Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does acting drive innovation and progress? That’s the question we explored in Room #1021 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Action.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you all. Today we continue with acting and innovation — how does acting actually foster innovation and progress? We’ve touched on the concept of innovation before, so let’s briefly refresh what we might still have stored away on that. We’d not only discussed innovation, but also drawn out the difference between innovation and progress, before looking at how that connects to acting. As always, you’re warmly invited to join in and help open up this space for reflection together. With that, I’ll mute myself and see who wants to come in first — and before I forget, we’re recording the whole time, so joining means you’re okay with that, just for the record. Good morning — what are your first thoughts?
Good morning to you and everyone in the room. I hope you’re all enjoying the public holiday the way we are here. Picking up on your introduction — we can narrow the term “innovation” down a bit for today’s topic, since we’re talking about it in connection with acting. I say that because I see innovation as connected both to acting and to thinking. And going a bit further into that: for me, the true origin of innovation is actually the thinking. Though, admittedly, if you look at various definitions, a connection is often drawn between thinking and acting when people talk about innovation — because it’s about having ideas, having visions in the first place. Innovation has to come from somewhere. So this innovation, in its genesis, is above all a function of perception — the perception that I recognise, say, a need for change, and out of that perspective comes an imaginative capacity, let’s call it a fantasy-developer, that leads to the concrete shaping of a mental innovation. At that point, it hasn’t yet made it onto the drawing board or into production, hasn’t been sold as a product. And that, for me, is exactly the interface between thinking and acting when it comes to innovation. And today, I assume, we’re talking about the aspect of innovation combined with acting — meaning, once the thinking is done and the groundwork, which is what thinking represents, has been laid for acting. Do I have that right, and can I go with that framing for today’s topic, which I still think stays fairly complex? Thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much, and yes, I’m happy to confirm that. Let’s look at that aspect — once the thinking is done, how does acting ultimately foster innovation and progress. And let’s briefly recall, not in full detail, but at least roughly, what we’d previously established about the term innovation, and how it differs from progress, before we look at the connection between acting and innovation. Good morning — what are your thoughts?
Good morning to the round. I was listening closely, and I already have a bit of a mischievous glint in my eye — I have an objection, or a suggestion, because some thoughts are going through my head, and I know I’m drifting from your agreement with our friend here. Topic acting and innovation, I’ll stick to that, but I’ve thought of examples in my head where I didn’t consider anything at all, where I have no innovation of my own whatsoever, and yet innovation, in connection with acting, still pushed me toward new things I never initiated and never wanted to initiate — where innovation and acting get imposed on me by others, from outside. So my question is: am I allowed to bring in an example, or does that go beyond the topic? Because, as I understood it, with a wink, we’re only talking about innovation and acting as it relates to ourselves — meaning if I’ve thought about it myself. But there are plenty of innovations I haven’t thought about, won’t think about, and yet they’ll still force me to act.
I think you might want to follow up on that.
Thank you, and good morning especially to you — I’m glad you picked up on my intro, but I think I probably expressed myself in a way that was open to misunderstanding. The self-reference wasn’t really the point I was making. I explicitly didn’t limit the dimension, or better, the origin, of innovation to the self, to one’s own “I.” And that’s an essential aspect underlying the complexity I flagged — how innovation can affect us. To put it simply, and I hope I’m staying in the direction you understood it, let me clarify from my point of view: there’s innovation that comes from within me and leads to acting. But the other side of innovation is that innovation can also be the trigger for action induced by it, in my view, without me having anything to do with that innovation myself. And something that came to me gratefully from your remarks — and you’ll find this in a lot of publications — is that each of us is actually an innovator. I’d put that out there, because the common definition of innovation is the ability to develop ideas and visions and to implement them. Now, speaking from my own experience and looking at myself, if I had to classify myself, I’d place myself more toward the idea-and-vision side, less toward the implementer side. And that’s the genuinely fascinating question for me — and here we’re back at the self again — is this innovation really something every one of us carries within? But to be very clear: I didn’t mean to explicitly exclude what you raised. I hope that helped clarify things. Thank you.
