Nadia Laurinci recently joined the Sandbox team as the Chief Innovation Agent. She explains why she joined in an open letter to Steve Jobs.

Hi Steve,

I wanted to write you a brief note to give you some peace of mind.

Now that you’ve retired from Apple and your innovation impact is coming to an end (even though your powerful lessons will stay with us forever), you may find yourself wondering:

Is there anyone left out there still capable of real innovation? Capable of really pushing the boundaries, creating things that make this world a better place, testing and experimenting with groundbreaking ideas?

Rest assured; there is!

It was about a year and a half ago – on a lovely, sunny Sunday morning in New York City. I had recently quit my job at Goldman Sachs to venture into strategy consulting and was on my way downtown to Union Square. I found my way to a rustic Peruvian restaurant, opened the door, and there, a group of young people was getting together, engaging in what seemed like a very interesting conversation. Something uniquely uplifting was circulating in the air.

Little did I know that a few minutes later, I would find myself surrounded by some of the most driven, creative, and visionary people on the planet…all unified by one common thread – they were all Sandboxers. One Sandboxer ran a sustainable fashion business, the other co-founded a magazine covering all things 2.0, the next was powering young entrepreneurs in South America, enabling them to make their creative dreams come true.

I was rocked to my core. Never before had I been surrounded by such an envelope-pushing, dream-uncompromising, fired-up group of people.

Since that morning, I’ve had the privilege to meet, brainstorm, and become friends with dozens of Sandboxers in many corners of the world which gave me hope that even though you’re now retired, Steve, with people like those in Sandbox, real innovation will continue.

These are the key 3 things I observed about Sandboxers:

1. Sandboxers don’t follow, they lead: a few weeks ago, my mentor Kaihan Krippendorff  pointed me to a fantastic book – The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy, Jr.  – with insights on how to succeed as an entrepreneur/artist/creator. A rule from the book that particularly resonated me says that at some point, you will have to stop following. You will have to stop managing (projects, pipelines, factories, people) and you will have to start leading – charting the uncharted path, risking things, resisting the resistance of the skeptics, the “experts”, and the other non-believers out there. Eventually, you will have to find the strength, the passion, and the persistence to do it your way. Sandboxers are doing this every day.

2.  Sandboxers don’t preach, they enchant: when you meet a Sandboxer face to face, you quickly start feeling that in their presence, the world seems different; it doesn’t seem negative, it doesn’t seem stuck, it doesn’t seem boring, black and white, or difficult. When you talk to a Sandboxer, you enter the YES-territory of the world, the Go-For-It country, the race to be won, the challenge to be conquered. Things not only become possible; they become actionable, they become urgent, they get done!

3. Sandboxers take initiative and start things: as one of my entrepreneurship heroes Josh Linkner (author of Disciplined Dreaming) said, “Getting started is the hardest part. You could spend your whole life preparing, analyzing, and covering your tracks…or you can move forward with the spirit of a warrior. Leap into your work and imagine you are Van Gogh, da Vinci, or Mozart. You have the same talents inside you.” Sandboxers have the habit of doing just that – they start things. Sometimes they do fall but they always stand up and continue their quest. They fight the fight, take initiative, and as you, Steve, they give it their best, every day, putting a ding in the universe.

So don’t worry, Steve. With Sandboxers pushing the boundaries every day, in 48 countries around the globe, things will get done; innovation will not stall, recessions will be overcome; and new and better things will be borne into this world. I’m honored to be a part of this movement.

Yours truly, always hungry and sometimes foolish,

Nadia Laurinci
Chief Innovation Agent, the Sandbox Network
@laurinci

Peter Vogel is a 25 year old Austrian‐American who grew up in Germany most of the time. In 2000, he developed his passion for entrepreneurship when he co-founded the lifestyle magazine re.flect for the lake of Constance region. Before moving to Zurich in 2004 for his engineering studies at the ETH Zurich, he travelled for a decent amount of time, getting to know wonderful places and people in this world. After 5 semesters in Zurich he went to the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. When he came back, he received the ETH Zurich Excellence Scholarship with which he partly financed his current company, Jobzippers Ltd. This project keeps him occupied until today.

Still, he decided to start a PhD in Entrepreneurship at the ETH Lausanne last May. Currently, he lives in both Lausanne and Zurich.
Find Peter on Facebook and Twitter. Jobzippers on Facebook.

