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Certainty

A society on the move, both localising and globalising, where companies are looking for new economic models and where individuals aren’t sure whether what they learned in 2012 is still true in 2013.

Politics coerced by the illusions of the day into serving the illusions of the day, media joining in happily. It all makes us feel insecure, and we’re the ones to blame. In a society this insecure, we look for certainty.

For example, when I was fifteen and I started up my first enterprise, my parents didn’t know how to help me either, but they did know a solution to all my questions. It wasn’t so much the aroma of coffee and apple pie, but rather the comforting sense of certainty brought to our kitchen table by the accountant they invited over. And for months afterwards, my parents would say: remember what the accountant said about that?

‘Certainty and an objective view’, that was what the accountant always stood for. But for how much longer will certainty still be possible in a world that’s changing more and more rapidly and becoming more and more complex? Maybe we’re looking for certainties that we are losing.

But this is what is happening to more and more companies: changing economic circumstances call for adaptation, but when making changes where billions of Euros are at stake, one has a need for certainty. And that’s what stifles the development of more and more companies, so that they end up overtaken by competitors. Or it’s why they forget what they were founded for.

But innovation is all about being uncertain and having the courage to take risks. That’s why some of the most successful companies in the world — for example in the ICT business and the computer industry — weren’t around ten years ago. They had the guts to do something that they couldn’t be certain about, but they did it anyway. And if established companies in other areas aren’t careful, it’s entirely possible that 2013 will be their last New Year’s Eve.

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