Let me briefly pick up the room’s subtitle again, to make clear what framework we have today. We don’t want to talk today about how far innovation might affect me personally, and we don’t want to look at the thinking process that precedes creating some innovative idea — the question is: how does acting foster innovation and progress? And that’s really more about looking at, for example, the framework — what kind of external acting can, quite generally, foster or favour innovation and progress? Maybe you’d both like to come in on that.
Sure, happily. That’s been on my mind, both in terms of the future and the past. And one of the interesting questions, I assume this is what you mean, is innovation and learning — I actually thought about this myself yesterday: can innovation even be learned? And then I’d land on all those answers, like you just said, what can I actually do? How can innovation be learned, or how do I connect it with acting? How can I be innovative and act, and combine both? Did I understand you correctly?
I’m not sure I’d explicitly bring in the term “learning” today. It’s not about whether I can learn innovation, but rather what framework is needed externally, so to speak, or what kind of acting fosters innovation in general — we could also phrase the question differently: to what extent does a certain kind of external acting foster something like creativity, so that innovation can emerge from it, or similar. Tomorrow we actually have a room called acting and learning. Maybe, to bring in another term to see if we can connect here — companies are always thinking about how they can foster innovation, and that often involves talk of company culture, or innovation culture. Maybe you’d like to come in on that.
That’s exactly the connection I had on the tip of my tongue. For me, that would really be the meta-level, a reference point under that heading — and I think, I hope, that sums up your intended direction in one phrase: what environment defines itself as innovation-friendly? And company culture is a partial organisation within the overall organisation that is society. Because our society, standing in for our entire political, cultural and social system, sets very specific framework conditions — through legislation, norms, cultivated behaviours, all the way to certain identity-related processes, within which we all move. And on that meta-level too, I think they’re highly determining when it comes to innovation — they set a value, or position us in relation to the value and evaluation of courage, of risk, of equal opportunity, for example. Just naming those three positions, they’re already directional for me on that overarching level of our entire society. And so company culture, which you raised, is for me the absolute classic example — you said it yourself, an innovation-friendly company culture, which you read about in countless annual reports and so on, fundamentally has to orient itself first around these broader societal framework conditions, within which it can then be innovation-friendly in some form. And I notice two different fundamental orientations there. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had the fortune, in my life, of getting to know 26 different corporate identities across six different countries, and I’ve had a long time to reflect on what the actual differences were and what it brought me. And especially on the topic of innovation, which I always associate with imagination, with vision, with ideas, and the possibility of giving those ideas and that imagination a real chance at implementation, taking the risk and potentially failing — that’s a key classification criterion for many companies, especially in my own industry. And for me it’s also directional, this aspect of corporate innovation and innovation culture, because, to put it simply: each of us, under normal circumstances, spends the majority of our conscious time within 24 hours, once you subtract sleep, in that environment, and gets shaped by that culture of innovation as a result. I can’t quantify it, but I think it shapes us considerably more through the company than through societal norms — the reason being that we internalise it, more or less unconsciously, from childhood onward, throughout our entire development. Thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much. That’s genuinely fascinating, especially that last thesis you put forward — because if we now look not just at companies but transpose this onto institutions too, so educational institutions, starting from daycare, through school, then vocational training… sorry, I’m cutting in because I can’t hear anything anymore — is that just me? Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear both of you.
Then it’s on your end — I can’t hear anyone. One, two, three, hello — maybe an emoji or something.
I can hear you, but I assume Yasemin wanted to say something and I can’t hear it. Maybe you can pass on that they probably can’t hear me and should try leaving and rejoining the room — maybe that fixes it. No, nothing’s coming through. Let me translate and repeat what Yasemin just said.
Maybe try leaving the room and coming back — it’s probably a technical glitch.
