Prof. Dr. Ir. A.J. Berkhout

‘Logic based activities will be taken over by smart robots.
In the future mankind will focus on creativity and empathy’.

In my scientific career I concentrated on the interrelated fields of acoustics, geophysics, energy and innovation. These fields have in common that research results are closely connected with strategic issues in society. I believe that science and society will have to interact more than ever before.

In the years ahead, we will see a strong coupling between ambitions in science, innovation and sustainability. This means that the different frameworks, being utilized to realize these ambitions, will converge to one integrated circular system with iterative technical, economic and social processes. In these cyclic processes scientific knowledge on the behavior of molecules (‘hard knowledge’) are combined with scientific knowledge on the behavior of people (‘soft knowledge’) to create new solutions for a better Planet Earth. In this symbiotic world, where the emphasis will shift from competition to cooperation, universities state their ambitions in terms of future contributions to society, business organizations focus on multi-value targets, and governments concentrate on serving the public interest.


Reinventing Democracy

Today, we see that Western democracies fail to address the important issues in modern society. Politicians show little or no interest in long-term issues; most of them appear more interested in party politics and personal benefit than caring about the future of their country. In addition, the very segmented governmental organizations come up with highly complex solutions that do not perform. Governments are consistent in asking more money from their citizens, but in return they deliver less value. We have to rethink the role of politicians and redesign the governmental system to diminish their bureaucratic footprint on society. It is time to reinvent our democracy.

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The Great Energy Transition

If we look at the worldwide problems that need be urgently solved today, then we see that concerns about poverty, natural resources and environment always end up somewhere at the top of the global priority lists. The general consensus is that if we can solve the poverty problem by raising the income of the poor, many other problems – such as the explosion in the number of people on our planet, the mass waste of human talent, the uncontrolled immigration from poor to rich countries and the abundance of crime in poor neighborhoods of big cities – will be largely resolved. A general consensus is also that the oversized footprint of mankind on our planet need be significantly decreased, not tomorrow but today. Sustained supply of clean energy at affordable prices is central in this debate.

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Green GDP

Energy is by far the most critical single issue that determines the quality of our life, i.e., our prosperity and our natural environment. If the supply of fossil energy is decreased, our natural environment – sure enough – will profit due to less emission but, looking at the way current economic systems produce, the consequence is that productivity will shrink and our prosperity will inevitably go down. To make Planet Earth sustainable, we have to find a way to generate more energy without increasing the emission footprint. This means that ‘business as usual’ is not an option: we must rethink our current energy transition models. I propose the circular concept of ‘Green GDP’ that gives insight in how the complex transformation to a global sustainable energy system can be realized without sacrificing economic growth.


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Innovation: New Solutions for a Better Future

Today, innovation is carried out by cross-sectorial alliances (‘innovation clusters’) with highly diverse players from different organizations. This means that in innovative industrial sectors competition goes hand in hand with new forms of cooperation. Current theoretical models of innovation, however, are a poor representation of what really happens in successful innovation practices. These models still represent all sorts of variations on the familiar linear project management pipelines (stage-gate instruments), giving little or no information about the actual innovation processes involved. In addition, current models do not acknowledge the distinctive roles of the different key players that are involved in these processes and, above all, these models are not embedded in the strategic issues of company boards, remaining therefore isolated modules. I observe a serious mismatch between what innovation theory advices and what innovation practice requires.

Innovation models that give a good insight in the dynamics of successful projects bring together natural scientists and industrial engineers as well as social scientists and market experts. All these diverse players share one goal. In addition, they are aware of their different roles and together they function in a cluster with a circular process architecture. This circular architecture makes ample use of feedback paths, allowing a wealth of self-organized interactions. Moreover, this circular architecture emphasizes that the knowledge generated by successes and failures must be utilized in new projects: the innovation circle does not produce intellectual waste! The Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM) is such a model. It is positioned as a multi-level (from board to shop floor), descriptive and normative model for innovation projects that focuses on new solutions for a better future. In practice, this high level ambition can be realized if the activities of every individual company is driven by the needs of their clients as well as the long-term concerns of society.

The transformation to a sustainable society may be the biggest challenge mankind is facing. It requires changes in technology, changes in process management as well as changes in financial arrangements. The proposition is to make CIM the common innovation framework for the emerging cleantech transformation. Innovation must occur in multi-disciplinary clusters, where academic institutions work together with leading industries and facilitating governments to make this transformation come true. In terms of CIM, moving to a sustainable society requires a process of symbiosis between all players around the entire innovation circle.



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