trendrede 2011 - english

8/8/2019 Trendrede 2011 - English

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Trendrede 2011

This Trendrede 1

, is an initiative of Dutch trend watchers and

futurethinkers; a collective statement about the future of our nation. This

initiative did not appear out of the blue, as new developments never do. It

is the time for it. There is uncertainty about the future and media andpolitics are looking at the present and the past What happened? rather

than looking at the future. Right around the corner from our time, severalsignificant revolutions lie in wait. The way we live, work, consume and

communicate will radically change. We think the Netherlands has a needfor guidance towards the future, in addition to analysis of the past.

The Troonrede2

is a product of politics. But the future is in the hands ofgovernments, citizens and corporations. This Trendrede is an autonomous vision

of Dutch trend watchers. In the Trendrede we will shine our light on the influence

citizens and corporations have on society. With our knowledge and our talent wewish to contribute to the future of the society we ourselves are a part of. Wewant to inspire the Netherlands by illuminating the most promising paths to the

future. We will not illuminate those roads that we see are dead ends. TheTrendrede manifests the undertow of current affairs, but deliberately does not

portray it. We make concrete recommendations and proposals for the future of

the Netherlands. If the Netherlands wishes to ride along on the waves oftomorrow, we must gauge the current and undercurrent of the waves today.

Chapter 1. Country between hope and despair

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Winston Churchill

The Netherlands. Country between hope and despair. Over the years, dark clouds

have accumulated over the nations economy and culture. Seemingly unshakeableauthorities have fallen off their pedestal or have been pushed off. Family doctors,

police, politicians, journalists and judges are no longer the points of reference inour everyday lives. Anchors have been swept away, groups within society have

been driven apart and society seems adrift. Truth and opinion blend into a social

fog, leaving everyone finding their way by touch.The result is a widening gap running deep through Holland. A gap between those

feeling displaced and threatened by cultural developments and those graspingthese same developments as an opportunity for breaking through. Half of the

Netherlands is clinging to the emergency brake, while the other half puts theirfoot down firmly on the accelerator.

We see people -slumbering at first, but now more and more overtly- regrouping.Citizens on both sides of the gap are no longer finding their salvation in

1 The document title Trendrede, or address of trends, will not be translatedthroughout the document.2 Every September, the Dutch queen addresses the nation in a speech calledTroonrede or address of the throne.


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traditional parties, established institutions and churches. For this reason, they

organize themselves in alternatives, from residents committees to onlinenetworks. Every community has its own vernacular, truths, standards and

values. From the sideline, fellow citizens are being accused of offensive behavior

and exclusion. Politics are being accused of crime and dichotomy and being

governed by market forces, CEOs of being greedy and of squandering Dutchinterests. To whom new diseases, floods and other environmental disasters can

be attributed is still unclear, but unsettling nonetheless. For those problems thatcannot be solved, the complete removal is advocated. And we expect the years of

clear felling still have not past. There are still more claims to be settled: Think ofpension funds, healthcare issues in politics, areas in which the way of working,

the attitude and the provision of services are no longer accepted. Citizens aredisillusionedly turning away from those traditional organizations that no longerlive up to the heightened expectations. For those lacking the strength to take

matters into their own hands, a collective, blatant no allows them to exert

power. The balance of power within society is changing: By mass rejection, the

desperate leave a firm mark on the political and cultural landscape.Lets look at the hopeful side. Far away from the angry laggards, the world of

the young, fast and freely surfing professional is rapidly developing. Theunstoppable energy (built up over the years) of this group will inspire a lot of

societal innovation. They build hope to face the despair. They view reality in a

different way and enrich it by holding it against a new yardstick. New points ofreference mean new starting points and therefore new goals and new results.

Remarkable is that first of all, in many areas, new instruments are devised thatreach further than any purely economical measure does. The state of mind in the

nation is held against a collective production figure: almost an anachronism.Next to quantity, people want to measure quality, next to prosperity they want to

measure wellbeing. French president Sarkozy assigned Nobel laureates JosephStiglitz and Amartya Sen the task of finding an alternative to the Gross DomesticProduct. The report states that the French expendable income is only two-thirds

of the American one. But when the quality and availability of education and

healthcare, the honorary work in family and community and the amount of

leisure time are taken into account, the income rises up to 87 percent of theAmerican income. The report implies that someone working many hours in asociety with little communal sense, education or healthcare is only statistically

more prosperous. By measuring economic and cultural progress in a differentway, we refocus our energy. And what we can measure, we can specifically

change.