Tell us the story of your latest project

Having two full-time jobs makes it difficult to pin-point the latest one. To form a big picture, combining my function in Jobzippers, that as a PhD student at the EPFL and the general approach I want to take, into one project which I want to call “making meaning”. I see this project as a continuing project which I have and always will make part of my life. To follow this path, I had to (at least temporarily) leave what I had actually studied and worked for, but I now know that it was the right decision. The nice thing: there are about 10 projects just waiting to be kicked-off, so once I find the time for it, there will be some new and exciting stuff taking place.

What are you doing and how did you get there?

As stated in the introduction, the mindset for “making meaning” began in 2000 where I decided that I wanted to do something that actually has an influence, not only on my own life, but rather on the lives of many. But this was the moment where something switched on my entrepreneurial mind rather than really making meaning yet. This journey continues with the foundation of Jobzippers Ltd in 2008 and then that of Stipendia (our European scholarship service) in 2010 (launch still to be announced).
In my PhD I am investigating programs offered by the US and many European countries to help unemployed transition into self-employment, as one mechanism to grow (in the current situation rather heal than grow) the economy. By collaborating with the national employment agencies we try to find out which programs work best, which people and industries should be supported in which way, thus providing insights for the individuals, economies as well as policymakers.

Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

Let me start with failure, because without failure there cannot be any success which is also why I do not see failure as a real problem but just part of the game leading to new opportunities. There are several moments in my life when this statement was proven. Two examples are: (1) When I applied for a scholarship for Berkeley, my application was rejected. Totally ruining my day and week this was the worst that could happen. But 3 days after having received this notice, I received an email saying that Georgia Tech is among the top 3 universities in the US for Biomedical Engineering. The application window for Georgia Tech was later than that of Berkeley, so I applied for a scholarship there and received it.
(2) During my Masters studies it was always clear for me that I want to become a consultant. For more than 1 year I was considering only this career option (even though I had already founded Jobzippers and signs were good that it will become a success) and when I finally applied for jobs (last January probably was not the best time-point to do so) and went to the interviews, I failed (probably my inside knew that this is not the right time for me to become a consultant). So I started looking for alternatives and I ended up with my PhD in Entrepreneurship which, when looking back, was the much better option for me at that time-point.

When it comes to success: There are various nice things and achievements that have happened that make me happy and proud. But instead of naming various details, I think I am happy to gain traction and awareness in my project of “making meaning”. Three recent achievements are the acceptance to the St. Gallen Symposium 2010, the nomination for the WEF Technology Pioneer 2011 program, as well as my presentation (highly recommended by Sandbox to watch) at the St. Gallen Speakers Series. At the end of February 2010, I was presenting at the St. Gallen Speakers Series in front of several dozens of students as well as a video camera which not only recorded the talk, but also transmitted the video to the AutoUni in Wolfsburg where an additional set of people were sitting.
The main topic was on “Opportunities, Risks and Responsibilities of Running your Own Company”. With this talk I tried to highlight some of the problems that startups might have during the early phases but then also try to encourage students to go out and actually do something.

What do you want to achieve in the next week, the next year, the next 10 years?

Next week: Find a present for my 6 week old nephew, finish up an investment proposal for Jobzippers, finalize our CTI project application, sign contracts, some more contracts, and hopefully some more contracts…
Next year: Open our Lausanne office, raise enough capital to hire passionate and motivated people, expand to other European countries, continue with my PhD project and my “making meaning” project.

Next 10 years: Finish up my PhD, hopefully achieve an exit with Jobzippers, buy a sailing boat, sail around the world, climb Pik Lenin, Aconcagua and Mt McKinley, launch my startup consultancy to help governments around the world establish and improve their startup as well as unemployment support programs.

What was your most inspring moment during the last two weeks?

Leaving my desk last Thursday to go for a run down at the lake (the nice thing is that my desk is just about 300m away from the lake) feeling that Spring is coming back.

How could other Sandboxers and the outside world support you and why would that be exciting for them?

With Sandbox being an amazing community of outstanding individuals, I am always happy to meet and network with its members. If I had to state things in which I would actually need help right now I would ask for support in the following:

- Help us find investors to accelerate the growth and European expansion of Jobzippers
- Help us find PHP software developers
- Help us find entrepreneurs that are potentially interested in becoming Jobzippers country managers in one or more of the European countries
- Keep me informed of events that could help me in my project of “making meaning”
- Join our Jobzippers mentoring program to help the “younger” generation become as visionary as you are (contact me for details on how to join).