Alright, let me bridge the gap until you’re back, and hope it resolves itself in the meantime. Seems to be working now, wonderful. So what I wanted to say was, I find it fascinating what was just said, especially that last thesis — that we might well be shaped much more by the companies we work for than by society, once you subtract sleep and compare the time spent there. Let’s expand on that a little — we can look at companies in terms of innovation culture, but with that same keyword, we can of course also look at whole institutions, starting from daycare, through school as an institution, then possibly training institutions, then the company we work for, and so on. And then there’s the societal level too. So the question is, how does acting foster innovation and progress — and if we look at this not just in relation to companies, but quite generally, what similarities or differences are there, and what does that mean, especially given that this week, as we look at acting, we keep wanting to open up this level, moving away from an individual or team-based view toward a societal one. And we could transpose the term we had earlier, “innovation-friendly company culture,” onto, say, an innovation-friendly society. So how does acting foster innovation and progress, looked at on that broader level? Would either of you like to come in directly on that?
You’re the only speaker on stage with me right now — maybe you’d like to go first.
Then let me respond to what you both said, about company culture. It’s a bit simpler for me, since I’m a sole proprietor. But I can agree that the environment companies operate in, and something that always comes up with the topic of school too, is the acceptance of mistakes — how we handle risk-taking and mistake tolerance, how we treat each other, and what’s modelled for us by our role models, or by politics, with this finger-pointing, which is my word of 2023, finger-pointing, that we strictly deflect everything from ourselves. People are afraid to make decisions, people put off decisions, and so on. And that naturally makes the whole process around innovation and acting very, very difficult. Because whoever acts also takes responsibility, and if they don’t, then someone else has to.
Thank you so much. You can hear me again now — I gathered that from the emoji. Let’s see if speaking works properly again too. Can you hear me?
Yes, wonderful, I can hear you perfectly now.
It really was just leaving and rejoining. Thanks again for the tip.
Staying with the topic, and your, for me, evidently very strict framing of today’s theme around this connection to acting — I briefly thought about it again, because for me, and hopefully this is clear from my earlier contributions, the origin of innovation was, and still is, truly the mental process. Somewhere, and I’m repeating myself, this idea has to come from somewhere. Something has to prompt me — a perception, a phenomenon — to engage with it mentally and recognise, this is something new. And then I act. So, hopefully turning this in your direction, I’d say: acting is actually a precondition for innovation. If we don’t define innovation purely as what innovation is, but also as what it can be used for — and that’s the second aspect, which only just became clear to me — one of those uses is progress. And I think, in my current state of thinking, that progress only materialises if I act. So acting is a precondition for innovation to become progress. Because — and here’s a grey area I haven’t sufficiently questioned yet — I can also be innovative purely within myself, and here we’re back at an earlier theme. Yes, but let me soften that, because it’s a learning effect from this half hour with you all: this innovation has to generate some kind of benefit somewhere, and that benefit has to be reflected not just in thinking, but in acting too — not necessarily actively producing some artifact or generating a new product, but that I reposition my innovation through my own behaviour. And that behaviour, in turn, is the foundation for my acting. I hope I’ve managed to convey this jumble of insights reasonably well, and that it fits the direction of this room.
Absolutely, thank you so much. And in that context we can also pick up a related thought: if we say there’s clearly an acting that favours innovation and progress, is there perhaps also an acting that doesn’t favour it, but instead holds it back or causes stagnation? And I love that you’ve picked back up on this distinction between innovation and progress — we’d noted that innovation is generally about something new being developed, but that not every innovation automatically means or represents progress. And progress, we’d noted, is a further development of something. Maybe worth reiterating that, by the way. Would you like to add to that too?
Yes, I could hug you for that — it’s a real concern of mine that you underlined again, innovation, progress, but not necessarily advantage. And sorry for straying from the room’s topic for just one second — on acting and innovation, there are so many things around us that influence us, where people have acted, where people have acted innovatively, and it happens invisibly, things that don’t affect me directly because I don’t even notice them, but that also has to do with acting and innovation. Not every action, and not every innovation, is progress. And, since I missed the opening moderation, the room was silent, so I wrongly assumed there were technical problems — I would have opened the room myself with the topic of acting, progress, and responsibility. And it occurred to me that we’ve actually already had that topic, you just called it something else — pioneering spirit. Does a pioneer, someone who’s innovative, who acts, also have to think about responsibility, or is it first about initiating something new, making progress? But what I liked best, let me repeat it: progress isn’t necessarily advantage. Would you like to come in on that too?
