Young blood

What did Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, think when he received two young applicants with a brilliant idea for a free app? ‘Won’t work out anyway’? Five years later, he hired them. And paid 19 billion for WhatsApp.

Innovations succeed each other at a rapid pace. The old traditional industries are, in part because of this, almost completely dead. Continuing the same thing is not a foundation for innovation. Experience is the sum of mistakes made? Experience most learns that ‘Can’t be done, won’t make any profit, won’t work’. An inhibiting factor for innovation. What seemed impossible ten years ago, might be possible now! Experience can be inhibited by ‘the shit from yesterday’.

The market value of IT companies like Google rockets sky high, while old industries like Shell, Coca Cola, the traditional car industry et cetera struggle to stay afloat. And yet, it’s not the IT speed (quantum computers, artificial intelligence) that decides the power of innovation. So what does?

Manoeuvrability!
The ability to think differently.

In the Middle Ages, there was the jester: one of the few people who would not be punished for his jokes about the nobility. He was at the bottom of the social ladder, but could penetrate into the highest circles. Officially, he (or she!) was not taken seriously, but still managed to make the court think. The jester as the one who inspires ‘thinking differently’.

Changes must be made. Instead of throwing dividend tax over the wall to keep old industries in the Netherlands, we must invest in young blood. Use tax money to give a working space to these ‘modern jesters’, a place where they aren’t hindered by experienced (read: stuck) curmudgeons. That would truly cause change. That’s where the source of innovation lies. Look at what’s happening in Eindhoven, around the Design Academy: there is space there to think differently. You see an explosion of innovative start-ups.

Rutte, do something, start thinking innovatively, spend the annual 2 billion in dividend tax on new thinking and not on the old industry.

Herman Bessels

Herman Bessels is architect BNA at Bessels architekten & ingenieurs B.V.