 At home, all our animals are shelter animals, the horses, the cats or the dogs. I want to give you an example for the dogs. If a dog comes to us, which lives six or five years on a chain somewhere, the dog comes to our farm and sits down and never leaves his place, because he doesn't learn that before. In five or six years before, he gets one place and stays there the entire day. And the same's happened to us over the years. We commute to the offices, we go to a desk, we talk to a machine, work was invisible, we had no idea what the neighbor is doing, exploration, social learning, no chance. And now, boom, it's a new time. Rafael Gilgen is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. We have known each other for a little while, and luckily I've gotten the honor to be able to call him Rafa. But I want to tell you a little bit about Rafael. He's very unique. It's kind of a person that in your company you'd say, who's that crazy guy? What's his job? What does he do? He's always gone. He pops into the office and tells us and he's in this utopian space type of world. And then he takes off again. And everybody in the office listens to him. One of these guys that your colleagues would say, oh, he's got an irrepressible curiosity, a relentless search for explanation and the desire to turn everything upside down in this world. And sometimes for others can be uncomfortable to be around him because he's always pushing that status quo. And when he returns to the office after these long journeys, he talks about things like virtual utopia that sounds like he's lived in some kind of alternate reality. That's because Rafael is a trend scout. He's an innovator, a futurist, a trend scout. And he looks all over the world for new trends, reads books. And he has spent most of his professional life working on making the office environment a better place. Even some of his own colleagues think he's a little crazy. He's really, you know, he's out there. And the other thing to kind of know about him is that he works for Vitra. And they have this approach to improving the quality of offices and public spaces through the power of design by serving the varied Vitra team with the results of his observations, cognitions, and trend clusters, market analysis, and really hard business cases. Rafa, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here, my crazy friend. Thank you. Thank you for the kind introduction. Oh, you're most welcome. I'm glad you're here because we have absolutely tons to discuss. I'm sure we're going to get into a lot of wonderful topics. So it couldn't have really come at a better time because we've just played this crazy experiment and still are playing it on the future of work, the future of life. Where are we going with the future and how now in Germany, we're on our third or fourth severe lockdown where now people aren't even really going to work anymore in a lot of cases, if possible, they're being requested. So with all this trend scouting the future of work and not only architecture and design and how offices in these spaces, has that prepared you to all of a sudden have a whole year almost now with little travel and staying put in one spot? How have you gotten through this time? What's happened? Has all the stuff you've been talking about given you resilience or get us up to speed? Yeah. So honestly, when it hit me, I would say at the end of 2019, I had a year with tons of travels. It was about 25 countries. Always the airport was peck wherever I was. And I thought, oh my God, the planet is real in a bad position because how we do business, that could not that could not be the way, but I had no idea what could be the alternative. And then in a predictable life, the unpredictable, a pandemic comes into our life. And after three weeks or four weeks, I had a little bit fear personal wise because I thought, hey Rafa, your job is game over because you can't travel. You can't meet people. My entire relevance at Vitra was based on personal interactions. And I thought, oh my God, so what do you know? Because I thought I don't want to reinvent myself again, like three or four or five times before my life. But then I have to reinvent myself. I go for a camera setup. I built at home in my big studio, a smaller proper TV studio. I start to write storybooks for the first sessions. And then I start I think in April with my first sessions. I was 13 weeks on my farm in one block. I was never before 13 weeks in one block on my farm. My family got me every day after a while, they freak out. And then in my 20, I leave the first time my home coming to the Vitra campus. At that time, the Vitra campus was empty, but it was so good to be here first and second this. And then I start my I would say my little Rafa TV show, my webcast sessions. I ended up with more than 300 sessions last year all over the world. The biggest one was with 500 people from our Japan community, totally freaky 90 minutes. And nobody leaves the session 90 minutes come on. But honestly, I always was I also was done then at the end of the year. So that was my year. And I enjoy I enjoy to be so many days at home. Because now I know every every single trail in my forest. I bought a kayak to go on my river and nap frequently in the evenings. So from that perspective, I enjoy it. Yeah. And I really critical thing about the the climate change from that point. Yeah. Because I thought I had time to think about it. I would not say before I had the time to think about it. But it was really like with the high five with the chair into your face. Yeah. So you work really in all different countries all over the world with a lot of small medium enterprises, but also there's some some big names on your list as well. But but a lot of a lot of the companies that you work with probably are not thinking of these moonshots or these big hairy audacious goals where they're going to save the world or change it that it's a different mindset. Now, I'm surprised to hear from you what what I just heard. And I want to tell you why, because as a trend scout, as someone who sees these different environments of how work is that that there's a big psychology that also goes along with this. And we'll kind of get into the more of that as also your discussions and talks on how how you see that the future of work, humans of new work, things like that and and how that occurs. But didn't that give you a little bit of preparedness of what what was what was coming and and what the future for not only your clients, but for yourself and what that would be like. And that is okay. Eventually, it's going to happen. That's the first surprise. And then I just want to before we go into that question, I want to clarify for my listeners and you can clarify, you kind of did a little bit. You live on a farm in Regensburg or close, close there and as a beautiful place and a lot of nature. And so you have one of the I was also surprised to hear that your family is going crazy that you're spending so much time there because you have one of the most beautiful human zoos you could wish for. You're out in the nature. You're kind of on this farm. You've got open spaces and can even distance yourself from your family if they get on your nerves. So I I'm you've shocked me in a couple ways. So you now have got to clarify what have you been working on all these years and why the hell having you applied it into your life a little more so that you would be prepared or did I totally misunderstand? Okay, starting with my family, you know, I'm so curious. I want to understand everything. I talk a lot. I jump through the topics from one topic to the other one. And I need for sure a kind of an audience. I need to talk to someone. And for that reason, I talked your own breakfast, lunch and dinner to my family hardcore. And in all the topics, I