Since April, 1st, 1984, the InterFace AG has now had thirty successful business years. Our thirtieth birthday is on the first of April and we want to celebrate it in the summer of 2014.
In 2014, however, there are many other birthdays you could also celebrate. Among others, there is the 450th birthday of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). For several reasons, our decision whose face to make the 2014 InterFace AG face was made in favour of his.
Consequently, we now invite Galileo Galilei to “visit us in the present” at our IFForum. The topics of the three presentations in 2014 will be cosmos, humans and the turn of an era.
On Thursday, February, 27th, we will start with a presentation by Jörg Schindler on the turn of an era. He will speak about
The Beginning of the End of the Fossil Age.
“The big Transformation of Our World” and “Resilience will Follow Efficiency”
Jörg Schindler was born in Augsburg in 1943 and now lives near Munich.
In the 1960ies, he studied business at LMU München. During the 1970ies, he worked on the development of traffic control systems in various companies around Munich.
1984 – that was the year we founded InterFace AG – he changed to Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik GmbH (LBST) at Ottobrunn, where he was managing director from 1992 until the end of 2008. After that, he started his (non-) retirement.
Apart from this, he is active in many areas:
From 2000 to 2003, he was a member of the Enquête Commission of the Bavarian Senate: “Into the New Millennium with New Energy”.
Board member at ASPO Deutschland e.V. (www.aspo-deutschland.org) and managing director of the Solarinitiative München-Land e.V.
- Co-author of numerous studies and books on the future availability of fossil energy, for example diverse studies for Energy Watch Group (www.energywatchgroup.de) on coal, crude oil and uranium, the books „Ölwechsel” (München, 2002), ”Geht uns das Erdöl aus?” (Freiburg, 2009), ”Aufbruch, Unser Energiesystem im Wandel” (München, 2011), ”Postfossile Mobilität – Wegweiser für die Zeit nach dem Peak Oil“ (Bad Homburg, 2009) and last not least “Öldämmerung – Deepwater Horizon und das Ende des Ölzeitalters” (München, 2011).
Here are some of Mr. Schindler’s theories
- BAU (Business as usual) is “now” at its end.
- In actual fact, this means: with Peak Oil, the short era of abundant and cheap energy has reached its end. It had started with the “great acceleration” in the 1950ies due to the more and more and ever cheaper oil from the Middle East (the historian Christian Pfister called this development the “1950ies syndrome”). The consequence was that the industrial nations started mass motorization and developed consumer society habits following the American model. This phase started losing its momentum in the developed countries in the mid- 1970ies and came to a world-wide stop in the middle of the 2010 decade – regardless of the still prevailing development in the emerging economies of Brazil, China and India where some catching-up is under way.
- This means that the world is at a revolutionary turning point, i.e. the transition from a fossil-sponsored capitalism to a post-fossil society – the Great Transformation. (The end of capitalism as we now know it).
- Cheap and more than enough energy as a business requirement: following Karl Valentin, you could call this an “erroneous error”.
- Now we need to make the inevitable transformation as tolerable as possible. This is, in particular, also a task for the enterprises. Internally, it is a question of survival, externally one of contributing to the solution.
- There is no master plan for this transformation (nor can there ever be one).
- Since you do not know what the future will bring, it must be the goal of all enterprises to cope with as many scenarios as possible (incidentally, this is also the principle of nature).
- What does this mean for our enterprises? Above all, it means that efficiency as the highest maxim is no longer useful. You can only be efficient in a well-defined context. Instead, our new goal must be resilience.
- Mind you, we know that efficiency and resilience oppose each other …
- But resilience, too, needs management. Externally, you need a critical view of the world and you need to know the non-sustainable elements of your own world. Internally, you need a maximum of qualifications gained through flexible organizational structures and self-organization.
Registration:
This IF Forum, too, will be held in the seminar zone on the top floor of our Unterhaching InterFace AG building. We welcome you from 18.00 hours, the introduction will start at 18.15 hours. After the short presentation, there will be plenty of time for communication in a comfortable atmosphere.
As always, you can register for this IF Forum by simply sending an E-Mail. We look forward to the same kinds of interesting discussions and beautiful chats we are used to!
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Mr. Schindler is someone I know rather well and I am always impressed by how many things he knows. Having been the head of a “Think Tank”, his professional life gave him the unique chance to do practice-oriented research for many years. I feel particularly comfortable with how rational he informs about often very emotional topics. Again, I am sure we will have an extremely nice IF Forum.
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