Peter’s favourite:
- Book: Brave New World
- Movie: A Beautiful Mind
- Travel destination during last year: 3 months sailing from Marquesas to Vava’u
- Food: Wienerschnitzel
- Quote: Life is too short, don’t waste it…short and simple

Malin Berdette, 28, describes herself as a “global dreamer, traveling the world turning my visions into reality”. She is originally from Sweden but currently traveling the world for 610 days for her project “Win Win World Tour“. Her goal is to raise enough money to spend $100 000 per month to projects empowering millions of people worldwide starting from Dec. 31st 2010. Malin on facebook and twitter.

Tell us the story of your latest project / occupation.

I felt a strong desire to make a difference so I packed a suitcase, gave away all of my belongings and the 1st of May 2009 I got going. Now I’m on a 610 day journey called the Win Win World Tour, with the following goal: “From Dec 31st 2010 I’m giving $100 000 per month to projects empowering millions of people worldwide.” Up until now, Day 290, I’ve visited Sweden, USA, Mexico, Canada, Ireland and Australia. I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of people, been in conversations about change and empowerment, connected people & projects worldwide; I have laughed, cried, succeeded, given up and gotten back on track again.

What are you doing and how did you get there?

I’m starting a foundation called The Conscious Capitalist™ uniting people worldwide with a mission to create financial freedom for empowering projects. The aim of the foundation The Conscious Capitalist™ is to fund, build and educate other self-generating projects and foundations, combining the most efficient and sustainable processes from non-profits and corporations. Basically it comes down to releasing unnecessary friction, by training visionary and brilliant minds around the world into highly efficient change makers, and providing a financial platform allowing them to immediately create the changes that benefit us all. How I got to where I am is well summed up in a quote that I once got from a precious persons mom: “If you wish to know where you’re going, ask the ones you meet”. I engage in dialogues with the people I bump into, no matter if it’s the newly released ex-prisoner, or if it’s the business man who’ve made and lost $55 million over the last years. It’s during those conversations that my vision becomes clearer and I find my next step. I’m also fully following my hunches and inspirations.

Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

My biggest successes are two major team efforts. First I was part of a team of 150 leaders who created more than $80k in cash and $20k in building material and other supplies during 5 hours in San Diego, followed by building 5 houses, 8 latrines, and 14 concrete slabs during another 5 hours in Mexico. Handing over the keys to the new house owners, who used to live in shacks, was truly heartwarming.
Next I was awarded one of the most influential team members and informal leaders when we as a team of 70 leaders set new records by completing 138 of 140 goals in 10 weeks, creating a monetary value of over $4 million, and creating numerous other results. That’s when I truly realized my ability to create energy and build momentum towards a united vision on an international level.
My biggest failures are the situations where I’ve pushed myself too hard on my own. For example I combined studying, working, being active in politics and all with a trying-hard-on-my-own mentality. My body ended up screaming NO, which lead to a year of recovery (that led me to the gift of self-discovery, reflection, insights and a valuable lesson). The key failure here was my trying-hard-on-my-own mentality. I’m achieving much more now, and yet I’m having way more fun.

What didn’t work: trying to achieve better results by working harder, especially hiding away on my own, in combination with trying to live up to my own assumptions regarding others’ unspoken expectations.

What did work: setting a clear intention for myself, sharing mutual expectations with the ones I’m interacting with, following my inner guidance, being in motion, sharing my dreams and visions with those around me, taking one step after the other, asking for feedback, being fluent and open to the present moment.

What I’ve learned: I’ve noticed that everything is as easy as I allow it to be. There’s always a smooth solution. Mostly it’s just a matter of changing perspectives.

Also: Unspoken expectations can only be met by change. Shared expectations are met by choice.

What do you want to achieve in the next week, the next year, the next 10 years?

Within the next week: I’ve chosen the selected few to whom I’ll give unique access to my diaries and notes. Together we’ll go through the raw material, finding the good stuff for a book about what’s going on in the mind of a global dreamer, intending to change the world.

Within the next year: The foundation The Conscious Capitalist™ is alive and kicking, with a base of $10 million, giving $100k per month to projects empowering millions of people worldwide.

Within the next 10 years: I am grateful to be part of the Young Global Leaders Community, selected by World Economic Forum and their Selection Committee. Our powerful team is collectively shaping the future, by taking committed action on multiple levels towards a sustainable world.

