A New Path for World Development
The global issues that the 1972 report “Limits to Growth” sketched so imminently are even more severe and urgent today. It is time to hit the “tipping point” for “runaway change”, away from the structures that have long functioned and brought prosperity to many, but at hidden costs that can no longer be absorbed, and time to construct a track to inclusiveness and one-planet economic growth. Once again, the Club of Rome felt the need to intervene on the global stage and launched a three year, integrated programme of international research and consultation: “A New Path for World Development”.

Cities Can Save the World.
Metropoles - world cities - are lead players in the global economy. Though they cover just 2 percent of the earth’s surface, cities consume 75 percent of the resources utilized by humankind. Cities dominate the planet politically, economically, ecologically and cultur- ally. How mankind functions in the city of the future shall to a large extent depend on factors such as energy, water, waste, food, mobil- ity and ICT. If we manage to make our cities sustainable then this will have a huge impact for the whole of the planet.

Else Bos, CEO PGGM Investments: “It’s very important in times like these to make the decision whether you put your time and effort in the urgent or in the important. And I think responsible investment is important.”
Donald MacDonald, Chair of the PRI Initiative: “People have now come to understand that the so called extra financial issues, actually do have a serious impact on long term investments.”
Gavin Power, Deputy Director UN Global Compact: “The objectives of business and finance are now meshing with those of the UN and international community. This has led to a number of public private partnerships like the PRI.”
James Gifford, Executive Director PRI Initiative: “The core philosophy behind responsible investment as defined by the PRI, are those activities that will add value for the shareholders through building better companies over the long term.”
Marcel Jeucken, Head of Responsible Investment PGGM Investments: “In the end we will not talk about responsible investments anymore, but we simply talk about investments.”

In a world that is confronted with climate change, instant wars, collapsing banks, global terrorism and an oil price that is jumping up and down, the old ways of doing things just don’t work anymore. ICT has enabled us to link everything together. A digital layer of connections has merged with our old infrastructures of trains, plains and boats creating a network that has simply become to large and complex to grasp. We can no longer take the machine apart to understand its parts. Are we just going to pretend nothing is wrong, sit down and brace for impact?  Dealing with that kind of complexity has to be done bottom-up, believing in adaptiveness, self learning and letting go of control. We need new tools, new ideas, a new generation and above all, new leadership. But how are you to define a strategy in such an age of uncertainty? For a study on the Future of Work FreedomLab partnered once more with ViNT , the institute that explores the impact of new technologies.

Africa is a continent on the move, trying to climb from the bottom up. Many regions on the African continent are suffering from extreme climates, environmental degradation, colonial trauma, language barriers, HIV, illiteracy, poverty, famine, artificial borders, dictators and armed conflicts. But at the same time, Africa is also a continent of tremendous unleashed potential of natural resources, human capital and economic activities. For several years in a row now, Africa is the fastest growing region in the roll-out of ICT infrastructure, especially mobile. In FreedomLab’s new study into this continent we sketch a thorough picture on the status quo of many of the aspects of the African growth dynamics. And we’ll discuss the hurdles as well as the tremendous opportunities.

‘Me the Media’ deals with user generated content and the questions it raises. Like:

• If everybody is in control, than who is in charge?
• If the medium has just become a medium, than where is the message?
• How do we deal with the fact that mass-media turn into a media-mass?
• ….

FreedomLab partnered with Vint in a visual-experiment. We tried to visualize the history, present and future of media by applying a kind of Dogma-style rules. Could we visualize the book in ten minutes by using 100% YouTube material

NextGeneration Study: Buddylist

A study researching the digital lives of generation risk. We had our kids panel elaborate on themes like virtual friends, downloading, Second Life and corporate blogging.

Powerplay-documentary: Who determines your near future?

New technologies enable new tools from cars to trains and computer chips. All have an impact on our experience of space and time. The world becomes more transparent and decentralized. It becomes smaller and our lives more efficient. or doesn’t it?

How has globalization changed our world?

In this documentary we studied the effects of globalization on society. As Thomas Friedman has suggested, this development has led to a world in which everybody can work together and in which everybody is equal. But is that really the case? A panel of five experts share their thoughts on the changes in a globalized world.