talk normally to my to customers, to people like you, to all these people at the forefront. If it is startups, universities, whatever. And I think that was a little bit overwhelming for my family. That that was the reason they became your business colleagues, they became your office colleagues, so to say. And you know what, there's one secret to keep Rafa Calim, give him hard work on the farm. So I had an entire week to go out to harvest the firewood for the next winter, like for this winter. And in that week, I was really calm because working in the forest, going for the trunks, you're at the evening really tired. It's like an entire workout session. So that that to my family, to the business topic. For sure, I was, I was totally convinced that we, that it was monkey business to commute every day to the office to spend the rest of the day in front of a machine. For sure, I believe there is in front of us before COVID a mixed reality that will change everything. And we set up since 2017 hackathons all over the world with topics, what remains from the physical world? How could your life be in an entire mixed reality and so on. But it's like you talk always, we have to go to the Mars, we have to go to the Mars, we will achieve that. And now it's true. Now we are on planet Mars. And now it's up to us to execute all our ideas. And I think that makes a difference. I love that. So we're definitely going to get in some more of that because I've heard a number of your talks and you start out actually very similar to me. But I don't want to touch on the space topic just yet. What I do want to talk about is, and I'm also this, even though I'm an environmentalist, a big global food reformist, I'm almost a trans scout myself. I'm thinking about sustainable innovations of future. I'm thinking how can we work sustainably in the future? How can we do things differently with different tools? What does the future of work look like that doesn't have an impact on human health and on human suffering and on our environment? And so I really think about that in many respects. So in some respects, I'm also a trans scout in this kind of, you know, what does the future work? And for example, this is an audio podcast, but it's also a video portion. And those who are watching the video can see that both you and I are standing. I've been standing for work over 18, maybe even close to 20 years now. When I very first started, I was turning garbage cans upside down and used all sorts of crazy tips and tricks and tools because deaths weren't always available the way I wanted them, you know, these drivable standing deaths. And so I even went to monkey deaths and did all sorts of hacks to make it workable. And before that, I was thinking about what different types of chairs, kneeling chairs and other chairs that would get me more in and leaning chairs into a standing position. And how do you make that trend? And so in some respects, there's this, you know, how do you work in the future? And how does that happen? My question is, now this subject has come up for, I would say, the majority of the world's population has had to address during this lockdown period, if they were allowed to work from home, are they going to work from their bed? Are they going to work from their couch? Are they going to work from the kitchen table? Do they have an office? So they're seeing their human zoo a little bit closer. And they're also learning that if you work eight hours a day from the couch or the bed that eventually your back hurts or you never get out of your pajamas or whatever, and eventually you're running into some ergonomic and some health issues. And so I want you to kind of answer that trend on just the ergonomics, the occupational health and safety aspects of setting up your work life that you deal with as well. I mean, that's a trend and you have those swatches behind you, you know, where things are going. And that's kind of what Beecher does in some respects as well. So I want to hear how you've seen that evolved. And then after you answer that, I want to address the Anthropocene of chairs, the Anthropocene of desks and things, what we're seeing some trends starting to emerge. Oh, big question. So coming to the first topic, I believe what we learn is that there is a mismatch, how we deal with space. Think about the cities. The most of the cities was a little bit like sleep cities. Your home was so so so tiny that you have maybe you have your bedroom and maybe your kitchen and kitchen combination with an open space or living room. So that means our sociology setup how we live was not prepared anymore to have a proper house. And I don't believe that is a question of the size of the floor of your flat. I believe it was like the entire industry serve the houses. Now we see all the houses. It seems like they're a little bit too small because there was not additional space anymore to stay there for work. On the opposite, after the first lockdown, when the most people come back to the office, they go into the office and say, Oh my God, that looks like 1999. I don't want to work here anymore, because they learn it makes no sense why a big portion of the work was routine tasks, they could do done from everywhere. So then they start to avoid commuting. And now something interesting happens. People start to think what how to make minded places. So what is the best place to do the best tasks you have to do? Maybe you have to write good narrative. You go there where you get kind of inspiration about the people you write about. Maybe you have to prepare a paper for your CFO. Maybe do that at home because you don't want to be disturbed. Or maybe you the task is so big that you need help. Then you go to the office because you have your co-workers. I think first people reference is now their task into a space in general. And now when we go to the smaller setting, you talk about the ergonomy topics. I believe a great example is an exercise hall. The strongest body language, an exercise hall at school has a strong body language because you go in and you immediately know how to deal with the space because every item you know what to do with that. And I think here starts ergonomy in terms of an activity. So what we have to learn is how to code objects like furniture by a semantic language that people immediately understand, A, I can do these and that and that and that and maybe much more than the designer believe what to do with that. To give them kind of variances. And I think that we also learn like we don't want to be located anymore at the desk because that seems like mass farming. Currently we are discussing how we take care about organic farms that all the animals should have a better place to stay as long they grow before we eat them. But in the same way, we organized 10 years our own workspaces. Yeah, it's not only our living conditions, but it's also our schooling conditions, our work conditions. It's education not only at the university level, but at the grade school level. It hasn't changed since the beginning of the industrial revolution even before that. And there's very few that are starting to make that transition. But even now we see this shift in not only consciousness, but an awareness on how it needs to change and why those systems or those environments aren't working. I want to bring an example. At home, all our animals are shelter animals, the horses, the cats or the dogs. I want to give you an example for the dogs. If a dog come to us, which lives six or five years on a chain somewhere, the dog come to our farm and sit down and it never leaves his place because he doesn't learn that before. And in five or six years before, he get one place and stay there the entire day. And the same happened to us over the years. We commute to the offices, we go to a desk, we talk