PLA Podcast Episode#1 | April 2023
What's the relevance of partnering in ensuring that today's technological innovation serves our humanity?
In this PLA Podcast episode I felt very privileged to explore this question by interviewing three impressively committed technology-oriented experts: Dr Stefan Voigt, Chairman Open Search Foundation, Dr Christian Betz Digital Strategist Consultant Accenture, and Dr Claudio Noto Airline Pilot and Aviation Research Fellow at University of St. Gallen.
They all have one thing in common: they make part of technology-driven projects that aim to advance areas of our European societal life in an ethically responsible way: Our web search infrastructure, our digital payment system, and the security in our aviation ecosystem.
For me, it was hopeful and enlightening to learn from their work and projects that our technological innovations have incredible potential to help steward our society toward a more socially just, safe, and equitable version. However, this seems to involve that we are willing to let go of certain limiting beliefs when it comes to operating models. More precisely, it needs us to rethink fundamentally our management and organizational logic and instead experiment with frameworks, structures, and processes that allow co-creative partnering to scale.
This conversation helped me understand why and where a scaling, partnering-based organization and thinking logic is critical to responsibly unleash the full potential of technological innovation for the benefit of our humanity as a whole - and not inadvertently undermine it. I hope it may well inspire as well other transformative and innovative IT projects in the business world.
Join this interview of three incredibly dedicated yet humble men who are doing important, innovative, foresight-thinking work within their projects for the benefit of us all.
If you want to learn more about the three European experts and their work, you can find it here:
Dr. Stefan Voigt, Chairman of the The Open Search Foundation e.V. (OSF): The OSF is a European movement of people and organisations that work together to create the foundation for independent, free and self-determined access to information on the Internet. In cooperation with research institutions, computer centres and other partners, we're committed to ensure that searching the web benefits everyone.
Dr. Christian Betz, Digital Strategist Accenture, has co-authored the Whitepaper “Seizing the potentials of ecosystems” (2022). Exploring the main success factors that make co-creative value creation within complex ecosystems work, the authors come essentially to the conclusion that we need to overcome established vertical and horizontal structure thinking requiring new leadership skills to orchestrate community effort.
Dr. Claudio Noto, airline pilot and fellow at the Center for Aviation and Space Competence at the University of St. Gallen, works on applying the concept of a "just culture" in a general corporate context. The just culture is well-known from aviation, where it seeks a shift from blaming individuals for their errors and mistakes to a learning culture of responsibility.