“A maverick company, for me, is a lot of things. The one thing that sets maverick companies apart is that unique, original, point of view. This blue print, this idea, set around ‘How can we shape the future of our industry?’ The sense of mission beyond just creating a high performing company but actually advocating a cause in the world. It’s something that’s very clear, that introduces a whole new way of competing in an industry. And really just captures the imagination of employees, of customers and of the wider marketplace. It goes back to that traditional definition of the maverick. It’s a very American term. Basically, the animal that’s unbranded, and doesn’t run with the herd. For me, that’s just a great way to work, and compete, and to win.”

Polly Labarre,  Business and Innovation Expert and Author

“The sphere, as we view it nowadays, is the existential space. It is the space that cannot be discussed by physicists, that mathematicians or geometrists cannot discuss. But the same applies to architects, civil servants or people that work for the land registry. Because they all work with images that describe a non-personal, abstract, geometric, mathematical space.Space that doesn’t know ‘I’. When I or an I enters such a space, space transforms itself into a sphere.”

Peter Sloterdijk, Professor of Philosophy and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe School of Design

“I think that we live in a world where ideology will play a dominant role. I think it’s almost the opposite to what people think, that after the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow we became all very pragmatic and therefore we can all run our own business on a daily basis without having to care about the big picture. I think it is just the opposite. Now that the Berlin Wall has fallen, somehow you feel lonely because you don’t know to whom you have to oppose your own vision. And so that’s a moment when the price, I would say, of ideology has reason because people want to think of their life as something more than simply the daily routine of doing one’s work. And I believe that is the period in which we are now…”

Daniel Cohen, Professor of Economics at the École d’économie de Paris

“The evolution of the workforce is going to be quite fascinating to watch as we look at the baby boomers retire. In the United States at least, I know that the numbers by 2012 we’re going to have ten thousand Americans turning 65 every day, and we have the millennial generation coming into the workforce. And they have very different attitudes. So if I think about my children and that boundary-less, completely global, connected world; they’re going to bring that to work with them.”

Dan Rasmus,  Director of Business Insights at Microsoft Corporation

“What’s going to matter is, not information but what people want to do with it. So I don’t think it make sense to really look at technology but it makes a lot of sense to look at what people want to do with technology. And I think that increasingly they want to participate, they want to contribute, they want to use it. They want to share. Find ways of sharing information and ideas with other people and they want to find ways to collaborate. So, I think it’s much more about the emergence of a networked society and its development into these networks of collaboration, that’s really the key thing. Information is just a kind of raw material at that.”

Charles Leadbeater, innovation and creativity specialist and author

“Chaos is always there, chaos is part of any complex system. Chaos is a means of evolving or changing the system. You have to destabilize a system before you can restabilize it some place. It’s a myth to think that a system will change by little steps, adaptive steps, they’re not major changes. So when do you need chaos? Yes, there are times when you need chaos. If your current system is at the limits of its stability, its sustainability, then you have to change it. Then it has to loosen up its structures.So chaos is a state in which new relations can come into being because there are very sensitive, complex relationships between the elements of the system and changes propagate very fast from one part of the system to another. At the present time I think we need chaos, not to reach the point where it degenerates the system, where it endangers the entire system, but to the point where it allows constructive change to unfold.” - Ervin Laslo, author and founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group

“Lets take this twelve year old girl that I am a godfather to. She has a cell phone, she is on the web, she has a Facebook page, she has friends from around the world in that space and for her, that was like for me growing up when we had radio and tv, it was just part of the atmosphere. For her it is part of the atmosphere too. So I think she is growing up not so much with the sense of entitlement, but rather a sense that this is the way the world is. And because she makes those assumptions she is going to build upon that too. I don’t know where that will lead, but being an optimist I trust in the human spirit to find its own way.” - Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Software Engineering in IBM Research

“Ask yourself a very different question: what are the inputs or strategy, not the outputs. What are the necessary elements, skills, that I need that will work in any situation. It’s like prepairing for a trip around the world; you are going to be in business, casual situations, hot climate, cold climate, what cloth do you take? And you have to do with carry on lugage, not with a trunc on a steamer ship or something. How do you pack? You pack cloth that are versitile, that you can dress up, dress down. The organisation has to do the same thing; what skills do I have that are adapteble, that will work in any situation. Because when I can’t predict the future, then adaptability and flexibility is paramount. Focus on those skills, process those skills, be world class at those skills, then worry about where the journey takes you, but be ready for the journey”- Jeffrey Sampler, Fellow, Templeton College-Said Business School, Oxford

“The key thread is one of individualization, that is reaching more and more inside of individuals. If you look at the progression of economic value that goes from commodities to transformations (even beyond experiences). Commodities are these arms length things that we hardly even touch and feel anymore. Goods are things that we touch and use like cars and clothing. Services are activities performed on those goods like cleaning our cloth, or on ourselves cutting our hair. But experiences for the first time reach inside of us and they engage us in creating a memory.  Transformations actually reach inside and change us; so effective is the experience, that now we become a different person as a result. So that process of individualization of getting more and more into a person, and with transformation the customer IS the product. And of course that is going to be authentic because you actually changed the self-image of who they are.” Joseph Pine - author of “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage ” and “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want“