16 Jun Jena: On the pulling power of civilizational centers
It has never been monocultural gatherings that have moved us forward as a society. It has always been the mixing and diversity that we consciously establish in innovation ecologies today. There are numerous examples of this in the past.
Right place
Once upon a time, an insignificant, small-town structure became the origin and center of a new literary movement. It acted as a focal point for Germany’s intellectual endeavors and gained invaluable importance for the cultural life of Europe. We are talking about the “Jena Circle”. This circle of poets and thinkers was formed in the years before 1800 and brought together intellectual greats such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, August Wilhelm, Dorothea Schlegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, Caroline Schelling, Alexander von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm, Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Tieck. Free from courtly constraints, young representatives of Romanticism met with established writers, scientists and philosophers in this “right place”, as August Wilhelm Schlegel called Jena.
Awakening through upheaval
In the face of the fundamental upheavals between feudal dependency and a bourgeois social order, they sought the dawn of a golden age and developed completely new ways of thinking.
WOW-capital
A semi-deserted farmland that was virtually insignificant until the middle of the 20th century also experienced a meteoric rise as the most important international location for the IT and start-up scene – Silicon Valley. Nowhere else on the planet have innovative ideas been and are being backed by so much venture capital. The unique mixture of inventiveness, a talent for improvisation, a willingness to take risks and an entrepreneurial spirit that cannot be slowed down by failure has made Silicon Valley the epicenter of new technologies and economic concepts that have shaken up and profoundly changed existing social and economic structures. The list could go on and on across spaces, times and continents. From the current giant Kenyan project “Konza Technology City” (often called “Silicon Savannah”) to Renaissance Florence with its numerous masterpieces of art and architecture, to the Viking settlement “Haithabu”, via Tel Aviv, Singapore, Dubai, New York, Nantucket, Giza back to the red-white-red heart of Austrian industry in Linz.
BETA State
These are places of almost unlimited possibilities, whose development and design I find, visit, promote and develop with my company CMb.industries – such as the DELTA Group – under the motto “Developing Ecologies”.
Agoras
The focus here is on establishing innovation ecologies with sustainable thinking, restaging brownfield sites, creating sustainable environments and dramatizing real estate in the sense of “true places”.
