there are far reaching consequences depending on how that election goes for us all over the world just as there were with Brexit just as there were when Bolsonaro was elected for our planet with resources with things that occur whether it's a pandemic in a lockdown whether they occur just in normal trade or economic negotiations of a nation that affect us all over the world and so we have the bull scenarios of our world making decisions for us in Germany by letting the Amazon rainforest burn and so me as a global citizen I say I'm breathing that same air and that's creating carbon emissions and it's also my life here in Germany the way I live it in our future effects of our future and our kids I want to have a decision in that governance for Brazil I want to have a decision in that governance for the United States because they're making decisions and things that affect us all on this same planet because you talk about circular economy you talk about food and innovations those are all things that are borderless they don't have borders they're not nationalistic things they're for everyone and energy especially that's not divided by borders and so I just really wanted to know what your thoughts and feelings are moving in that direction and how that influences foresight, our future innovation and you're thinking before my next question that I'll give you is probably the first and hardest one that I will give you today but I just won't I don't know if you have something to say for that but that's kind of why I caveated that about the global citizen you know why I think we should all travel to space why? because of the overview effect when you sit there and look on this planet and you see how fragile it is and this blue sky is just like a very, very thin thing and you see there are no borders and it's all in one and you have to protect this and if you have this overview effect you get this feeling of we need to protect it and this is maybe the biggest benefit so far space travel gave us and we have this overview effect and I think everybody should have everybody should travel to space 8 billion people how can we do it maybe with virtual reality maybe we can build a virtual reality elevator that's so easy and you just set it up and you go to space and you have this amazing overview effect and every there's a book on the overview effect I have it, it's right here on my shelf this blue one and every astronaut was like 500 days in space in Dubai every astronaut ever experiences it only about 500 people that have ever experienced it and they've all had a profound change in their life that really leads me to my first most difficult question, it's the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word it's the future what's the future and you can answer that I prefer you answer it for yourself but if you want to answer that in the guise of the rest of the world that's fine as well can I just say one word sure intelligence that's the future we can leave it because that is so important with other things that you said about education and that intelligence is really a major player we just lost Sir Ken Robinson August I think it was August 21st or August 22nd which was a big shift in our education in our world and a push for reforming and changing how we educate everyone globally but I think that intelligence goes a lot as well by that as we have those moments of awe and experience and learn and educated and have that intelligence that next level so it's really a profound thing thank you for that so that makes my job much easier I have some questions that I really want some kind of sustainable takeaways for my audience that they hopefully you will share with them and they can get from you if you were to speak to some young innovators in your field of thinking that are looking for a way to make a real impact empowerment or advice would you give them? find a good mentor and a good coach to to support you and stay long on your vision in German Hartnäckigkeit persistence dedication really don't stop after just a couple of years you have to continue many years it's a long journey and it will be fruitful but you have to continue really really long and work hard on this work hard it's like you do everything for this and really put all your energy there and find partners find good partners because I think we all have special skills I mean you are special I am special and maybe I'm a more creative person but you also need like analytical capabilities and financial capabilities and find that what Mark Zuckerberg once said and usually I don't like Facebook but I like this he said my best, what I did is to find people for jobs at Facebook in fields where I'm not good in and I think that's also for an entrepreneur if you want to create something you need to see where you are good in and to find people to match the gaps I really believe that that is a key to success so that theme or that mantra has been around for a long time so Henry Ford also he didn't know everything about building production facilities or automotives but he knew what engineers to find those people who were smart enough who had their answers even if he didn't he didn't even graduate from high school so there was a lot of controversy about that but I recently interviewed John P. Stralecki he writes he sells a book in Germany about every 23, 26 minutes he's sold well over 5 million copies of his books and he's done the White Cafe and the Big Five for Life so find the who find the person who's already done it who is doing it and like you said have them be your mentor those who have done it and have been through them watch and follow them copy them have them be your mentor so I'm right in the line time after time our history has really shown what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey up until this point that you would have liked to know from the start so back when you started 20 years ago well long ago what would you have liked to know back then that you know now that you didn't know then that might have made your journey or travels a little bit easier now I know it's so fantastic and inspirational to work in future and innovation and 20 years ago I didn't had a glue on that it's such an inspiring work I can do in the future so maybe this yeah I know it now it's fine but it was a hard hard work and I always loved it I also love to take the risk because I know what for I do it because risk is nothing you just for fun or for adrenaline it's just when you have a vision and when you believe in something you can take risks and yeah that's also what I like to take the risk to do the next step that's fabulous what two or three actions can you give my listeners as advice or as citizens and decision makers that can help them accelerate the impact that they have in their chosen path that if they're an activist or they're an innovator if they want to be a futurist or if they just