It was a cold and sunny Saturday morning in Berlin, and I was headed to Denmark to see one of my best friends after 9 years apart. Nik is a tall, shy and introverted Bulgarian software engineer living in Copenhagen with his wife and kids, and we love to outsmart each other with quirky and funny conversations. It had always been the case. As soon as I stepped outside the airport I had this feeling of peaking into the future (or a parallel universe) where you go from strange building architectures into subway wormholes, walk through riversides and see people in their bathing suits diving in the freezing water and having fun with their kids at a Robin Hood alike playground, on a Monday afternoon at 5 pm. You may be asking what does all of this have to do with innovation. I'll tell you this: it has absolutely everything.
This year at Davos, Kai Fu Lee (an artificial intelligence expert) said that we need to develop the skills algorithms cannot perform as well as humans to reduce the threat (it's a real one, guys) of being replaced by emerging tech. The World Economic Forum tells us to develop empathy, cognitive flexibility, people management, negotiation, emotional intelligence, creativity, decision-making, complex problem-solving, collaboration and critical thinking. With them, we also accelerate innovation and give birth to disruptive solutions. Without them, we're doomed to live in a post-apocalyptic Black Mirror reality. The question is: how can we foster those skills and foment innovation? Take a glimpse into Denmark, that holds one of the top ten spots at the Global Entrepreneurship Index, is a great start.
Danes may not be the most extraverted human beings on the planet, but they did something we all didn't: organically developed a way of life with core human-centered design principles. And continued to be on the top three happiness index, since ever. For Danes, it's all about social trust, profound well-being, empathy, investing in public programs, community, collective responsibility, the encouragement of meaningful bonds between people that help each other to succeed and the most valued asset is time. Nik told me that the price you pay for a washing machine is almost the same price you pay to the person that will install it at your house because it takes a person's (living) time. And time there is expensive. So, they leave work at 4pm, ride home through the exclusive bicycle lanes of the city, pick up their kids at a government paid kindergarten and finish the day however they want without the feeling that their life in just other office design sprint. If you lose your job, the government will pay you 80% of your previous salary for two years. If you decide to have a child, you will be allowed four weeks of leave before the baby is born, 14 weeks after the baby is born as a mother, and 32 weeks for both parents to split as they see fit, which can be further extended by another 14 weeks. Did I mention it's a paid leave? In addition to that preschool, school and university education is free.
Why am I mentioning all of this? Because we are social animals that respond to the environment, and when we are taken care of, trust and cooperation emerge. Danes are not driven by the creation of products or personal success, neither by the production of millionaires on the planet. But for sure they are driven to always bring purpose to the table. If innovation isn't about the WHY, I don't know what is.
When you have leaders (in the government, companies, organizations and even home) that set the tone to ensure people's safety and well-being first, giving them the opportunity to strive, trust each other and feel they can be themselves, encouraging risky play in a space where they can fail and explore and take gut decisions and ask for help, an environment of people that are driven by what they believe about the world is created. Outstanding things happen in environments like that. If we wanna surpass the artificial intelligence threat and create innovative environments, we need to follow Simon Sinek's advice to stop asking people to only follow rules and start trusting people to know when to break them.
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