Another example. The Netherlands is classified at the top of the world when it

comes to perceived happiness. New generations of youngsters score so well onself-confidence (Review of General Psychology, September 2010) that the

current measures so not suffice. Researchers argue that Maslows pyramid needsa new layer, because in western society the current top layer of self-actualization

has long been achieved. In the United States this layer is called parenting

(caring for a new generation), Dutch researchers adopt the broader term giving

meaning. Het Financiele Dagblad and Academia Aemstel researched the currentperception of work: Many people in fact do not know what to do, how to grow


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and what to experience beyond Maslow. Even more amazing and longer

vacations, more swimming pools around the house and even more gurus withtheir own vision? Is doesnt inspire any longer. We dont want to be consumers.

We want to participate in our own world and do not want to have lived without

purpose. A recent documentary, Alles wat we wilden (Everything we wanted),

on the motives of people in their twenties, deepens that image. These peopleseemed to strive for a life that is worth remembering.

Servant leadership is a dominant subject in present day management literature.

A third measure elicits new goals in the economy. What do we expect from ourleaders? That they rise above their own self-interest and are able to link the

individual meaning of employees to the organizational interest at every level inthe organization, and then that organizational interest to societal values. Theservant leader transfers the attention from the quarterly account to the long-

term policy of the organization. In order to grow himself, he knows he must

invest in all elements of the production chain, the whole team working in unison

towards results. From women a more binding, servant leadership is expected.Despite the presentation of the new government suggesting otherwise, female

leadership is still a debatable item in the media. It is for this reason that, amongstothers, psychologist Susanne Pinker and EU-commissioner Neelie Kroes argue

that the financial crisis would never have escalated with enough women in bank

management: If Lehman Brothers would have been called Lehman Sisters, itwould never have gotten this far.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility are almost beyond being atrend. Its surges are already too long and too general. The cradle-to-cradle way

of thinking rapidly evolves into a new gauge: Every end product shouldeventually be able to be the starting point of a new chain. This idea has already

found its way to several corporations and government bodies (Desso and thecities of Almere, Utrecht and Hengelo). Active citizens no longer accept that acompany or an organization backs out of environmental thinking, participates in

Greenwashing or ignores the work environment in the (international)

production chain. It is the principle of the modern, hopeful citizen: One person

can make a difference. Through a well-expressed public call and a smart choiceof media one individual can gain tremendous support and have significantimpact. One for all becomes all for the cause. This is something we will address in

part two of the Trendrede.

In this first part, we have addressed the widening gap between Holland withnegative expectations and Holland with positive hope. In order to progress, wemust diminish this spacing between individuals. This is not something that can

be achieved by talking about own responsibilities, while the actual subject is aneconomizing government. This can be accomplished by offering people the

opportunity to participate in projects that give them a chance of a better future.The development of new measures like servant leadership and the desire of

living life with a purpose gives us hope that the gap running through the nation

can be bridged in the years to come.


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We will conclude this first chapter with a plea for replacing the expansion

of desperation about the past with spreading hope when it comes to thefuture. This means hard work, but it will pay off. A hopeful Holland again

appropriates itself a new, socially engineered world; a world in which

giving meaning is the foundation of economical and societal growth. We

continue by illuminating two fundamental paths towards this world.

Chapter 2 From calculating citizen to connected individual

I am because we are.Translation of the traditional Zulu expression Ubuntu

Like the Young Urban Professional became the icon for budding individualism,the social networker is the icon for a time that revolves around connections. The

focus on individual liberties has taken us a long way, but eventually we havethrown ourselves over the edge of a cliff. The unlimited pursuit of self-interest

doesnt serve this same interest in the end. Or, to put it differently, there is nosuch thing as living alone. We are, whether we want it or not, part of a larger

entity: of a network, of an economic chain, of a society. For example, exerting

leadership is only possible as long as there are people willing to be led, just likewe need others ourselves to feel independent. The people around us make us

who we are.

