• Are we turning our children into cyborgs?

• Will we be able to speak any language by implementing a chip into our brain?

• When will our bicycles be able to fly?

• Are dinosaurs going to be living on Greenland?

• The average age of the next generations might reach beyond hundred years – how do we spend our time when we are too old to be an employee?

• Do virtual companies replace nowadays office buildings and are we going to work whenever and wherever we decide to so?

The Club of Amsterdam

The Think Tank which provides the platform to reflect

what we want the future to be.

History

The Club of Rome, founded in 1968, published the famous book "Limits to Growth". The Club of Rome contributes to the solution of what it calls the world problematique, the complex set of the most crucial problems – political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural - facing humanity.

The Club of Amsterdam on the other hand is a think tank reflecting what we want our future to be and provides a bridge between industry, education and society. The Club chooses topics to reflect upon, which are of cross-industry interest or of interest to the individual or society at large. The topic items have in common that we have a creative influence on its further development.

Vision

Most companies are now run on short-term or maximum mid-term plans. We first were collecting and now looking for money – all on a three monthly base to satisfy the stock market – we are running like chicken without heads.

The world's most famous business-school professor Michael Porter is fed up with CEOs who claim that the world changes too fast for their companies to have a long-term strategy. If you want to make a difference as a leader, you've got to make time for strategy.

Industry and society needs to think about mid- and long-term ideas and developments. How we want to live, to communicate with each other and what tools, cities we need, how we want to commute and how culture or industries should develop. In brief: what we want our future to be.

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Quotes

“There is a slightly odd notion in business today that things are moving so fast that strategy becomes an obsolete idea. That all you need is to be flexible or adaptable. Or as the current vocabulary puts it, ‘agile.’ This is a mistake. You cannot substitute agility for strategy. If you do not develop a strategy of your own, you become a part of someone else’s strategy. You, in fact, become reactive to external circumstances. The absence of strategy is fine, if you don’t care where you’re going.” Alvin Toffler, Futurist

"If humankind could spend just a fraction of the countless millions of dollars and millions of hours we spend trying to predict the future, instead on imagining preferred future options together, we’d be living in a different world.” - Ed Lindaman, Futurist and Director of Program Planning for the design and manufacture of the Apollo Spacecraft Project

Quotes (2)

"Sustainable, meaningful solutions cannot be created by one industry in isolation but only through sharing competence and creativity, and by involving people right from the very earliest stages of research." - Stefano Marzano, CEO Philips Design

The world changes so quickly it's hard to keep up. New inventions and innovations alter the way we live. People's values, attitudes, and beliefs are changing. And the pace of change keeps accelerating, making it difficult to prepare for tomorrow. By studying the future, people can better anticipate what lies ahead. More importantly, they can actively decide how they will live in the future, by making choices today and realizing the consequences of their decisions.The future doesn't just happen: People create it through their action -- or inaction -- today. - The World Future Society

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