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These are the kinds of ideas I have when on vacation, while thinking back upon my life a little:

I was born in 1950. We were a generation on the move, wishing to get rid of the post-war ballast. But each day was a day of financial improvement for us.

We were idealists and loved utopias. Some of our parents’ values and opinions were incomprehensible for us. Consequently, we sought refuge in smoky cafeterias and pubs. Drinking red wine and beer, we discussed God and the world, often in circles. Rothändle and Gauloises were a matter of honour, Sartre and Camus were our favourite authors. We had little or no inclination towards baroque or romanticism, or lost cultures.

Even in those days, we were fed up with the established parties. And when, early in the 1960ies, Karl Jaspars wrote about the oligarchy of the parties as a threat to democracy, he echoed our sentiments.

The irrationality of war – not just in Vietnam – was an abomination for us. We considered the overkill of the long-range missiles with their nuclear bombs the highest possible absurdity imaginable. We were pacifists. Compulsory service and irrational demands were anathema for us and we wanted to avoid being drafted for military service at all costs.

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Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

In this series, I will comment on the written feedback I received after my presentation. Also, I will answer the online questions asked by students I had no time to amply reply to during said presentation

Lehren für Unternehmensführer – das Leben, das Wissen, die Informatik und die Ethik

(Lessons For Managing Directors – Life, Knowledge, Computer Science and Ethics)

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“/ Summer Semester 2010

Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Today: Personal Matters

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Again, this is not the end!

This magazine accompanied the presentation by Frau Fischer in our IF forum on July, 21st, 2010. The “brand eins” editing company kindly supplied us with a rather huge amount of the red brochures with the green button on the front page.

Incidentally, much happened in the world between November 2008 and August 2010. So what we have here is an old business magazine. It is almost two years old. You can almost call it press vintage.

In your dreams.

The magazine is surprisingly up-to-date. You would probably have no problem publishing it without major corrections this coming November. Perhaps that is what they should do.

I also find it interesting that the brochure was basically finished before the Lehmann Brother bankruptcy.

Incidentally, you can also read the magazine online: in the archive of brand eins. And if you prefer to have it on paper: as far as I know, you can still buy it from the editor.

It is worth the effort!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

In this series, I will comment on the written feedback I received after my presentation. Also, I will answer the online questions asked by students I had no time to amply reply to during said presentation

Lehren für Unternehmensführer – das Leben, das Wissen, die Informatik und die Ethik

(Lessons For Managing Directors – Life, Knowledge, Computer Science and Ethics)

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“/ Summer Semester 2010
Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Here is another item of feedback I consider very important

“I, however, do not agree with the speaker when he gives the prognosis that not much will happen in the future as far as the “object“ is concerned.”

This is absolutely correct. I am afraid I failed to make it clear in my presentation that I meant this prognosis to refer to the traditional goals “further, faster, higher” in the “physical” (old) technologies. As I see it, the “further, faster, higher” is probably at the end if its rope. What I see as a future scenario is for the classical engineering disciplines to be about “more economical, lighter, easier”.

In this context, I like to refer to the term “Cheap Design” as introduced and made public by Rolf Pfeifer in his interview. Rolf Pfeifer is the founder and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Department of Informatics/University of Zurich. He gained a reputation through, for example, his cheap robots. Using totally innovative approaches, these robots show new ways in robotics and Artificial Intelligence. I recommend that you read his book: “How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence” (Bradford Books).

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In this series, I will comment on the written feedback I received after my presentation. Also, I will answer the online questions asked by students I had no time to amply reply to during said presentation

Lehren für Unternehmensführer – das Leben, das Wissen, die Informatik und die Ethik

(Lessons For Managing Directors – Life, Knowledge, Computer Science and Ethics)

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“ / Summer Semester 2010
Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Another item of feedback I consider rather important was

“The speaker states that growth as a business goal should not have top priority. That is a contradiction to what we learn.”

I absolutely stick by this, both intuitively and rationally:

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