to a machine, work was invisible. We had no idea what the neighbor is doing, exploration, social learning, no chance. And now, boom, it's a new time. It really is. It truly is a new time. There's this thing that I've spoken with a couple other guests before, but I really want to get into it with you. The work and life balance, home life balance, so to say whether you're married or not, single or even if you're a student, if it's even school and home life balance. Those are two holders almost pulling away from each other, moving in other directions and maybe some small parts touch. There's very few people who have that job satisfaction in our world. The job dissatisfaction is even higher now during the COVID time for many of us, but before it was already bad. And only a portion of those two different directions were touching. And most of it was like, okay, I've got to go work 40 hours a week at this place, but I'm spending another 20 hours preparing to go to that place mentally. On Sunday, I'm thinking about going to work on Monday. I'm thinking, how can I prepare? What can I wear? And if I'm out, when we had the freedom to go out, and sometimes if you would see a colleague from most normal jobs, you'd be like, oh, I don't want to see him. Let's walk the other way. I don't really like that person. And you're working at a job you don't like. In a lot of cases, it's different. We enjoy our work and hopefully that everybody has that. But the reality is it's not, and those are polar opposites. But actually, to have livability, to have a good social society in our world culturally everywhere, those two worlds actually are one. They need to become one that you can trust and have what Tim Liberist would call in his book, The Business Romantic, a type of romance with your work where you enjoy your colleagues, you trust them, you want to see them and you can count and rely on them. They care about you and your family and what you make in your health. And then there's even, you know, there's numerous books. There's reinventing organizations from Frederick Rolalu. There's work rules from Lazlo Bach and on and on and on. Otto Schamer, Thierry You, but there's all these things about how this work-life balance needs to kind of merge and how do we create now in lockdowns these human zoos, these environments where we can not have domestic violence, where we can enjoy our children, we can have enough technologies and environment and ergonomics to make these new environments work. And so with that question is the question that, did you know that we are in the age of the Anthropocene of chairs? Not, we're in the Anthropocene, but we're in the Anthropocene of chairs per person. There are three to six chairs per person. We are talking six to eight billion chairs on this planet. That's six to eight per person on our planet. That's unbelievable that amount of chairs, right? And actually it's even more than that. We have almost eight billion people on our planet and I think it's 60 to 80 billion chairs on our planet. And now in this lockdown, those chairs, they're not doing nothing. We're in the age of the Anthropocene of chairs and we could talk about tables and we could talk about technology and you talk about this as well. So there's a couple of things there that I'd like you to address that kind of hopefully have sparked some some thoughts and directions that we need to go here. Wow, that is a really good point. Yeah, quite far beyond how people think. By the way, that's, I thought in average one person had 10 chairs, so but even 10 chairs are tons of chairs. So coming entering this question, by the way, Tim Lieberich, one of his first book readings was here at the Vitra campus, I think four years ago in September, something like that. He just had a new book launched last year and I think it was in September, October of last year. I met him first in my life eight years ago in California at that time. He was at NBBJ Architects. Good, so to your point. So currently, why we separated spaces? So there was not kind of intersection or transversality, so we really separated. And then we see that our home is not good organized because the home has not kind of a hybrid structure or like a smart camper structure where you have a multi-purpose space. And even the office was not a kind of a multi-purpose space. First, second is we are overwhelmed now to live in two worlds. We are still so by the first lockdown, we go home and we copy our behavior from the office in our homes. And after a while, we find out that makes totally not sense. Then your tools are coming into our life. I make a report. It's called Mapping the Remote Work Universe with a student, with Merit Zimmermann. And then we count more than 700 remote remote work tools. What makes them so interesting, so the power of these remote universes, I would say 70% of these tools are synchro work tools. So a portion of T people could work on one on one piece on digital twin, whatever. The old physical architecture of work was a synchro, ping-pong, ping-pong. So that means in the second wave of the lockdown at home, we come to the point, what are the benefits of the virtual space? Then we come to the point, we have to reinvent the old physical space. And now we see, I believe you will see now several kind of examples. There is no one solution, even not from a company. There are companies, they sell now their headquarters. They go in a business, like in Seattle, this company, Ray, they rent now small satellites because they find out in a food walking distance, or maybe in a 20-minute distance, there are several spots in Seattle. We rent smaller locations that everyone from our company can go there by bicycle. And they don't have to have to commute times. If they have no space at home, they can go there and they meet each other, so you create a sense of belonging. I think that is a kind of solution. So other ones believe, okay, so we have our headquarters and now the headquarters is much more like, we name it, the club. We really reinvent it as a club. And we do kind of a new program that means there is a person who takes care, who creates an interesting program, what happens during the week in the club, that people say, I have to go there because there are one desire. One desire is to be part of a bigger portion of people, of a tribe. It's called belonging. And second is to develop your own potential. It's like learnability. And for that reason now, companies start to rebuild their headquarters. And for these people, which don't have the opportunity to work from home, they make deals with the local coworkers to say, come on, I want to have a flat rate for my employees for one reason that the most of them go to the same spot, again, that they meet each other so that you still have a sense of belonging. And what I believe now the super advantage companies, what they do, they set up a digital twin of the company. They're inspired by the gaming industry who provides super virtual spaces so that even if I'm not able to come to the Vitra campus maybe in one or two years from now, I take my Oculus and I get a really great experience. It's like, I'm there. And I believe in the following, in this generation Z, who spend a lot of time in a virtual space comparing to a physical, that maybe for these guys, it's quite normal to stay in a mixed reality. So we will see now, I believe monthly, new good examples how people deal with that. Another last example, I live in the countryside. What happens now in the countryside, there are smart majors to see, hey, there are some people who have a bad wireless connection at home, so a bad broadband connection, or they have no space. So what they do, they find in their countryside places, where the majors say, okay, I give this place to the people who don't want to commute to the city as they're kind of mini co-working on the countryside. And now we, there are some good examples around and I believe what that helps us, that brings really freedom to the people, freedom to have a choice, to find a great spot, and in average, the people commute in the world, in average, the people commute in the world 10 days a year, 10 days. Think about that. Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. So there's, I mean, there's so many different facets of what we're talking about that we could branch off into almost any of them. You know, even just specifically talking about what the ergonomics, what does your space look like at home in your home office, and how does that future of work look like, whether you, where you live, what's the connection like, do you have to still travel, things like that, those are all shifting in that, in that shift. What we're, what we're seeing is, for most places, the sustainable infrastructure emerging. So broadband internet, we're seeing a lot of companies shipping chairs and desks and computer monitors and all sorts of things offering tools of iPads to their employees to be able to continue to work from home. We're seeing that before companies that say, oh, you can work from home one day a month that they're like, oh, that's totally fine. And they're seeing that the productivity in that whole thing is shift. And as you, as you also mentioned so correctly, that a lot of companies are re-evaluating saying we're spending an enormous amount of space for these offices, especially in the banking blue collar areas, they're saying like, well, this is just extremely something that could be digitized, can be changed, we're wasting so much that they're now going satellites and they're downgrading a lot on these physical spaces. And so there's a lot of changes, we're right at the crux of a unique time that we're seeing this. I've always, for at least 20 years now, felt like sitting was the new smoking. And that's kind of why I shifted to standing at work in this ergonomics. And I come from a long background of health safety, OSHA compliance, occupational health and safety environment. So what do the ergonomics of work look like? And then it went from that to compliance. And then it went from that to corporate social responsibility. And then it went, now it's an environmental social governance. But it all really started back with health and safety. How can you work no matter what your work environment is? Do you have personal protection equipment? Do you have good ergonomics and things? So I've always kind of been thinking in one respect or the other of the future work, and how can we do it that we don't have repetitive motion injuries when we work with carpal tunnel or back issues, whatever it is, because those are the biggest things just in the reality, regardless of sustainability and environment. Those are the biggest things that create numerous problems with human suffering health problems, which then lead to your employees calling in sick and having issues at work. I would bring it there in another perspective. So if you look at the end of the 2010 years, the most disease at work was brain disease. So like burnout and all the other cases. So and the ratio of these disease like to your body cycle, like to your back or things like that, there was, I think, they go up to 13 or 40 percent, 14 percent only, comparing to 30 years ago. Think about the programs in the companies. A lot of them, they have the sport facilities inside. They make programs if they have yoga classes, mindfulness. So there was a good movement. I believe there was a very good movement in the entire biophilic design and also well-being movement. So that was, I think, that was really highly increasing in 2016, 17, 18, 19 in Asia, in the US and also in Europe. So that was in a good way, but even that topic changed now. Because if you go now to the office, I think there is one challenge in the future. As more repetitive tasks are taken over by softened hardware, as more we have kind of creators work. If you look to the skills published by the World Economic Forum, the new 10 skills, the first five of them are about creativity, intuition, and the other five about your technical skills. So as more we work in a creation mode, as more we need a regeneration mode. So what I believe in the near area to these office spaces, there must be areas where you say, okay, I take a nap. I make a rest. There is a park. If maybe there is a garden on the top or in the atrium or like in the near field, or maybe there are meditation spaces for that. Because I believe in the future, the biggest portion of our work is driven by creativity, and that really sucks energy. Even as long we interact like with, I would not say old devices, but like with these kind of machines. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And that brings me perfect in our discussion perfectly to kind of some of your past talks, and I want to bring them up to speed. So when I start my presentation, I also use the overview effect. I use Earthrise, and I show the blue marble. You do that as well as well, but you do it in a different context. And then you also discuss because now we're in the 51st year of the moon landing. And you show, you know, the first astronauts going to the moon and their spacesuits and the inside of the shuttle. This last year, 2020, with the year of the pandemic was unbelievable for rocket launches, Mars, Elon Musk, all the space travel. And we saw a change in the working environment and space, not only in their suits, the type of machines and rockets that they were going into. We went from, when I used to look at the old NASA shuttles and not only the space shuttle, but the Sputniks and the rockets before I like, how in the hell do you not get overwhelmed and totally go crazy? There are so many buttons, I would be worried in that big clunky space suit that you would bump something, right? Or put the wrong switch and then you've just lost all your fuel or something like that. And now there's 12 buttons and three touch screens. And it's like mainly automated. There's not a damn thing to do. You watch the astronauts and they're busy trying to figure out what to do with their hands because there's nothing to do anymore. And so we've taken a quantum leap into reality, not only the future of space travel, but the future of how we work and where we work. And so I want you to kind of take us why you talk about the Earthrise and why you talk about that and how that ties to the future work and what you're doing, this trends as well. Because I think we have a lot of similarities how that ties together. So by the way, I was also surprised when I've seen inside the rocket because there was no button anymore. There were only the screens and even how the astronauts looks like. I say, eh, this is an astronaut dress, not more because I love the old astronaut dress. These like going like in the specialist. Okay, why I joined that look. We lose. I was more and more confronted that the that the customers or the society in general was critical. So that means that take all the things how they are. They never thought about that. And they only thought three or five meters ahead, not not far away. They never go beyond. And I want to show them I want to really show them how important is to look beyond to get the full picture because context, it's really important to think in these context stories. You can't reduce complexity by reducing complexity. You have to deal with complexity, but you can understand complexity to train yourself to build a mindset. And I was inspired by Accio Toyota last year on the CES in Las Vegas. Accio Toyota go on the stage and he doesn't bring a car and brand new car to Las Vegas. He brought a story. He share with us the story of Toyota of his