The notion that the economy is built from domino blocks (if banks collapse, so

does the construction business, the distribution business and the automotive

industry) attracts attention to the many chains in which we are eitherconsciously or unconsciously a link. We are employees of a business line

connected to other businesses, to suppliers, to banks, to pension funds, toenvironmental agencies and governments all over the world. The saleswoman of

a clothing store gets the fact that the dresses she sells are that cheap onlybecause they are made by children in Asian sweatshops, rubbed in at birthday

parties. Whoever realizes he is part of a complex chain of wobbling economicdomino blocks, also knows that the danger is in the weakest link of the chain.

This means its in everyones interest to strengthen this particular link. After thecrisis, we notice a small change that will grow in the years to come. Reciprocal

self-interest I help you knowing you would help me- will become an important

trend. We are not going to relinquish our individual liberties, but there is anongoing changeover. The calculating citizen is turning out to be a connected

individual.

The cohesiveness between individuals forms the central idea of a new age.

Everyone has his or her own personal goals in life. However, we start acceptingthat in this rapidly changing and globalizing world, we depend on many others to

achieve these goals. The modern individual makes the well-considered choice to

seek this connection. This choice is also what drives many societaldevelopments.


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The development of The New Working, for a start. Fixed contracts, fixed

workplaces and fixed rewards are concepts of the past. People are seekingconnectivity in a new way. Flexible, temporary, goal-oriented and profound at

the same time- are the concepts of the future. It is these ever-changing contacts

that determine success.

By rapidly switching between his networks, the Independent Professional formsalliances of opportunity people complementing his own unique skill-set- to

accomplish complex assignments together. After that and with that- he goes hisown way. In parallel with the conventional economic reality, a new world has

evolved. Through virtual social networks one can make contact, experience asense of community, share knowledge, exchange experiences, test practical

behavior and important- create value. This creation of value is not alwayspaired with monetary reward. People employ a constructive code of conduct:Something is useful when the participants jointly improve. Division ismultiplication. That particular reversal in thought gains us, in addition to new

value, new joy in life. Having access becomes more important than possessing.

This is a new ethic, one remarkably enough lead by old riches like Bill Gates andJoop van den Ende. It is not the possession that yields power, but the sharing.

Building connections in order to jointly get better from it. This is also the

foundation of using social networks to organize personal life. In several

municipalities energy companies have spawned from the use of social networks,and subsequently windmills are jointly purchased. Independent Professionals

start procurement and sales co-operations together. Social networks form a well-

functioning breeding ground for new connections. It is of course for this reasonthat this firstTrendrede is delivered in Seats2Meet. If you look around you see a

beehive of activity, developing almost by the hour. Examples likeStandupinspiration, socialeoverwaarde.nl and the 7 days of inspiration planned

for February 2011 indicate that there is not only interest, but also a willingnessto make time for activities that are personally meaningful and are of socialsignificance. One and one then quickly becomes three.

A third, related development is publishing personal goals through social media

as a request for help. A simple hashtag can connect the problem to the solution.

Those who dare to ask will be helped, is the new adage. Taking a vulnerableposition appears to be a successful strategy in accomplishing goals: there isnearly always someone willing to invest his time and attention in you.

The forth tendency: The new power is built up from the bottom up. Power has

found its way from the church to the government to the enterprise. Now we cansee that power is making its way toward social networks. They form the powersource of the future. Individuals use it to profile and organize themselves with it,

make contact with kindred spirits and are this way able to create a critical mass.Through online action, Greenpeace forced Nestle to trade in its destructive palm

oil plantations for a more environmentally friendly kind and aims its latestaction toward energy companies trying to built a coal-plant near the Waddenzee.

We also expect an organization like the British Fairpensions to find its way to

Holland. They act on behalf of the individual pension-insured at the annual

meetings of multinationals and point out the necessity of screening theirproduction chains. The analysis of pension problems will become more of an


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issue as well. There will come a moment that a HEMA employee will no longer

accept that the money she hands over to the pension-fund is invested in a hedge-fund that uses it to buy that same HEMA, sucking the profit out of it and forcing

the company to emaciate its pension plan. No one likes to bite his own tail.

What is the vision for the future outlined in this second part of theTrendrede? We are growing towards an Interdependent Economy.

Everything is connected to everything. We can no longer limit ourselves toadjusting only a single element to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.

And that has far-reaching consequences for the way the market, societyand politics are arranged. There will be emphasis on other values. The path

to the highest profit an inalienable target for businesses- changescharacter. Customer value en societal value surpass shareholder value.

