Directors Note
The KaosPilots have come a long way in since 1991. And so has the world. Think 18 years back. Two years after the wall came down. 18 years later—so many developments, so much good. But not all that happened was good. New walls have been built. And what didn’t happen that could have, that should have? Walls that we did not tear down.
2027, Where are we then? What do we know? What kind of challenges do we have? What do we want?
Change everything. Think. Play. Sensitivity. Slow. Poetry. Generosity. Integration. Time. Quality. Excess. Good. Serenity. Joy. Share. Receive. Imagine. The adventure. Meaning. Fulfillment. Not satisfied.
People often ask what we will live off in the future. Maybe we should ask what we should live for?
A new social order
It is in our nature to seek, create, and force meaning upon everything we are part of. We want to lessen uncertainty and enhance order. Our challenge today is that stability is gone. The world is changing and the changes are in flux. People, money, technologies are moving. We are breaking up the old order. But we do not know where the destination is set. Social order requires institutions. If the new social order is disruptive what institutions do we then need?
The three traditional sectors in society operate under an ever-increasing pressure to change. Citizens demand that the public sector deliver more effective public services, both collectively and individually. Shareholders demand larger dividends and, at the same time, there are demands that companies make greater environmental and social efforts. NGO’s are required to produce results while also dealing with ever-greater financial needs.
Today one can argue that we are seeing the transformation of the sectors, allowing hybrids to develop. We may even see the emergence of a fourth sector—a sector that takes elements from each of the traditional sectors. A fourth sector would be characterized by being self-financed, operating under the rules of the free-market, aiming to pass on its financial surplus to the “public good,” and desiring an organizational culture that resembles that of a voluntary organization.
There are major questions we need to answer: how should this transformation of our society be done, by whom, and for the benefit of whom? And most important, where to should it be leading us?
We need to usher in a humanistic era. A sense of belonging for all.
A society needs to be designed, one that embodies an aspiration for social aesthetics. We need to experience breakthroughs that anticipate the new paradigms—that demonstrate the possibilities for positive, compassionate creative growth.
Where is academia heading? Learning is not education. Can we see? Can we discover? We need to make the person matter. We need to bring stories from afar. We need to explore and bring forth what is not known.
Institutional leadership needs to be inspiring, collaborative, challenging, visionary, hopeful and real.
Massive institutional change
A new profession
In the early 1990s there was a growing focus on project work, a tendency that was particularly noticeable in the cultural and knowledge milieus. An outcome of this was the establishment of the KaosPilots as an alternative project leadership program in 1991. Now we have accepted this as a condition that is continuing to accelerate, necessitating faster changes in society and with an increasing focus on the flexibility and adaptability of organizations and employees. We have an urgent need for social innovation, making multiculturalism the answer and not the problem, and making sustainability an every day reality.
There are an increasing number of demands placed on employees and leaders to relate and react to a complex world under constant change. The KaosPilots’ point of departure is the formation of dynamic change makers and learners who can work in holistic ways, focusing on new ways of thinking that are environmentally, financially, and socially sustainable.
We need to expand our understanding, broaden the base, and look further into the future. Navigating and making change happen absolutely positively.
A profession: the KaosPilot
The kaospilot navigates terrain. They take the unknown and make it theirs.
beyond navigation, they help to give form to the very ground. This involves redefinition of norms, Stepping outside conventional thinking.
The kp dares. They strike into things beyond, not-thought-of, never dreamed. The kaospilot is responsible for building the dreams of the next millennium. Their strength is a process of innovation, invention, improvisation. They play off of situations. They seem to master a fluency in human potential.
The kp invites everyone to step beyond their boundaries. What they know is to not work to expectations, instead, they throw far afield, that anything is possible. and that once they think it, they can find a way to get there.
William Tate, Umbau
We educate and train for a life in the unknown future, crossing uncharted territory–thus we have to provide students with generic capabilities (learning, leading and enterprising).
Leadership is a distributed, collaborative process for effective change. Leadership is open for participation. Leadership allows others to be leaders. KaosPilots promotes the leader in others. Society is dependent on the ability to generate ideas, design new services, products, organizations, and companies. KaosPilots are enterprising values and dreams. KaosPilots are changing themselves and allowing others to do the same. They learn, steer, maneuver, initiate and intervene in ambiguous global settings.
A KaosPilot is an agent for playful work.
The KaosPilot is capable of healing, integrating and moving everything forward from a moral ground of integrity, authenticity, and honesty.
Each moment is an opportunity. Each person is a tide. No one stands alone. That is the calling–professional creativity stewards. Our narrative.
The new institution
As Keith Jarret performs jazz, so the Kaospilots is a live act. KaosPilots become KaosPilots by virtue of the synergy they create in cooperation with each other and with the projects they do. We seek and meet our audience because we know that it is in the meeting that the art is discovered. The school becomes the school in the meeting and interaction with the students.
KaosPilots is an experimental studio for exploration, discovery, fun, and mastery. It is a cultural authority for our high ideals and business ethics. It offers a program in which the student can design his or her own program. It is a question of what we want our student to become and maybe even more so–who should decide?
At the KaosPilots we foster creative entrepreneurship, learnership, and leadership with special focus on sustainability, social innovation, and cultural diversity. We offer creative outsiders and potential change makers’ space, and a place for them to develop their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and competencies to be able to realize their values and visions. We create the frames where young creative minds become creative leaders: KaosPilots.
The institutional logic makes the student more than a student. He or she is a learner, a creator and an entrepreneur—all at the same time through co-creational processes. We create useful products, and deliver them to their communities. The art of the KaosPilots finds expression in our students’ evolution to value creational designers innovating the traditional transaction model between customer, organization, and society.
Transformation is the potential
Our value proposition:
- play together, thrive on change, do good
- thrive on good, change together, do play
- thrive together, play on good, do change
A human being is part of the whole, called by us "universe," limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons close to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all humanity and the whole of nature in its beauty. Einstein
If we helped curate virtues of custodianship, togetherness, responsibility as well as playfulness, creativity and humanity, then we would truly deliver on the promise that there is more…so much more.