Yes, and unusually, this actually connects for me to something very practical, based on what you just said. Sorry if I do a bit of a recap here and go back to the definition of innovation — take the example of a smartphone. The smartphone is labelled as the innovation, alongside or as a consequence of the internet, an innovation that’s even earned the label of a “machine revolution” or “Industry 4.0.” Let me gratefully ask, given today’s room: is the smartphone itself the innovation? Or is it rather the behaviour of everyone using this smartphone, the actions they generate from it in their daily lives, and the corresponding shift in thinking that follows, around information, communication, how we interact with each other, the breadth of how we acquire knowledge and so on — isn’t that actually the innovation? And when we talk about innovation, shouldn’t we also ask whether what we’re calling innovation is really more of a tool, rather than the thing itself, the thing behind it, that’s actually what makes it innovative? And that brings me back to the benefit aspect of an innovation — one that leads to a novelty, not necessarily to progress in the sense of improvement or deterioration, but to something entirely new.
And that entirely new thing, with the smartphone, isn’t for me, as things stand today, the device itself, but all the possibilities and consequences for acting and thinking that result from it. Thank you.
That’s an interesting question. Let me pick that up and pose a slightly modified version of it. Maybe it is the smartphone that’s the innovation, the tool representing the novelty — but specifically what you raised, about behaviour and how people engage with it, what changes, what effects it has — from that perspective, is that then progress, yes or no, and is that itself subject to a judgment? What do you think, off the cuff?
Thumbs up, spontaneously. Exactly that.
Thank you so much for that. Wonderful, thank you. Let’s actually look now at how to build the bridge back to acting more directly. We essentially have the task, for today, of looking at whether there’s an acting that, by the definitions we’ve now established, fosters innovation and progress, or also hinders it. Someone else has joined, so let me bring them in too, and then we can draw the cross-connections. Good morning!
Of course it only works if I actually bring you in. One moment. There we go — that one was on me. You should be able to speak now. Your mic’s still off. See if that… alright, well, I’m just glad I found you all. It’s still a little complicated, I think I need more practice figuring out how all this works. But I’m glad I found you and get to hear your voices again — I missed it, real withdrawal symptoms. What just occurred to me about the smartphone, I’ve thought about this before too: at first, the smartphone was for me nothing other than a mobile phone, a completely normal phone you could make calls with. The second part, and this is the innovation I credit to Steve Jobs, are the apps — they brought an enormous range of possibilities for acting that have nothing to do with making calls at all. And today I say the phone, I still call it a phone, is the new geometry set for school. Because you can do an unbelievable amount with it. And you describe it yourself, how learning and acting change because of it. What do we do when we’re standing in a shop, looking at what a device can do? You don’t need a salesperson anymore. You look it up, and say, okay, I’ll take this one, it was the cheapest, the price is right, I have it right away, I can take it with me. Or you say, no, let me look at this some more. And these are all things we used to never even think about — or we searched for ages. I remember spending weeks wandering around town figuring out which TV or which radio to get. Today that’s zero problem, no difficulty at all. And for me, innovation and acting also relate to my own development. And I do think that what I’ve now organised, or conceived, as a working framework for the classroom is innovative, because I notice it works, and I notice it’s working for more and more people. And people who see teaching just as positively after 30, 40 years in the profession show almost identical thought patterns and ways of acting. It always comes back to acting raising the question: what can I do better? What isn’t working for me and why isn’t it working? So that reflecting too, though I think you’ve already said quite a bit about that in recent days. And then really saying, okay, something has to change now. I need to do something. This doesn’t sit right with me, I don’t like this. What’s possible within the framework of what’s available? And if that framework is open, if you have structures that actually let you try things out, then you probably get to new thoughts and new actions faster through trial and error — which at the same time cause something to change, both around you and within you. Which means acting is the precondition for innovation, and innovation then becomes the precondition for new, changed acting. That’s my thought, at least. Thank you for letting me be here.
Thank you so much. Let me pick up the school example again, to reformulate my question. Say the smartphone is an innovation that’s banned in schools. So we have a product, with various novel features, the original phone now looks different and has different functionality, and as an innovative product, that gets a tick in the box — it’s an innovative product on the market. But I don’t allow its use, say, at school. What does that mean, then? Let’s just assume we’d agree that the smartphone isn’t just an innovation but also favours progress, and its use isn’t permitted at school — what does that do?