father and of his grandfather that Toyota always served the society to make the life of the society easier. And and he would love to have a glass ball to understand when cars could fly when a car is getting a robot like transformer or when a car pick him up at home only by a hey car come over. But then he talked to us but that is a romance because but he learned so many that Toyota car company learned so many about the future by building cars by getting a kind of an overview and a foresight mindset that they came up with 40 new fields. And these 40 new fields are dedicated to the society because the most of them are matching with the SDGs and with the global with the mankind challenges. And for that reason, he don't build a small lab. He built an entire city on 157 hectares with Bjarke Ingels. And I thought, oh my God, what a strong commitment. How that person can make so a strong commitment. And by researching and talking to the Toyota people, I find out, hey, they are well prepared. They know they really get the overview. They really know how to deal with the presence or how take the presence to predict a picture into the future. And even how to deal with the past and to know what to transform on what not to transform, what could be heritage. And so I start with the overview effect. And after the overview effect, I bring in 51 years later, now 52 years later, Acura Toyota. What happens if you have your personal overview? What happens if you have a long-term perspective? Ah, and by the way, my personal carrier into the trend, trend, trend topic or foster topic starts at the DLD in Munich. Thanks to Hubert Borda. In 2010, I met Bertrand Picard and he changed my life in a 30-minute speech. He told, he tell us a story about how important is in life to have a weatherman, to have the long-term perspective. If you are the pilot, he talked to us in the audience, you're all great pilots, but don't forget you need a buddy and this buddy is your weatherman and you have to deal with them. Yeah. Yeah. Did you happen to hear my talk at La Fertura at all? Yeah. I actually know Bertrand Picard as well. He's the owner of Solar Impulse and 1,000 Solutions and he also is the first man to fly around the world in a solar airplane. And so I love that. He likes to deal with pioneers and innovators, those people who do not know that it is not impossible. Yeah. And so he deals for his solar airplane, he dealt with shipbuilders instead of airplane builders because the airplane builders all said, no, it's not possible. We don't know how to do it. So he went to those who didn't know it was impossible and got it done. And that's a lot kind of how the future works for many of us. And as looking at these trends, we're in the decade of not only the decade of action, the decade of regeneration, regenerative thinking, and also the decade of this circular economy doing the impossible, inventing things as pioneers for the future. And so Innovators Magazine has interviewed him and worked with him in the past. And I also, he's very inspiring. I think that was the last time you and I saw each other was at DLD in Munich. It was in 2020 and then later we went down to Davos right after. And actually it started out as a bang. The year was going great. And even after Davos, I still had a couple of events before the true craziness happened. That brings in another topic. So we're right now in this extreme next lockdown here in Germany. And now they're saying, okay, no more cloth made homemade masks that were the Instagram crave that everybody is making their own masks and these that we need a medical mask. And it has to be changed out and repurposed a lot more. All these new social distancing measures, we finally got the vaccine. But now the situation of the vaccine is such that I think we have six different choices. But it's being delivered and rolled out at least here in Germany in a certain way. And you'll be notified when it comes. But even when we get it, here's the interesting thing that I want to discuss with you is it doesn't mean that the masks go away. It doesn't mean that the social distancing goes away or some of these measures because even with the vaccine, you can still be a carrier. And so you and I are thinking not only about the future of work, but the future of life because those two are combined. So now does this, we know that other pandemics, other things will be coming. And we're working towards a better future. But what does that look like? Does the next thing now we're going to wear a gas mask or we're going to wear a space suit or we're going to wear oxygen masks because the vaccine isn't really helping anything until that herd immunity is reached. And we're talking, you know, close to 8 billion people on our planet, you know, something. And so now the question is, do we need some better trends in medicine and vaccines and better trends in how we work and live ability? Because as you say, we need the social interaction we're social beings. So what is the hope that somehow through the technologies, the things that are emerging that you're working on that you're probably hopefully talking about, where companies are thinking about this, where are we going next, at least in your areas of expertise. Is that just that that's the new that's the new norm, I guess, we're all we're all going to continue social distancing and mask because that herd immunity is not something that's going to happen. And now we've seen mutations as well. And so I don't want to belabor the point, but we need to get into realities. How do we solve these problems or what are these things that we can not get back to a new normal but create a system for better futures? Good point, Mark, really good point. I think first what we have to do and we should start, I wouldn't say we should start this year with that, that we as a society start to understand why that could happens. So thinking in a context to know why that could happens. So the the means as long as we deal with the planet in that term, it will happen again. And to come now to the footprint moment to come to the handprint moment to real to be critical to yourself like okay, Rafa, is it necessary to go by car? Is it necessary to buy this car, even if you live in the countryside? And in the larger portion to be part of a community inside the organization to take over responsibility? I honest believe that every the brand of a company, the value of a brand of every company on the planet up to five years from now will be combined with the impact of the company to the society and even to the planet, like out of this planet centricity or this SDG model. I can't believe that there will be any brand in 2025 or 2030, which is high ranked, which don't take care about this issue. Second is every organization, it's not enough for a company to have only a commercial layer. You also have to have a society layer. The society layer could be cultural education, or maybe the climate change topic, like a kind of a citizenship for these kind of topic. And then we are then when then really can start a big movement. So to bring this topic closer to all of us. And I think the most important point is that we how to say that we connect each other again with nature. Look, for me, it's totally easy to be connected to nature because I live in the outback. I see now how many birds are my feeding station in winter, comparing to winter 2020, 2019, 2016, 15, 10, and I let you know there are less birds on the feeding station. I can let you know what happens with the draw during the year because we have two big water ponds. And we have to refill the water ponds out of our big water basins from our roof. So that means I'm aware not because I'm so smart because I live in the context with nature. So and we should reconnect us with nature again. And it should start