What was your most inspiring moment during the last two weeks?

I’ve welcomed onboard John Laine, who mentors me through strategies, organization, business plan etc. I’ve also invited and welcomed Aron Solomon, Think Global School, to my board of directors. Above that I’m happy to be part of the new Higher Life coaching team.

How could other Sandboxers and the outside world support you and why would that be exciting for them?

My goal is to raise $10 million on or before the 31st of October 2010. According to my financial planning a base like that generates $100k per month, during the upcoming 30 years, directly towards the mission: financial freedom for empowering projects. In our world we do have the time, money, energy, knowledge, wisdom and all other resources required to make any changes we wish to do, right here and right now. It’s just a matter of connecting the right people with the right resources, together with implementing and allowing efficient processes, turning visions into reality. That’s where The Conscious Capitalist™ comes into the picture.

Appreciated support
1. connect me with potential members for my board of directors.
2. share your ideas and suggestions regarding setting up a truly sustainable self generating financial model for the foundation.
3. brainstorm possibilities about how to reach the goal.

The exciting part is that the faster this baby gets off the ground, the faster we’ll start setting empowering projects financially free. Maybe your project could benefit from that?

Malins favourites:

Book- “The 4-hour workweek” by Tim Ferris
Drink- Water
Quote- “Slow down to a pace that assures completion.”

This blog post is part 2 of the Sandbox Network ‘Palomar 5′ series: a six week innovation camp in Berlin from 9 October – 24 November 2009. To follow the progress of the conference, you can view the official Palomar 5 blog. Alternatively, if you are on twitter, follow hashtag #p5 for real-time updates. You can also check out one of our camp member’s daily video blog on Youtube. (Part 1 is here)

By Max Marmer

Two Thirds of the Palomar5 Innovation Camp has already passed. Four weeks down, two to go until the 2 day Summit, when we will have the opportunity to present the fruits of our labour to an eminent group of thought leaders, politicians, scientists and investors.

Before we dive deep into the Palomar5 experience let me give you a quick overview of the last month:

Our first two weeks, focused on understanding the thought landscape we’re operating in, generating hundreds of ideas for projects mixed in with some intense bonding experiences. Two weeks of intensive prototyping ensued, and now we’re transitioning into storytelling mode for the summit.

The last 4 weeks have been amazing but I was hoping to get more done. But that’s probably just my restlessness to change the world talking. But it is strange how fast a month has flown by.

We had our second “reality check” yesterday, where we all presented what we’ve been working on to many highly respected professionals and received their feedback. Someone asked me how long ago the first reality check was, it felt like ages, a month at least, but in reality it was only two and half weeks.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re trying to describe a prolonged experience and it feels like time has passed incredibly quickly but when you reflect on things you did in the beginning and it feels like it happened a long time ago, it probably means you are doing something right.

The Final Stretch

I have spent a lot of time the last few years learning about frameworks that have supported me in developing visions for a better future, but it has taken time for my entrepreneurial skills to catch up to the size of what I’ve set out to accomplish. The last half a year I’ve become increasingly anxious about pontificating while building takes a back seat. With only two weeks left of the camp part of me wishes more had been accomplished while here. But I have to realize that while we’ve been here a month, real work only started two weeks ago and our last two weeks of focus have been incredibly productive. The end goal of the Palomar5 camp is not to create fully functional products for the summit. Of greater importance to Palomar5 is conveying the underlying vision behind our projects and validation of the experiment of bringing 30 diversely talented young people from around the world and forcing them to live and work together for 6 weeks. Fully functional projects that make an impact are definitely vital for the success of Palomar5, but we don’t want to be another idea factory producing theories and patents; we want our projects to make a mark on the world, but the purpose of the 6 week camp is just to create the gravitational core for these projects to continue to flourish once the camp is over.

The summit should play a huge role in jumpstarting this process, but it all depends on the quality of our storytelling and how well we convey the enveloping experience of Palomar5: the lifestyle, the passion, the big projects and all the little creative projects the flit in and out serving as creative fuel for our bigger initiatives. If we do this well, TED-esque as we all like to say, (it being our common inspiration and the height of sexy intellectualism), we’ll create a buzz around the camp that will accelerate the development of our projects.

The Malzfabrik and Beyond

While we’ve spent most of our days in our stylish cubes dreaming up the next big thing followed by nightly recharges in our sleeping boxes, the weeks have not been without some atypical extracurricular activity.

