Matthias Horx – Welcome to the Future!

Even as a technology-loving boy in the 1960s, he was interested in the secrets of the future. After a career as a journalist and publicist, he developed into the most influential trend and futurologist in the German-speaking world. He published 20 books, some of which became bestsellers. He is Co-Founder and Mentor of The Future:Project, a think tank for holistic forecasting.

Matthias Horx stands for a futurology that doesn’t chase every fear or technology hype, but instead embraces the change in consciousness. “The future emerges when we look at the world from the perspective of tomorrow – and our minds sense the connections between the present and the future!”

Matthias Horx – Speaking Topics

Megatrends.
“Every mega-trend creates an inner refraction effect, a massive counter-impulse. The true future emerges only in the synthesis of trend and counter-trend into higher complexity and integration.” Legendary futurologist John Naisbitt created the term MEGATRENDS in the 80’s. These are developments that will profoundly change our social, political and economic conditions in the long term. Typical megatrends are globalization, individualization, urbanization, digitalization, global aging and connectivity. Thirty years later, it is time to rethink the concept of megatrends: Are the megatrends defined in the 1980s still valid today – or have powerful counterforces long since gained the upper hand? How can current crises, wars and turbulences be integrated into the megatrend model? Are megatrends making the world more stable or more unstable? How do trends work in a system context?

Matthias Horx: The Blue ecology.
No doubt: ecology will be THE big issue of the 21st century. Greta Thunberg has changed the future once and for all. But WHAT ecology? Today’s fear and blame ecology can only divide society, and in the end does little to avoid CO2, plastic or. Scarcity and abandonment ideology creates stress and aggression, and inevitably leads to distribution wars. But could another ecology shape the future, an ecology of abundance, even plenty? Technological and systemic changes are making this possible – and likely. This talk re-codes the ecology issue from a discourse of fear and dread into a space of possibility in which we are all on the path to the future together.

• What does “Blue Ecology” mean?: The move away from blame and abandonment ecology to high-tech systems ecology.
• Beyond Oil: Why we are further along in the global energy transition than we think – new technologies, but also amazing political developments, make it possible.
• Apocalyptic Cocooning: The psychology of end-times thinking, or why doom is a comfort zone.
• Intelligent Waste: The ecology of abundance and how it’s created.
• Biobased Economy: How to “organize” the raw material cycles. On the coming cradle-to-cradle world.
• Welcome to the Anthropocene: On reconciling technology, culture and economics.

Big Business Change – The transformation of science in turbulent times.
Disruption or gradual innovation? Digitalization or re-analogization? How do disenchantment with capitalism and environmental debates affect business models and corporate cultures? How are the framework conditions of the economy changing in the age of Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg? Whether it is the food industry or car manufacturers, insurance companies or the pharmaceutical industry, fashion or furniture, tourism or the steel industry, banks or public authorities – all industries are in the midst of a radical process of change. With many best practice examples, this lecture will focus on the major economic transformation forces: sharing business, economy of scale, “green pressure”, gloKAlism, experience and sense markets.

• Best Future Practice: an overview of the new business models, how companies are reinventing themselves across all industries.
• The new GLOCALization: How globalization is tipping over into new locales.
• Revised Digitalization: The great digital hype is followed by a phase of “Digital Realism” – with completely new possibilities.
• New Work, New Mind: How the world of work is being restructured in the age of individualism and mindfulness. Prospects for an authentic corporate culture.
• Radical Middle and Successful Niche: The evolutions of abundance markets.
• The Visions Principle: How to develop holistic visions for a new age.
• Integrated Capitalism: How economies are reinventing themselves beyond neoliberalism and socialism.
• From Mission to PURPOSE: The new sense companies, and what they do differently.

Global 2050 – How we win the future.
Is humanity still salvageable? Will we overcome the climate crisis in the end – or will “Global Warming” destroy civilization? This lecture works with the means of time travel: We look back from the perspective of the year 2050 and ask: How did we actually manage it? In doing so, it becomes clear that many problems that seem insurmountable today can indeed be – and probably will be – solved. A de-carbonized world is not only possible, but likely. Specific topic areas (water, energy, global economy, political power distribution, raw materials, etc.) can be emphasized / elaborated as needed.

• The Apocalypse Fascination: How the belief in doom has dominated our images of the future since the 1960s – and distorted our perceptions.
• In the green: The ten key trends for the survival of mankind. Why population development, nutrition, education and energy are following an astonishingly positive path.
• Opportunities for a new world order: From bipolar bloc politics to a new multilateralism.
• The Blue Ecology: From the paradigm of renunciation and guilt to eco-modernism.
• The hyperurban future: why urbanization is a positive trend.
• Biobased-Economy: Overcoming the resource crises through “cradle-to-cradle” technologies.
• Africa Rising: How the “problem continent” will change.
• On the Impossibility of Decline: Why Human Civilization is More Resilient than We Think.

A passionate European, he commutes between London, Frankfurt and Vienna, where he has lived with his family in the “Future Evolution House” since 2010.

Matthias Horx – mission and goals

Matthias Horx’s life project is to further develop the “futurology” of the 1960s and 1970s into holistic prognostics – an interdisciplinary combination of systems, social, cognitive and evolutionary sciences.