at school. We should even then let the normal school like the school is in German, I don't talk about these like the Alemannin school in Germany, which has a super, super program for the kids. So what would happen if maybe 15 or 25% of the education would happen outside? That is a kind of a beginning. The other topic is that we should provide ourselves a kind of footprint or handprint index that you know what is your consumption. Like look, I know I get every year a letter from the German Retirement Organization, what is the prediction of my retirement salary or payment? Why I don't get by the government paper what is the prediction of my carbon footprint? By year, by year, like if you want to make a contribution, my recommendation is go to that I can give you the answer to that is because we're all over the world. We're not based on an ecological economy. We're based on a capitalistic economy. So on a very intensive economies that that's why you don't get that. And I think that a lot of our economies and things are really failing us. And I agree 100% with you on reconnecting to nature. I think that is so vital and it is the key. It's proven their studies, you know, just taking a walk in nature, being around trees, that what it does for your health and your psyche and your emotion is fabulous. And the other thing that really connects to what you're saying, which is really become so the pandemic is horrific. But a lot of things have been bubbling to the surface and it's shown a microscope on where our problems are, what we need to fix and what we really need to change. And for that, I really am thankful. And one of the biggest areas of what we're now seeing has ties into its to liveability to the future of work that we've been discussing is New York, Shanghai, Wuhan, Tokyo, Munich, all the big cities in the world, even Hamburg, people are realizing and they're making a mass Exodus out of these big cities. New York has not had so many vacancies and so many people leave during 2020 and 2021 already, not only because of the craziness, but because there's no need to be in a big city. They want to go somewhere where the livability factor is a little bit better because now they realize I can do my job from anywhere and to pay these high exorbitant amounts of money where I've maybe lost my job already, or I can work from home, I'd rather have my home work life be a little bit better. So you see all these people now going out trying to find I've heard more farm purchases, more land purchases, more house purchases, all sorts of things in Europe. That's a lot of talk about Denmark and Sweden properties that they're buying and they're going to Spain. People are saying no thank you, we're moving, we're going to find something better and so we see these shifts and it's pretty substantial. I'm going off of a lot of numbers from New York because I'm from the U.S., but we're actually seeing that, that the people, it's not just that they want to live better, but they also want to reconnect with nature. They want to be somewhere further away. They say I'm going to take a break and walk out in the nature. And I had on Tuesday, I listened a broadcasting, live broadcasting by the Alfred Herrhausen Society from Frankfurt and the London School of Economics and one of the guests was Richard Florida. And he mentioned the point that the topic was about the social order in these cities, in the old cities, so they don't work anymore. I talked to a colleague from Tokyo and Tokyo is missing 50 million people a day, the city of Tokyo. So that means the old ecosystem don't work anymore. So that means now we have two things. In the rural area, you play out of the offence because it's highly attracting. The major now is in the spotlight. He can say, oh, how cool is that? I can bring a value now in that area. People are coming. I can make improvement in schools and kindergarten and all the other things, what I could not done before. But the cities now are playing out of the defense because they really have to reinvent themselves. And there is a good institution in Barcelona, it's called placemaking.org. So they start this kind of placemaking movement. And what happens now in cities is like, for sure, like in Frankfurt. While the pandemic, people have to stay in their city. So they can't go over a weekend to another city to another country. And then they really understand what their city is. Now they have a kind of expectation to the city. Why we don't have ping, bang, bang, bang. And even maybe the authorities say, hey, we have an issue. We have to do something. And I believe, I highly believe this will be a strong society movement, that people take care, take over a portion of responsibility and say, hey, let us start a kind of a placemaking project for our city. And let us find what is our own domain. So what is our domain? We are not Copenhagen. We are not Paris. We are not Munich. We are maybe Wuppertal or Duisburg or whatever. The other thing I kind of want to clarify for my listeners is you and I are both speaking from a place of enormous privilege. So we are very fortunate to be living where we are. Fairly good social infrastructure, fairly good infrastructure. Period. We are not suffering. And even in New York to some extent, even though there is the boroughs and the Bronx and different things, there is a lot of pockets of some really poor and bad places. But that's still the Western world. That's the developed world. But if you're seeing those exodus in those areas, please understand if you come from that perspective that there is another exodus that we call refugees still going on. And it's still going to grow because the people are all different reasons that now become climate refugees or conflict refugees or things that are going on in Belarus or that they are now saying, I'm going to leave. I have to be a refugee. And so that all goes back to the very basic of things. Sustainable development, which is an infrastructure, livability in the future of where we're going and how we work. And so that's why I've been very blessed to have you on the show to discuss this, to kind of have some exchange of topics and hear what your discoveries are. And go ahead. Go ahead. Mark, I prepare myself over the weekend for a workshop. And I read two papers, one paper was from McKinsey. I don't want to make advertising, but it was about formally they had this climate risk report. And now it's only called like the climate report. And there was, they have some balance sheet to see what happens to infrastructure. So how are the costs to repair infrastructure and all the things out of these climate issues? What happens in the south of Spain, like, or like Turkey in this belt close to the equator by temperature? Or think about, there was a movie now in The Economist and they brought it, for an example, The Napa Welle. Ten years ago, they had six days over 40 degrees. Now they have an entire months with this period and they believe half of all wineries could not operate in beginning from 2030. And now, and you brought another story in a thing about the southern area of the Sahara. There is no chance to live there maybe in 15 years from now. And that really keeps me up at night. And what I don't understand, 20 years ago, there was a strong movement from the thought leaders in digitalization. These are these companies what are highly successful today. Why we don't take climate change as an opportunity, like the digital agenda, put the same efforts in to be at the end at the forefront of this movement. One of my biggest, not, I'm pretty big fan of him. I like him and when our paths is crossed before I'm a graduate of Singularity University. But Peter Diamandus said it so well and his book Bold and Abundance and he founded Singularity University and does many different things as