Experience over product. Healthy growth over exploiting and continuousprofit-optimization over one time profit maximization.

New age, new institutions. Part of the material wealth will inevitably shift to thecountries experiencing enormous economic growth. The Netherlands has a

history of commercial spirit and international contacts. Sociologists consider itsculture very feminine with an firm emphasis on meeting and consultation.

Problems like water management, aging and health are global problems that

can only be solved by international commitment. In his last speech for the UN,former Prime Minister Balkenende used firm words to describe the inertia of the

UN. The expectation is that next to, above and below the UN, the World Bank and

the IMF no longer the guiding organizations they once were- new organizationswill emerge that will apply the commitment principle to solve worldwide

problems. The Netherlands can and must have the ambition to play an importantrole in this new world.


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Chapter 3. Reappraisal: Please give us your attention

No army can stop an idea whose time has come.Victor Hugo

How do we keep standing upright in a flowing world? In our country, monitoringsystems and accountability reports have taken the place of traditional moralanchors. Uncertainty and distrust leave us in a situation where we want to keep

an increasing number of issues in society and our personal life under close

control. The effect is that large parts of daily life have become subject to

complicated systems. Whether this is in healthcare or our food chain, with thepolice, economic life or politics, people complain about the load of administrativework that needs to be done to comply with the system. Monitoring systems are

always created after the fact. But there are certain things you cannot prevent.When Iceland produces an ash cloud, entire distribution networks are paralyzed

and millions of people and as many commodities are stuck in the wrong placeuntil the computer says go. The earth appears uncontrollable, just like the

economy and the behavior of individual people. We keep being faced with this

paradox of our need to control. Control is supposed to provide security, butmore control also gives rise to the feeling of powerlessness and

uncertainty.

He, who locks the steer of his bicycle in place, will fall within 20 meters.There is a message that we hear with increasing volume: You cannot change the

world through old rules and new laws or by rebuilding an existing controlsystem. The system may never control us. The daily reality is too wayward to

lock human behavior in place. We are increasingly unwilling to accept thatcutbacks are made there where citizens and patients directly suffer the

consequences and that healthcare professionals are forced to neglect theirprimary task because they are forced to fill out forms supposedly measuring

their effectiveness.This has caused a fierce debate about delegating responsibility. Quotes like

giving the class back to the teacher and handing the instruments to thepoliceman speak volumes. The wish is to return to the basis. Human hands and

human actions inspire new support.

An improvement in quality must originate from the people themselves. Only they

themselves have the right attention for the little daily variances in their

environment.We can see that a search has been started for new forms of grasp. Control has

two sides: It limits courses of action and forces people to direct their attention towithin these courses. In the years to come we will switch from controlling

the process to observing the process. Achieving grasp by means of limitation

can be deadly to the personal initiative as well as to the ongoing awareness ofpersonal work. We can see the control shifting from top-down to bottom-up.

Directed attention sparks new life. Instead of forcing people to operate within a


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constraining system, we will again be asking them to pay attention to the

challenges they face in their personal working environment.Attention offers support as well as freedom. This support can be directed at

tradition as easy as at renewal, thus being anchor and sail at the same time. It is

for this reason many trends for the years to come will revolve around the

meaning of attention.Attention is something that we see as anchor in the large groups of people

discovering an unambiguous belief or a cultural persuasion. Attention for awritten doctrine inspires inner peace, confidence and illuminates the personal

life path. Old-fashioned words like catharsis and purification are reborn asidemeditation and spirituality.

Support is also found in the traditions of the Zuiderzee, Calvinism, Jan Smit,Verkade cookies or Unox soup. By keeping them in the spotlight they remainreference points in our culture. Our own backyard is a safe point of focus in a

very, very wide world.

Attention for our own backyard is also becoming an economical factor. Attentionleads to creation of value: the own small world appears to be more advantageous

than previously thought. Not everything can be imported from cheap-productionareas, simply because the cost of controlling and overseeing all the links in the

production and supply chains would be too high. Confidence in the local rises.

More and more supermarkets choose to draw their fresh products from the localvicinity. The control is more direct, the involvement is greater and it benefits the

environment.

