This is a summary of this article by Jared Baiterman, in which he gives an impression of the Chinese market of new communication technologies, as an illustration of likewise markets of emerging regions in general. Baiterman claims Western companies not to take this market serious, excluding it from future scenarios and applying just the strategies formulated for their own regions. This is a big misunderstanding and in this article he explains why.

The computer is not a calculator on steroids. Broadband internet did not bring us a faster web. Why are we looking at quantum mechanical research as bringing us the quantum computer? Does it imply we expect the classical computer to be replaced by the quantum computer? If it is not a computer (a settler of scores) then what is it?

We are right in the middle of the digital paradigm, so we think. And in the middle of any phase we start to look at the next one. Most bets are on quantum computing. But are we in the middle? Did we find all possible applications of digital? I think not. With the internet we started to connect computing devices. The web is one of the most successful applications of the internet. The web is about communication and sharing of information. We could also use the internet to build something that shares the rest of the capabilities of the available devices. That is what you could call a grid!

The quantum computer is gaining momentum. The field of QIS (quantum information science) is slowly increasing its research budgets. And the catch phrase relating to quantum computing is often to make Moore’s Law irrelevant. But what is a Quantum Computer? What is it that we are waiting for…

If I were to have to choose a new university career the University of Amsterdam has exactly my curriculum, I think. Next year they will start with Future Planet Studies. It is a bachelor of 3 years and part of the Bèta-gamma program (meaning your education is physics (natuurkunde) oriented.) Very interesting, especially since they claim to teach the student abilities to formulate visions for the future of the planet. They don’t educate truth, they educate skills to deal with tomorrow.

Felix Meritis, in Amsterdam, hosted a debate between the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner and Jan Pronk. Pascal Bruckner has a catchy philosophy on the attitude of Europe. In La tyrannie de la penitence he argues that we are paralysed by remorse and that we could get out of it by doing ‘penance’. He says: “Europe is a market without a project for humanity.” Jan Pronk is our former minister of Development Cooperation for the Netherlands. And he stressed he liked the book very much. It addressed his European chauvinism, I guess. But he nonetheless disagrees on some key points.

When Coca-cola ‘invents’ a new flavor or new design for its bottle it creates a competitive advantage. Copyrighting and patenting helps them to protect their ‘invention’ and thus their investment. Except for the fact that our culture is being limited in copying one another, which is one of the primal functions of a culture, no problems so far. But what if this company is not called Coca-Cola but Bayern and making HIV-treatments instead of softdrinks, do we still find it ok that their competitive advantage is being protected? Isn’t it in societies best interest to open up those medicine and intelligence… but than a private company would never invest in R&D. A difficult catch-22. But how about sustainability? Every company is trying to gain an advantage by being more green than the other… but shouldn’t all those new technologies be open… saving the planet instead of the market?

In our study on Brazil we forecasted that they probably will become an oil-exporting country in the near future. Their exclusive deep-sea drilling methodologies combined with a high oil-price (motivating other countries to buy-in Brazils expertise) sounds promising. Since the end of last year Brazil also announsed the discovery of some of the world largest oil and gas fiels before the Sao Paolo coast. We have discussed several scenario’ on whether Brazil will join Opec, non-opec or maybe try to set-up a latin-american oil council (Equador, Venezuela, brazil)?

Our main focus during a intel-session this week, was regarding the sustainability. Main topic: the phrase “divide less with more”. But what does it exactly mean? The meaning presumably means” to divide less resources with more people”. But different dynamics could be at work here. This post is intended to shed some light on the different possibilities of the phrase mentioned above.

Yesterday we attended a masterclass by Peter Senge on Presence. Presence is one of the basic principles that has led to the Theory-U by Otto Scharmer, that we’ve discussed last December and that could be an integral part of our own models and approach. The masterclass turned out to be an interactive session in which Senge tried to show the practice of presence and gave various assignments so we could experience it ourselves. Quite helpful for our own practices and models. We have taped the entire masterclass, so if you want you can review it yourself as well, but this is what I took away from the session…