After an intense first three weeks the Palomar5 team announced a mysterious weekend trip with few details except that we were supposed to bring our passport and pack warm. We speculated about trips to Poland or Holland.

On Halloween morning we piled on our bus unsure of our intended destination. A few hours later we found ourselves at the beginning of 8 kilometer canoeing expedition down a river somewhere in northeast Germany. We exited our canoes 3 hours later to find ourselves on the outskirts of a sparsely populated town with a nearby castle awaiting our presence. In the evening our creativity was out in full bloom as we showed off our elaborate characters including killer Mario, the bloody nurse and cross-dressing men.

Our favorite part of the weekend getaway at the castle was the sauna buried in the basement with plenty of half naked sandboxers to go around. We now request saunas wherever we go.

Other highlights included a Sunday afternoon project constructing an 8 meter mask out of branches and twigs, which was burned in it the evening. And I enjoyed my longest period of silence in a while during a solitary forest walk.

Atmosphere

Earlier this week we attended the ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On our walk back we noticed how this experience felt like the beginning of a new school. We’ve been living together for a month now and it feels like this is just the beginning of a new phase of our lives, which it is, but at the same time our concentrated camp experience is heading into the final stretch. The flight home will be very strange. The following weeks we’ll experience withdrawals as we return to reality, basically from the future. While we’ve been working on inventing the future of work, we’ve also been living it. This experience has seamlessly combined, friendship, fun, adventure and the birth of some really ambitious projects.

One thing I might change if I knew this could last beyond 6 weeks is not working as many hours during the day, I feel like life is cyclical, times where intense focus is required and other times where experimentalism is a better frame of mind. Making the most of my time here has been a higher priority for me. Trying to change the world takes sacrifice; again my restlessness talking.

How we maintain the community after the camp is an issue that looms large in all our heads, both for the continued success of our projects and the friendships we’ve built.

No matter what happens I think we can all say that the camp has inextricably altered our lives. And we’ll look back on our lives in a few years time categorizing our experiences with two denominations: BP and AP. Before Palomar5 and After Palomar5.

The pace of learning at this camp has been so high. I’ve often thought about what kind of person I’d become if every night I could go to bed completely mentally exhausted from the pushing my 3 pounds of grey matter continually past its limits. Palomar5 has given me four weeks of that dream. Everyday we discuss wide-ranging ideas, on many topics like learning, innovation, and culture.

One night Valentin and I were up late debating whether culture or technology was the stronger force driving society forward. While interesting, these conversations rarely lead to anything tangible, but Palomar5 begs to differ. The following day we were discussing how the iPhone achieved widespread cultural adoption so fast with technology so far ahead of what was previously available (normally a sticking point for products ahead of their time) and how our projects could succeed by similarly speeding up cultural adoption. The conversation immediately jumped to a new level as we drew on last night’s debate. Something in both our minds then clicked, “Wow that’s a first! Last night’s debate was enjoyable, but I never thought it would actually be productive.”

What We’ve Been Building At Palomar5

The theme of the camp of was the future of work, but that was just a starting point to sell the project. We’ve been given very little structure, and that’s the way like it. Lack of direction does not mean chaos, at least over the long term, our projects have naturally converged around big themes: Social consciousness, data and entrepreneurship.

These are incredibly important areas where a lot of growth will be made, and it’s even more notable that we were not told to pick 3 these topics, but our internal compasses driven by creative destruction, cycling through hundreds of projects over the last 4 weeks, led us here.

Our vision for redesigning society for digital age and generation is now more palpable with these themes guiding us. What’s notable is that while many of dreamed of redesigning society this kind of re-envisioning around our idyllic yearnings hasn’t always been possible. The industrial era required sacrificing creativity in the name of scalable efficiency, which was necessary to create the infrastructure to raise the quality of life to what is today. But while this era is long past its expiration date, it continues to live on like an infectious bacteria, contaminating our work and lives. So many of us realize it’s time to reinvent society and its organizations from the ground up, we now just need to commit to making it happen. Count Palomar5 in.

Magnifying Glass — Palomar5 Project Sneak Peak

Here’s a sneak peak into the vision of the project I’ve been most intensely involved in:

We’re postulating the future of work is going to have a lot more startups, because that’s where all the innovation is coming from.

The startup accelerator model is a big part of the future innovation landscape, think YCombinator, Techstars, Seedcamp, and now there are accelerators for more than web startups, using basically the same model like Palomar5 and the Unreasonable Institute. We think we’ll see a lot more of these.