I’d be curious what you all think about that — who’d like to come in?
Go ahead, and then you after.
I think I’ve also read that a lot of processes change there. You have to differentiate — it’s never simply left or right. Some universities do deliberately allow phones. I understand your approach, let me start there: if we consciously decide, as a community, that a phone is an innovative device that’s allowed to be used in school, that’s obviously an enormous challenge for the teacher and for the institution too, saying, you’re now allowed to use your knowledge for a certain piece of work, you’re allowed to use the phone specifically for that. And then the question in history class is no longer, when did Columbus discover America, but rather, what resulted from that, how did society change, what complexity emerged from it. New questions have to be asked, and then we’re back to it not being about recalling facts, but applying knowledge, and the tools that go with applying knowledge, like a geometry set — and there’s the solution to the whole problem, because a geometry set is also applied, it’s not just someone reciting facts from memory, but working with facts. And, as with everything we discuss, generally it’s never purely left or purely right, but finding a middle path, making compromises — but fundamentally I find your approach really provocative, and good, and I’m smiling a bit here, because if we agree that a phone is an innovative device, and I understand your thought, and we exclude it from school, what does that actually do? I wouldn’t be too worried about the kids, honestly, because phones are basically glued to their hands already, so they’ll just use it after school. Which brings us back to the point someone raised before, about concentration difficulties — whether kids can even handle eight hours at school without their phone — but that would be a whole new room in itself.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I’m curious what our other friend thinks too, and that’s exactly why it’s important here to try, as a whole, to set aside these emotional judgments, or push them to the side, and really just — which is why I deliberately phrased it as, let’s assume it’s not just an innovation but also favours progress, and what happens if we ban it.
And I loved that you brought back up the geometry-set example, exactly the one that was mentioned earlier, “the new geometry set.” If it’s the new geometry set, then of course I have to be allowed to use it, so I can actually learn how to handle it properly. And then the question becomes, what questions do we as teachers need to ask ourselves to integrate it meaningfully and allow it as this new geometry set. Now, we could stick with the smartphone, but we can obviously transpose this onto other contexts too. Let me make it a bit bigger, so we’re not just stuck on school — especially given the discussions we’re seeing right now, above all around AI. If we assume that’s an innovation, that there’s been a further development, and if we now assume it favours progress — what happens if we discuss, say, banning AI entirely, or restricting it, or, going a step further, if we bring in something like freedom of speech, censorship, and so on. All these points can be connected in the most varied ways, in the most varied directions, and we could revisit all these topics under the same question and discuss them. I’m curious now — you wanted to come in, and then let’s bring in our other friend too.
Thank you. That last step, freedom of speech, was a bit much for me as an entry point, I won’t go there right now, but the addition about the smartphone and the link to AI is actually spot on for what I wanted to add to what was said — because you’ve captured at least 90 percent of what I wanted to say in your own excellent words already. I’d like to add one aspect: from the perspective of what happens, or what effects it has, when someone bans something. It’s often a very common, and one-sided, conclusion drawn purely from weighing advantages and disadvantages — asking, what are the advantages and disadvantages of an innovation, in this case the smartphone, in the field of school teaching methods. The dimension that’s often forgotten — and your link to AI was spot on here — is the second essential economic foundation when assessing any investment, namely opportunities and risks, on both sides: opportunities both for the user and for whoever wants to impose the ban, and risks for the user, but also for those wanting to ban it. And, not meant disparagingly at all, when I say that an innovation like the smartphone — which you aptly called the new geometry set, or I’d say, from my own past, the successor to the slide rule — naturally has consequences too, and, let me strike “possibly,” definitely has consequences and risks for the teacher, for the instructor. Because, to put it bluntly, with a smartphone, everyone has the ability to define and discover the scope of their own knowledge in countless ways. And drawing on my own past, which admittedly goes back quite a while now — my knowledge was shaped by my parents’ home and by school, by what school taught me as knowledge, perhaps supplemented later in life by reading newspapers and books. But now, someone can simply stand up and ask, is what that person at the front is telling us actually still state of the art, or what’s the counter-position, which they’re not even mentioning? Opportunities and risks, not just advantages and disadvantages — always look at opportunities and risks too. Thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much. With an eye on the time, let me bring in our other friend directly now, and then we can draw the cross-connections again. Good morning!
