The Russian economist Kondratieff discovered that market economies develop in 50-70 year long waves. Markets follow an up-cycle of growth leading to a period of stability that is eventually followed by a recession and that in a timeframe of 50 to 70 years before the new wave starts.

Three important trends

The current wave of information technology is coming to an end and making place for a new wave. What this new wave is called is still debate for discussion, but already a few big trends are defining the direction. Out of the many being used by several futures and foresight institutes around the world, I would like to focus on the following three:

1. The search for happiness and authenticity,
2. People want to have an experience,
3. The consumer increasingly becoming designer and producer of his products.

Now this leads to several thoughts.

The first is that in the working environment change and innovation should be made personal and fun in order to engage your people. Interventions should be framed in terms of an experience and not just another meeting.

The fact that more and more consumers want to design and produce their own products also applies mutatis mutandis to the organisations they work in. I notice that people increasingly want to be engaged in the creation and design of their organisation. I feel the need to share ideas and create organisations together even in strong hierarchical societies such as you would find in Asia. This asks for a radically different leadership.

Colluding Kondratieff waves

And that brings me to my last thought. The current wave colludes with the coming wave. From my own practice, I notice increased stress levels within organisations. As the new is already having an impact but the old is not yet willing to adapt fully, organisations seem to be in a continuous groan zone (see here and here) between the old hierarchy (where others decided about your organisations) and the new network-like organisation (where you decide about your organisation). This post is a typcial symptom of these colliding waves. Also change guru Kotter beautifully explains it in his Forbes blog and gives some ideas on how to organise the difference.