are a business executive that wants to ensure that the company that they're working for is around in the future what kind of two or three actions or decisions or things you can give them or as a takeaway that would help them to accelerate their journey because as we've talked from the beginning we kind of need to step up our game the future is coming very fast and things are happening exponential and we can't do incremental anymore so do you have any advice or anything that you could offer them I think it's very important already in these times because we are working so much every day we have all these zoom calls and emails and we are in multi-tasking mode and we are losing the capability to focus and sit down for a day and imagine and vision next month I will not only go to Copenhagen but I will visit a friend between Berlin and Hamburg and you should google it it's a fabulous space and there you can just go there for a day and stopping the multi-tasking all these emails and imagine your future and take your time for the future and take a day in the year that's maybe enough or two and maybe you should also take some good friends with you you can invite Marc you can invite Niels and then you can have a day in the future and always do the plus 10 years that's easy it's far ahead but it's also realistic and always do let's do it I would recommend to do one day a year a day in the year 2030 2031, 2032 and so on that's great we will be in Copenhagen very soon for La Futura and via Bound it's actually we're building the future and I totally agree with that if you can't as an entrepreneur as an executive as a business owner as a family man as a single person as just a human being if you can envision and clearly see in your mind what December 2030 will look and feel like and how it will be when you get there there's a problem because right now on TV and on our media and what we see is all very dystopian views of the future of you of what that future feels and looks or even try to imagine and create what it will be like we're never going to reach it the only images the only information we have is it's all cyborgs and robots and dystopian we're fighting over resources and water and whatever well that narrative that story that vision will come true if we don't have a better the future will be like and so the best way to do that is exactly how you said take time for yourself every year to actually put yourself into the future and think about it speak with futureists and leaders and creators who are also thinking about it and try to create your version you don't have to accept anybody else's version create your version of what that future looks like and then start working towards that usually if you have that vision and if you spend the time to do that it's funny how you start working towards that in the beginning of our call you're talking about greenwashing the most crazy effect about greenwashing is those who practice greenwashing if they did it long enough they eventually switch to the real thing because they realized it was a better model anyway and they're like hell we're just greenwashing but this is such a good model and we're getting so much resonance and people are excited we're going to go that way anyway and so they eventually switched and changed anyway because it's just a better more resilient model and that leaves me with my last question for you and then I'll let you go I know you've stayed later to speak with me and that ties nicely with what we just discussed about this vision of the future it's similar to the burning question but it's a little bit different what does a world that works for everyone look like for you truly what does a world that works for everyone look like for you describe it to us or let us know because I know you've done these workshops these things before so give us that vision can I say just one word sure collective intelligence yeah connecting our brains and because at the moment we are just like single intelligence units and there may be some AI intelligence separately but when we connect this intelligence on a global scale and we learn how to better connect our brains together then it will be such an exponential growth of intelligence and it's almost a few more words because it's connected collective intelligence I think I've had discussions with this I'm going to be speaking to Chris Boos on the show pretty soon as well he does a lot for AI and for Angelica Miracle and the Bundestag but what we really need is a real-time update of collective intelligence for human beings we need to have it so that we don't make the same mistakes we made in the past but also so that we can get rid of all the fake news the misinformation the things that we just don't need to know to help us realize and make our lives a little bit easier of that vision of where the future is that's whether it's updated every hour or once a day we get this real-time update of collective intelligence that somehow says okay no we're on this clear path and we're moving to a much better future than this one where we're continuing to repeat mistakes over and over again that are getting us nowhere I mean the the Trumpocalypse, the Putin's the Shays, the Bolsonaro's they're not anything new we've experienced some over centuries and decades before we have more than 12 civilization frameworks in our world that have all collapsed that don't exist anymore early antiquity, Mesopotamia the Greeks, the Romans on and on and those are civilizations that failed well what kind of learnings can we use from those just because we have computers innovation doesn't mean that we could avoid a collapse let's create those better futures let's learn from that I thank you for that I have to I don't know if you like this but I have to add a connected collective intelligence something that's updated every day in real-time to some extent to give us that to the futures those resilient, desirable futures Nils it's been absolutely fabulous and I can't wait to see La Futura I'm so glad you were on the show is there any last words of wisdom you'd like to give my listeners it was so wonderful talking to you Mark thank you very much Mary I enjoyed every moment and every second being with you here also I connect from eye to eye remotely here I love it, I love the session thank you very much for inviting me and also let's connect with the people out there watching this and we are really open to connect and I'm so happy about every contact interested in front-end, foresight, future sustainable futures and all this topic so please which was us Mark and me and maybe see you at La Futura in Copenhagen on 16, 17 September where Mark and I will be that's great perfect I'll put the links of Trend One and La Futura on the show notes and we'll publish it before and we'll promote it so thank you very much and we'll see you very soon thanks so much Nils bye bye Mark take care brother