We can’t hear you yet.
Your mic’s still off, at least from our view.
If it doesn’t work, try leaving the room and coming back — seems like we’re having some technical challenges today. Let’s try again in a moment, I assume they’ll be back shortly. And then I’ll invite them to speak again, and see if it works.
There we go, it’s working now.
Seems like everything needs two tries this morning.
Seems that way, yes.
Good morning to the round. Oh, funny thing that happened — the moment I pressed the button I wasn’t looking, it turned on and immediately turned off again.
I saw it turn off too, but noticed too late.
Just for the technical background. Greetings from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a really beautiful area. I was just out getting bread rolls, so I’ll need to head to breakfast shortly, but the school example really got me thinking, and I completely agree with you all — wanted to share a small example. At my son’s school they’re allowed to use an iPad. I was quite critical at first, but he does great with it. Then the teacher says, well, some kids play games, so please don’t prop the iPad up, don’t use the keyboard, just lay it flat so I can see if anyone’s playing. But if I do that, there’s no point using the iPad at all, because I need the keyboard, I need it instead of a notebook. I’ve also buried my suspicion that the poor boy can’t write anymore because he uses the iPad — his handwriting is lovely. One thing doesn’t necessarily have to choke out the other. So I’m speaking to exactly what you two just said — my son basically anticipated my example before I even gave it. You have to allow room to move, and you have to appeal to people. I mean, the teacher clearly knows her own cards, so to speak, and needs to reconsider and say, we have two options: either do it properly, or ban it selectively. I think you need to appeal much more to the kids’ own drive to progress, rather than issuing a ban. And I noticed again on holiday just now what he’s capable of — I wouldn’t have guessed he could do so much with Chrome and Google Drive and so on, you know what I mean — he set it up for me. I probably wouldn’t have managed it myself. Incredible. Well, I’m going to bring in the bread rolls now, wish you all a wonderful day and a fantastic topic. I’ll just be passively listening this week — back to work.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Enjoy your breakfast. And that example really illustrates — and I see our two friends want to come in on this too — that the actual problem might lie somewhere else entirely. Because if we think back to our own school days, we didn’t need an iPad or a smartphone or anything else — we still found ways in class to write love letters, do crossword puzzles, or other things. And we were pretty good at it too. Which means, even then, the teacher had to pay very close attention to catch it and step in accordingly. Maybe worth throwing that in too, as a small aside from memory.
Well, my comment is basically unnecessary now, because spontaneously, listening to that, I thought, bullshit bingo. We played battleship during class too. I can’t remember love letters, sorry, but maybe that’s a gender thing.
But I do have to say, harking back to our room the day before yesterday, and that’s why I use the harsh phrase “bullshit bingo” — education begins with the education of the educator, and the relationship between teacher and student. So it’s down to your own teaching, dear sir or madam, not the tool in front of you. Thank you.
Oh, wonderful. It could well be gender-specific there — I do remember love letters, but I also remember notes from boys, things like “will you go out with me? yes, no, maybe.” Would you like to add something?
My mic’s on — today it’s you I want to hug, and not just because you’re a fantastic teacher, and if I were back in school I’d wish I were in your class, and not just because my own partner is a teacher, but because it makes me think — not everything can be dumped onto schools. Upbringing, and I agree with what you said about the iPad, that’s something you can practise. I notice, when families are together on holiday, mum and dad and the kids all staring at their phones — that would be the first place to start, hey, we’re together, let’s put this stuff away and focus on each other. And then, my last point, reflecting: why does the boy have to pay attention? He carries the responsibility, and so do the parents — let him play for an hour. He decides, even if he’s still too young to really decide, but I decided in school too, sometimes, to occupy myself with other things instead of the lesson, and I can tell you, I’m completely happy with how my life turned out, though there’s plenty I’d change today, mainly because I’m more curious now. But who says someone has to listen with full concentration for 45 or 60 minutes straight? If the boy would rather play during that time, okay, that’s his choice — but if five others choose something else, then those five got a lot of value out of that hour.
