Facilitating A Next Renaissance

Reverse engineering our future

While talking about the conferences (yes, we've created two conferences with the same programm, but with different contents, in one weekend) and its design the remark was made that what Dutch people are good at, is reverse engineering. We're not that great in new and innovating ideas, we're not into 'Knowledge Management', but we're specialised in using ideas from others, taking them apart and reassemble them into better and improved, workable entities. We did this in our 'Golden Age', with inventing the multi-national, a wooden shoe copy from the Italians, going to sea like the Portugees, copying colonisation from the Spanish; we did it in the oil industry, Shell is like Standard Oil; in lamps, Philips outsmarted Edison's invention and in butter and washing powder: Unilever. Our speciality is trading, resource shifting, because we're located at the delta of three big rivers.
So, this conference is just a quick redesign of over ten billion years of evolution. And, now I mention it, we didn't write the book 'Global Brain' either. Never again give a Dutchman your trade secrets!

posted by Jan @ 3/11/2006