Attention for the surrounding leads to new values. Eggs from the ownneighborhood inspire curiosity about the chicken that laid them. A visit to the

breeder leads to the discovery that there are more than twenty types ofstrawberries, while we only encountered one of these in the supermarket up to

now.

We are looking for a small-scale, cost-efficient alternative for the mega-thinking.

Not that we are going to smash any machines in the process. Do it yourself

stands, more than ever, for do it with attention. The small and home business,

the fastest growing business organization of the years to come, is perhaps thebest example of how do it yourself grew into do it with attention. RichardSennetts book the craftsman gets increasing endorsement and imitation. The

interest in crafts rises each year among students all over the world. They gladlyretake control of the production process and embrace the ancient techniques

that are still very relevant. They work with what their direct surroundingproduces as starting material. Wool from the sheep in the Rhine and Veen areamay not yield enough profit to start shaving them, but when making ecologic

tweed out of it, it is the basis for a proud local product of high quality, drawingattention from creative designers. The Dutch cooperation programs that

historical crafting icons like Royal Tichelaar Makkum, Royal Delft and RoyalLeerdam engage in with present-day leading designers are noticed

internationally. That the general public is now interested, is shown by the visitor

figures for the Zuiderzeemuseum, for instance. The attention goes out to what

we can grasp, follow and comprehend.


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Giving more attention to small things gives us the astonishment and

begeisterung that we are looking for. The revolution of the nineties was found inthinking big, with the worldwide Internet and the expanding financial systems.

Now, thinking small will lead the revolution. Nanotechnology and

neurosciences are the power sources of the future. Making measuring

instruments more precise, the decomposition of processes and the reduction ofmaterials will create great cultural and economic value. Precision data will

become the lubrication of economic traffic. We master our own learningprocesses on an increasingly precise level and are able to change or improve

physical circumstances. A growing number of food supplements, bordering onnarcotics, allow us to stimulate very specific parts of our brain. The trend is to

use this new power to gain extra focus and with that, this development amplifiesitself. Doing less with more attention. Buying less but more attention forconsuming. Less of a career but more attention for life.

Attention will become one of the important currencies. Its scarcity will lead to

moments of choice. We deal with our attention efficiently by delegating as muchof the daily hassles as possible. New services offer the consumer pre-selection

and save him the stress of going through the entire supply himself. Filtering willbe the new standard, surprise an option. What we will see is that young people

with fewer social skills take this selection to an even more extreme level. Some of

them will choose to live an online life. They reduce the attention they have forthe unpredictable reality to a minimum: Their body will become a necessary

maintenance vehicle for the brain, which in turn aims for a fantasy life in virtual

realities. The virtividual works, plays, communicates and enjoys online. Themovie Avatar illustrates how a limited body in reality can be exchanged for a

more appealing form in virtuality. And eventually, who can stop a youngster thatdecides to give his full attention to World of Warcraft, in an attempt to become

the number one in it? After all, we also allow fourteen year old girls to sailaround the world, just because it appears to be their life focus.

We keep getting better at filtering an selecting in order to direct our

attention. Attention provides support and the things we give our attention

to, grow. The final conclusion of this third important development: Werelinquish unnecessary control to gain space for attention. What we giveour attention to can prosper and grow. Lets make 2011 the year of

attention. For our resources, each other, the connections we live by and thefuture.

In this first Dutch Trendrede we have drawn several lines that can guide thediscussion and the decision-making on future developments. It is a refined

message, which itself is a trend. It is not a bold, optimistic statement, but onewith a sound of hope. It is important to give the three developments

The gap between hope and despair

The connected individual

The reappraisal of attentiona place in the discussion of Hollands future. We neednt improve the past, that is

what it is. Lets let the past go again. Lets turn away from resentment. Let usmake a turn towards the future. In this Trendrede we have addressed the


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reference points giving people confidence and opportunities, the points that

enable us to embrace the future, without the ballast of the past.

This first reasoning about the future gives several activities, aimed toward the

professionalization and further foundation of futurethinking, the green light. We

want to let go of the traditional and reluctant way of thinking about the world oftomorrow. Whether we are policymakers, journalists or futurethinkers, the

future affects us all so we should actively engage it. This first Trendrede shouldinspire the essential discussion about the future of the Netherlands. It is a good

thing you are willing to take note of that.

English translation:

Niels Buit, Netscore (December 2010)

trendrede 2011 - english

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