well. But he says, you know, the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities. And I don't see that in a capitalistic or negative way. What I see is that if you help one billion people, you automatically become a billionaire, but you've also solved the problem of a billion people and you've made an impact for the future of life of work of things and people have more than one problem. So I really think that we need to get not only in that mindset as those of us in business and those of us who are trying to do things for the future, but in reality that every one of us is a passenger on this spaceship earth and we can all put our hand on the steering wheel. There's only really two small points in our life where we can't be considered passengers and that's one as a baby and one where we're so elderly and frail that there's not much we can do. In those respects, you're actually still a crew member, not a passenger. You're actually a crew member guiding that. But we all need to realize that we have that potential to change and impact the future. So my very first real question, even though we've been talking for an hour now, is do you feel like a global citizen and how would you feel about a world with the removal of all borders, walls, and division of humanity, one for another? Look, two things. First, I got the privilege to visit more than 35 countries for Vita. And by that visiting, why I'm so curious, I always get access to the people there talking to them. And I've the same, I've always the same radar. It's like understanding culture, understanding society, understanding the businesses in that country. So what kind of businesses drive that country? And understanding the history of the country. So and for that, so before I go there, I Google a little bit, read some books, quack, quack. So that means I got the privilege to get the full picture to see, hey, Rafa, you are not alone on this planet. So first, second, I have the privilege to live on a farm. My wife is running an organic concept store. So since 12 years, we, all the things we buy at home are fair produced, are organic, and all the things we tried not to waste something. We rebuild our farm in biodiversity. So by we get trained by someone who's the expert. So my gardener is not an ordinary gardener. And here in myself, there's a strong voice. I'm no 51. And I have tons of energy. But what I want to do is now to that what you mentioned before, which one hand made from this kind of steering wheel to make a bigger impact. As I've done that before, the last six years I go out and talk about the future of work in a missionary way, but in a good sense of that point, to motivate and to inspire the people to say, hey, come on, there's much more in for you to make, to bring a chain, to bring, to bring a change into the way how you work today, how you're employed, what you do to be closer to your company, to endeavor, and there's one wish for me in the same way. I want to do that out of this climate topic. Currently, my personal interest is the city, because the neighborhood of the future of work for sure is the city. The city is a good example for me because that is a big spot. There are tons of people. So if you bring a change into the city, this change has an impact. And the idea is to do that from inside to impact. So currently, I'm studying, I'm reading, I try to meet the people who are city experts. I want to understand who owns the city because the cities are not owned by the citizen. They are owned by pension forms, by asset companies, by investment boutiques. And I believe if you address the biggest problem of the world, maybe to the people who have the money to can make a change, that could be a way to inspire them. Definitely. Thanks for that answer. That was beautiful because really, the COVID is a global citizen. Food is a global citizen. Species and animals are global citizens. They move across borders. And we've seen that water, air, all those things are really global citizens. And so I like how you kind of put that into personal perspective of not only your travels, but how you see and reflect on the world. My hardest question for you today is really the burning question, WTF. And it's not the swear word. Although we have all asked each other that. What's the future? I believe that the future is much more brighter than we think now because we underestimate the power of the next generation. We maybe underestimate the good sense of new technologies. And this is for me a good combination that maybe if you read the books in 2040 that there is published that in the beginning of the 2020s started movement. It's like, I don't know if you name it the planet centricity movement or take care about the planet or the ownership planet, however. And it starts maybe like in from government side, companies, people, countryside, city, city districts, however, maybe that is a common goal, hopefully. There is kind of a similar question to that as well. But I want to combine it with something and I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm going to make you think. So if smoke start coming out of your airs, I'll stop the recording. Just I don't want you to spontaneously combust. But I want you to tell me what does a world that works for everyone look like for you or you, not for a miracle or the governments or the US? What does a world that works for everyone look like for you? And somehow this message should have the power to impact and change people's life. So I often think about when I had the best time in my life in terms of to live a calm life, because everything was how to say was in rituals, no speedy. And I think that was the time something between, I don't know, 12 and maybe 18, something like that. And in that time, when I remember that time, for me, it was like, we all are the same. There was no race and nothing. My mother's from Spain, so I go frequently to Spain. And Spain in that years was totally different like today. But even there, the people was happy and they enjoyed their life. They have the rituals, they take care about the family. So they have their freedom, because Spain in that time was, I think, then 15 or 20 years after Franco. And for sure, it is not, we don't have this time yet. Because what is missing is respect. What is missing is the empathy to understand the other one, before you say he's an asshole or something like that. So are you telling me that what a world that works for everyone looks like for you is one with more calmness, more respect, more, more, okay. Sure. And even that the people feel free, often you talk to people like, what's he in Germany? And it seems like for them, they are not their own sovereign, you know what I mean? Yeah, they're not sovereign. They don't have their sovereignty, yeah. So, and even how to deal with your life, what to do. And so, and not in terms, I don't want to say that you sit the entire day for the TV and looking Netflix, not about that. But, and this is, I think that that would be for me, a kind of a picture. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a different form of sovereignty, peace. Yeah. I think it's based, I think it's based for sure on peace, on freedom, and, and, and also to be humble a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And to, and to enjoy the things around you. Yeah, to enjoy your, your surrounding environment, the nature, these, these quite easy things. Well, I'm gonna hopefully not get you in trouble with all your customers or your clients and those companies that you've probably haven't seen that much in person last year and this year. But I wanted to ask you what, with all the companies that you deal with when you speak to them about the future of work, when you present them with new solutions, when you talk to them about the trends and, and things. I'm assuming they're not rocket companies, they're not the Teslas and the Apples and these super big companies that have got this clear vision of the future. What do you tell them? Or what are your frustrations? I kind of like for you to tell me what your story and messages to them and how you help them to get up to speed for the future, kind of, if you don't mind. That is a good point. Look, I've always at one point, I say to myself, I don't want to waste time. I don't want to go anymore in any caves to bring the people out of the cave to let them know how life could be. But then I have to change my method like how to inspire them, for sure. So the most of them are struggling. So the most of them, they're all super pilots. It's like similar to the story of Bert von Picard. And what is missing is because they are quarterly driven to get first a long term perspective. That is first missing a long term perspective. Why? Because the measurement is quarterly. Second is to really go beyond. That is the entire story about provoke, explore, discover. Because what they do always is immediately design. They believe there is an issue. They don't take the time for prepper framing. And immediately they come with ideas, design. And so what I try to help them is start with provoke. What is question? Start then to discover and explore. What is going around in terms of bench learning, exploration, social learning? And then go to design. And I compare me often. I tell them often the story. I'm a little bit like the Falcon 9 rocket. A rocket needs around one, up to two minutes to be in the non-gravity area. So and my job is to bring them in a non-gravity area comparing to their that they don't stuck in anymore in their own business gravity. Yeah. And for them, this is often how to say the future is often for these kind of companies, something like, come on. Don't talk about the future. The future is come on. I have to deliver. I have to deliver. But you know, you can learn a lot about these farmers who live on the forest. The farmers who live on the forest have to think in three generations. Come on. In three generations. If I see today something, the kids of my kids would get these kind of trunks and that teach us the history. That's beautiful. I love that. I only have three more things for you and they're for my audience, for my listeners. It's information that tips and advice that you can give them. And so the first one is really if you were to depart one message that had that was a sustainable takeaway for my listeners that had the power to change their life, what would it be to train the curiosity and and to leave as often your discipline. So go beyond your discipline and talk to people outside your industry and outside the business you are who are who you are trained in. I think this is super important. If you really want to learn something new, you have to do that. Second, if you have to understand that you have to unlearn, you mentioned Otto Schachner with the youth theory, this kind of unlearning to be to have also the willingness to unlearn something because it's quite difficult. And third, the best yoda of everything is nature. Nature could teach you everything. You don't have to be Alexander von Humboldt. No, it's good to read his books, but you don't have to be Alexander von Humboldt. But as often you go to nature and you and you take all your senses to understand weekly after a year, you know which kind of tree is good, which is bad, what is working, what is not working. And then you try to understand to endeavor the world around you as an ecosystem. And I think this is a good example. That is always helpful. That's fabulous. I just released a podcast today, a matter of fact with Mark Dorfman from Biomimicry 3.8. And Biomimicry of Nature is really amazing innovations, amazing tools that we can learn. So I'm in full alignment and that's why we released that podcast today. What should young innovators in your field be thinking about if they are looking for ways to make real impact on the future of work, the future of really how we interact with each other. If they were going to copy and say, damn, he's got the coolest job. I want to do that. What would it be? First, they should go always to the most progressive companies they can go. As an internship for an internship, for a job, or even for a freelance job, go always to the best ones. That they really push your own boundaries and you can learn so much. Second, find out who is the Yoda inside the organization, be kind to that person and learn so much you can learn. Third is, history is important to learn something. Whenever you're in a new city, go into the museum. Whenever you visit a country, go in Wikipedia and read what happens in that country 100 years before. Because history also is a good teacher. I think in our epochs, I would believe we have 100 corona epochs in 2,500 years of mankind. That I would recommend to the young ones. The last question is, what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start? I would say this is the best question I ever got in the interview in the last six years, honestly. And I will copy that question and say that is from Mark Barkley. That is cool. Okay. A lot of people. I would say contextual thinking. I would say contextual thinking. I would say to, I want to say thank you to two persons, two colleagues of Vitra. One is Chrissy Moore. Currently she's running her own company. She's a super, super analyst and researcher. I learned so much about contextual thinking from her. And the other person, he's retired also from Vitra, Jürgen Durbaum. He teach me also out of the history of the company to the contextual thinking. And I need for that kind of learning session to become 44 years. That's wonderful. That's wonderful to hear. And it's also a nice accolade to those colleagues. In some respects, I continually get this feeling when we speak that you're really an intrapreneur within Vitra that you're like this. You're almost running this whole other business with inside of Vitra in some respects or it is your baby, but it's like this. You have such freedom and ability to kind of creativity to really go out, come in, share, grow. It's beautiful. That's just how, from my point here, in Hamburg, I see it. But I hope that we see each other physically very, very soon. Hopefully it'll be in May in Singapore at the World Economic Forum. That would be great. I don't know if DLD is going to go back to having some events anytime sooner this year, but hopefully we'll see each other soon. And I really thank you unless there's anything else you want to say about you or Vitra that you didn't get a chance. Now's your time. Otherwise, I'm done with my questions. First, thank you very much, Marc. I invite you to Vitra, and I promise you you will get here two fantastic great days with a ton of insight that will inspire you. Second to the audience, I have a giant archive, a digital archive. It is my Flipboard and it's open to everybody. It's called Raphael's Flipboard and you get access to around 3,000 articles. So feel free to go in there about how we work, how we learn technology, society, blah, blah, blah. And whenever the Vitra campus is open again and you go along, maybe you go to Italy or to Switzerland for holiday, you should visit us. This is a place. If you want to get an idea what it means, build places. This is a place here where you could learn a lot and get a lot of inspiration. Thank you. We definitely will. And I'll put all those links in the show note description so that everybody can go and see you virtually digitally and find your websites and everything. But I hope my listeners take you up on that and find out, say, you said it on the podcast. I'm coming by to visit. Thanks so much, Rapha. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye-bye.