Thank you so much, and it’s really important to underline that the smartphone, or iPad, and school is simply one example here — it transposes onto plenty of other contexts too. That starts with the very first institution we’re embedded in, all the way through to companies, or further education institutions, and so on. So we have many contexts where we can bring in very different examples, and on the societal level too, especially when we talk about something like AI — that doesn’t even have to be within a company, it can be entirely outside those settings too, in an institution or organisation. With an eye on the time, let’s move into today’s closing round — the aspect around freedom of speech and so on, I think that’ll become clearer when we talk about learning and sustainability in connection with acting tomorrow and the day after. So I think it’s fine that we’ve touched on it today at the edges, without going into it in depth. But I think those connections will get clearer once we pick up learning and education too. For the closing round, over to you, and then you, and then I’ll introduce tomorrow’s room.
I’d like to briefly come back to Clubhouse — you got me thinking about this yesterday. How creative were the people who built the Clubhouse experience, what did they actually understand? What were they engaging with? People want to get to know each other. And I thought about it — sure, you said yesterday, I could get to know people through WhatsApp groups too, but that only works if I already have your phone number, or theirs, or anyone else in the room’s. Having the idea that, when people want to meet each other but don’t know anything about one another and don’t want to pull out a phone book, how do you create spaces where you’re instantly pulled toward someone else — there’s A, B, C, D, and I can talk to them. That innovation, that consideration of what people want, what moves them emotionally, where people find value — I find that genuinely brilliant in hindsight, and I take my hat off to the people who invented Clubhouse, for simply recognising it, looking around, then acting, being innovative. That innovation has nothing to do with today’s topic, but it’s created enormous value for me from 2020 to today, in 2023, value we’re now continuing with the X system, where we can do exactly the same thing. And thank you to the people who are innovative, thank you to the people who act, and thank you to the people who bring us things that, for me, aren’t just progress, but also real advantages. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
My heartfelt thanks too, once again, for a room where, I’ll note, I really didn’t foresee the ending or the path we took, and I found that, as I always say, very fruitful, gratefully received. As a summary, though, I still have to note that we’ve certainly managed to discuss the topic of innovation explicitly through the lens of acting, and we’ve proven that’s possible — but I remain convinced, personally, that innovation is always connected to thinking and to mindset too. Thank you all, and I hope you have a good day, holiday or not.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I can’t say much about the holiday, honestly I don’t even know, since German public holidays don’t really apply to me, in quotation marks, and they differ between states anyway. I’m not sure if everything’s closed today or not where I am, I’d have to check, but I do have appointments today, that much I know. So my advice to you would be, sorry to cut in, move to Bavaria already, since that’s provably the state with the most public holidays in this lovely country. Well, I might just think about that. Thank you so much. Wonderful, thank you so much. I thought that was a really fascinating room today, especially because it became clear, right from the start, that there were a few assumptions about where this title might lead, and then a few correction loops with new impulses to reset the guardrails along the way. I think we managed beautifully to bring in lovely examples, to look at the concepts of innovation and progress against the backdrop of acting, and open up different examples. And I agree with you that thinking plays a really essential role here too. Under this overarching theme, it was simply important for me to build this bridge, in preparation — and I’ve mentioned this several times already — for an exchange with various impulses I want to bring into the digital campfire on Sunday. And for that, you need a kind of foundation, prepared in advance, so those trains of thought can be followed. So tomorrow we continue with acting and learning — how are acting and learning connected, that’s the question we’ll look at. And the day after, we’ll pick up acting and education as the next level up from learning. I’m genuinely curious how these rooms keep developing, and looking forward to the digital campfire on Sunday, where we’ll definitely pick up things like freedom of speech again, exchange thoughts, and see what insights we can hold onto. With that, holiday or not, I wish you all a truly wonderful day, whatever you have planned, and I’m looking forward to our shared space for reflection again tomorrow morning at 8, here at Deep Talk. Until then, ciao!
Ciao!
