So many new thoughts lately.
I feel like I should have written them down, and now they are all over the place flying around in my brain.
I keep getting back to this idea of mapping a 40 year plan for my professional life (until I am 70).
Like a master plan for my career.
That plan is ultimately connected to what I call "Super Morning Land".
Which is basically my idea for a utopia that I have had for almost 7 years now (described in this old post)
I finally found a way to make it more concrete. It used to be a desire for a perfect place. Now it's closer to a real plan.
Closer.
Clearly not a real plan yet.
The central idea is an awesome physical resort where the future is happening through countless crazy-ambitious startups. We are not a business incubator in the traditional sense. We create the ideas and recipees for all of our companies ourselves and then we attract outside investors, co-founders and young passionate graduates. That way we do not rely on the ambition of others but only on our own. A bit like Virgin has already done it, but with a bigger focus on innovation and unique work cultures - like making all employees co-owners. Not to downplay the importance of Virgin. Richard Branson and team deserves huge amounts of praise. We will continue in their footsteps.
Others thoughts are about Europe.
I have been thinking (and researching) a lot about ambition in Europe lately. What do we want as a continent? What's our drive? What role do we play in the world? Are we even aware of that role ourselves? And more importantly, are we missing out on our potential?
Most people never think about these kind of things. But I think everyone has an opinion about it if you ask them concrete questions.
For example it has been proven again and again that Europe scores better in scientific innovation than America or any other continent. It has also been proven that we are bad at going from ideas to Dollars (or Euros in our case). We simply don't make money on our innovation the same way the US does.
Angela Merkel has made this issue a high priority in Germany and along other German smart thinkers has said many smart things about it. Impressive reading. We even had a term for this issue for a long time. I think it's cool, it's called the European Paradox.
Part of that research and almost manic daily (if not hourly!) tinkering is because I want to shift my own focus to work on bigger issues in the future (part of the 40 year plan).
And I guess I am trying to find that one sentence explanation for everything I intend to do. A kind of mission statement for my professional life. A simple note about what I want to bring to this world before I leave it.
So far it sounds something like this:
I want to show people how creative, impactful and utopian companies can be.
I want to help Europe enter a new renaissance