In the Digital Modern era it´s perfectly possible to found a company and open a bank account in a country without ever physically entering it: given that one has obtained a form of digital citizenship there beforehand.

The nation of Estonia has proven that such a service is realisable even in full compliance within a strong EU regulation environment. Explore with me the fascinating possibilities of digital citizenship and let´s look at the various different approaches that are being developed globally. What if we were to see even digital-only states anytime soon?

Nanotechnology, biotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, the uploading of human consciousness into digital memories, super-intelligence and cryonics have been developed to a degree that shows: human beings are going beyond traditional natural limits.

Before we judge about this development we might like to educate ourselves about the current situation. Let me share with you some insight and draw a bigger picture so you can find a position for yourselves based on the latest information and historical context.

What questions need to be addressed and how fast do we have to expect certain progress?

Are we about to leave the Gutenberg era behind us while entering the Digital Modern at the beginning of the 21st century?

Probably we should then think harder about how to close the widening gap between traditional thought and power structures as well as behavioral patterns and the new rule sets encoded in our digitally connected world.

I bring you seven thesis about new thought and value patterns that we see have emerged as underlying fundaments for the Digital Modern era.

While we still strive for an adaption of traditional job profiles to the needs of digitisation, entirely new necessities show up. We´re even facing a takeover of many jobs by machine automation soon.

How do we as human beings - i.e. in leadership - handle this? This lecture gives a thematic overview, orientation by concrete examples and implies a collection of impulses to design a future strategy.

Now we´re all having smartphones. So we know how to work the digital reality? By no means it seems.

New and urging questions start to press: What´s our data value? What does the filter bubble actually mean? How do we treat multinational conglomerates with their internet based business models? What is the darknet?

Do we even need a hippocratic oath for developers?

Hardly a conference goes by without somebody proclaiming to "disrupt" themselves or at least declare to incubate "disruptive business models" anytime soon. What´s actually behind these ideas? Is it about a certain technique or culture within an organisation that needs to be understood?

This talk gives insight into a leadership idea that favours disruption. It helps to prohibit from false expectations and delivers recipes for a professional approach to an innovation management that deeply hooks into the promising market trends necessary to successfully develop future business.

No only has the so called "democratisation" through ever wider internet access and massive online open classes (MOOC) education services fostered the dissolution of former asymetries in information distribution. Also hacking culture moves the paradigm from corporate discretion and secretiveness to ever more transparency. Even in terms of former highly sensitive information as for instance about salaries, companies today feel challenged by startups like Buffer who radically open publish their entire salary structure broken down to the individual employee. Generations of X, Y or Z seem to find a lot of attraction in this - and appreciate it by coming aboard. This lecture takes on the tech and data driven challenges that organisations face today in regards to their ethics and responsibility aiming at some professional inspiration to create future value in PR and HR.

The prognosis that 2015 would be the year of a proper "digitisation-hysteria" among decision makers totally came true. Yet the change that results from the epochal transition post Gutenberg into the Digital Modern era reaches far beyond what is usually discussed within boards. Myself and Dr. Sebastian Pranz, Editor in Chief to FROH! society magazine have put some thought into this new era´s most urgent questions. We´re excited about any feedback.

Discussions about "the digitisation" are often affected by the usual fear of change, lacking willingness to leave one´s own comfort zone in thinking and quite a hang to premature damnation of innovative instruments and opportunities per se. The figure is intended to help to differentiate the discussion. It sensitises for the rather different perspectives and ways of thinking that are inherent in diverse generations.

Most cities not only tolerate advertising but actively pursue it. That´s because it´s a lucrative business. Yet Sao Paulo, being the biggest city on the Southern hemisphere has banned all advertising from its public sphere already as early as 2007. After a series of personal interviews that I conducted in 2008 locally I found why this decision might be an interesting indication for a new meaning of public space in the Digital Modern era.

Once an economic system becomes more focused on its products and services´s staging than on the products and services themselves I think it´s time to start to think about a "scenographic economy". If you´re in retail or online (it should be and soon btw) you might like to listen up here. "Stage" as a term has emancipated itself out of the art and culture sphere. Our entire existence becomes a stage in the Digital Modern era it seems. "The boards that mean the world" in the sense of Shakespeare are the ones that we stand on 24/7 now.
Sometimes they´re our owns - mostly they´re other´s. Everything is staged and everybody stages oneself newly every day.

Following the biggest national economy crash of the last 100 years Icelanders not only had to face the ruins of their once proudly built financial assets but a severe national identity crisis. Yet simultaneously they had the chance to start from scratch. What happened next was truly inspiring to me and obviously for quite a large number of Icelanders, too. A new leadership emerged with a great energy to their actions that one might like to call "disruptive" looking at it from today´s perspective. In 2009 I took on a series of netnographic interviews with selected thought leaders and decision makers. This report mirrors some of my impressions. The bottom line: I genuinely am under the impression that Iceland works as a kind of "future lab" for potential future forms western societies might take on in the future.

From 2009 to 2013 on behalf of Think Tank W.I.R.E., Zurich, I was invited to participate as an expert in their "healthlab" project. Behind closed doors we discussed the most important challenges and action fields for a future health system with entrepreneurs, politicians and scientist. As part of a series of suggestions on what actually do about that future my concept for a grass-roots democratic think tank became part of the book "hacking healthcare".

With respect to the ever-rising number of experts attending all sorts of smart gatherings globally, the fi rst thought that springs to my mind when being asked about “the future of media” is: simply more “new media”. Is this plain stupid and naïve?

The great German communications science pioneer Prof. Dr. Joachim Klewes has co-published a new book in which he and a bunch of professional colleagues rethink the meaning of corporate communications in the Digital Modern era. He has invited me to contribute a chapter and I happily agreed. I´ve given the question some thought what happened if we actually were rather happy to be governed by algorithms...?

Digitisation means much more than applying technology such as legal tech. Creating an innovative workspace that fosters the interaction productivity and serves as a platform for encounters across disciplines for example, is an important key to the challenge of transformation.

"Human Leadership is going to heavily rely on data. I think that leaders need to understand data and the power that comes with decoding and exploiting it appropriately [...]"