The rise of accelerators means that there are now two big emerging markets: Pre and post accelerators.

We’re trying to build many of the tools needed to support startups post-accelerator: expert feedback systems, social network amplification in order to get connected to the right people, just in time learning to acquire skills to overcome new challenges, and repositories of best practices and eventually developing some kind of recommendation engine to streamline and automate the whole ecosystem.

Also, while startups are more innovative because they have freedom, flexibility and autonomy corporations still possess advantages of scale and greater resources.

Startups need to achieve advantages of scale as well, but they will be able to do this modularly and collaboratively. Currently large organizations are organized like big towers, even Google operates like this. But startups will be able to achieve scale and preserve their autonomy by acting like lego pieces. Currently, startups don’t have lego functionality, they’re just rectangular blocks that don’t interface well with each other but we’re providing the knobs and the holes to assemble large towers for particular projects that can easily dissemble at the conclusion of the project and build a new tower.

The prototype for our skill acquisition platform for entrepreneurs has recently been launched. Currently we’re only offering it to alumni of startup accelerators. http://forceforthefuture.com/founders-first/

Conclusion

There’s a lot of uncertainty in many of our lives now, but I love it. Many of us have nothing to go back to, no work to return to, just the opportunity to take the projects and relationships built over the 6 weeks as springboard for the next few years of our lives. It’s easy to get scared by the uncertainty, I still fall victim to it from time to time, but I know it’s really just a sign I’m taking good risks. While it’s comforting to know what life has in store, the predictability is antithetical to impact and growth.

A few nights ago Eddie (Harran) was hopping around in the cube with typical exuberance saying, “I wish could just work with you guys for the rest of my life” “What’s stopping you?” “Well, nothing!”

Sandbox and Lucian Tarnowski’s One Young World will partner up to facilitate a conference that is unique in its reach and potential impact. One Young World is a platform to engage and inspire the 25 year olds of today – the decision makers of tomorrow.

The inspiring Sandboxer Lucian, winner of the Global Enterprising Young Brit 2009 Award, and his partners will organize a huge global conference In London, gathering 1500 young and ambitious participants from allover the globe to discuss about the most pressuring problems our planet faces. Secured guests include Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan.  Sandboxers who are interested to stand as candidates, please contact Christian and check out their website!

Learn more…

Find Lucian on twitter, flickr, linkedin, his blog or email him.

What differentiates one company from the other when talents consider their job alternatives? How can there be created challenges and opportunities for the high potentials of generation y?

As Sandbox’ representative in London, I had the great pleasure to give a speech and to join a panel discussion about these hot issues on the annual CWC Conference “Future Talent in Oil and Gas 2008”.

At this conference, the HR directors of the major oil and gas companies discussed about the sector’s talent shortage and how to counter it. Closer and more interactive partnerships with universities, as well as the “brushing up” of technical careers were among the suggested answers.

To the pleasure of Sandbox, one major need had come up which has not been fulfilled in the market place so far and which Sandbox aims to facilitate: “behavioural innovation”. The problem of most organizations today, it seems, is that their leadership programs include around 10% highly ambitious future leaders which have the actual capabilities needed to lead; and around 90% which might have the ambition but not necessarily the capabilities to go ahead.

How can you get these 10% to share their capabilities with their “worse-performing” peers? Well, they have to learn it, they have to be trained to do it. However, probably not only by the old-paradigmers from generation x, but also by the best gen y-peers of other industries, other areas, other professions.

If you take a look at the thoughts of Christopher Lomas at the gen y consultancy naked generations (who facilitated a great workshop about gen y at this conference), you will see why this shift is necessary: the old management paradigms under which generation x have operated are outdated; new leadership models are emerging around generation y. And who could teach or rather share these insights and models better than those who have already employed them in practice?

And who do you think is more probable to show and share those new capabilities (such as “collaborative leadership”): is it a line manager who is operating within the old paradigms of their organization (and whom you might meet in your “company network”), or, let’s say, rather a politician, who always had to establish coalitions, who always had to convince people to vote for him, and who always had to build up a valuable political network?

What makes us so convinced about our network is not only that a diversity of great people comes together and shares ideas about projects, leadership, and so forth; above all, we are convinced that many of these ideas and their implementation would not have been evolved or facilitated within the “traditional paradigms” of most institutions.