I have a good colleague down on the floor called David Stockholm, a former student at the Kaos Pilots. Now we just saw some really, really nice software, playful software. I would like to introduce you to some very, very old technology: a good old overhead (projector). Please give it a hand.

I hope that you understand my broken English; I'm from Denmark. I'm very happy to be here because I think it's a very important agenda on this conference. How do we actually create more playful organisations? How do we actually create more playful societies? How do we create more playful education? That was the topic just before the break. And most important: how do we actually create more playful people? You've heard all kind of speakers the last one-and-a-half days, and I don't know what you really have on your mind at the moment but maybe all these different people have created some new pictures in your head. I don't know what kind of pictures you have.

In addition to what's going on here on the stage I really think it's very important what you do in the breaks. I hope you have made some good relationships because we're going to have a hell of a party tomorrow night. Therefore I would also like to do a little warm up exercise for the party tomorrow. I hope you are in the mood for some fun. And there's been some people looking all the day, yesterday and today, looking into your back head. And I think it's time that you say hello to the people behind you. And I would like to do it like in a football stadium. I'll count down to three and then we'll start with the first row up here. And then you have to turn around and say hello to the person behind you. Are you ready for that. Let's see how it works. We're one big lively, organic organisation for the next ten seconds. I'll count down, one, two, three.

I can tell you it's very playful l to see it up from the stage at least. So now I got my entertainment. Okay what I want to tell a bit about is the Kaos Pilot education. It's a new business and education based in Denmark. My own background is in the 80's, I was involved in a quite innovative and entrepeneurial network called the Front Runners in Aarhus, Denmark. We did all kind of small projects and larger projects in the social field, in the cultural field, in the media field. And one of the biggest projects we did was in '89, here we together with some people in Copenhagen, did a cultural invasion of Soviet Union. In the fall of '89, we actually crossed the border to south from Pivl, into Soviet union. It was DJs, artists, musicians, journalists, film people and it all should end out in a huge rock concert in front of the Kremlin at Red Square in Moscow. And when I look back on this event - we didn't succeed in making the rock concert in front of the Kremlin, but we did it in front of the university in Moscow. When I look back on that fall of '89, and I still remember that I was standing on Red Square talking to some of my good colleagues. And we said that something is changing in Soviet Union, but maybe it will take five or ten years before it happens. And three weeks later the Wall came down in Berlin.

So I think we had this feeling that we're moving from one old society to something new. We tried in a way to identify what were the most important parameters in this change. And we were able to identify five - maybe there are more but, that was what we decided. The five most important parameters. One thing was speed, and as I was told, the last conference here in Amsterdam was speed. What we also discovered was we were starting to compete on quality more than on price level. And speed and quality together demanded a lot of flexibility from the organisations and from the people inside the organisations. And it also required a total new understanding about knowledge. And actually it was much more important to have the right people with the right brains around the table, than it was (to have) a very painted table (to sit) around. On top of that we gradually understood how important good strategic networks were.

But still, even if we were able to identify these different kind of parameter, we had a lot of discussion. Where are we heading? What kind of new society are we facing? What kind of new values are we going to deal with? And of course, a lot of us had to ask ourselves: how do I navigate in this very fast and turbulent period of time? And we said to ourselves, most of us have been graduated from universities or other higher education backgrounds, but we've really never been trained to go from idea to reality; how to really start up new kinds of business, new organisations. We had to learn it by doing it.

Then we said to ourselves: what kind of new competencies are needed in the coming years? And we were able to identify four important competencies. I have been mostly in my traditional training focussing on my professional competence, and that's of course very important - that you actually are an expert in something which has value for society or the organisation. But we also were quite sure that we needed action competence in order to create good results. And it was also important to develop very strong change competence, which in our opinion is that thinking 'out of the box'. Use new information in new ways. Combine it with old knowledge. And the last thing is that you need good social skills, good social competence.

And maybe you can say it in black and white that you are hired by your professional competence but you're fired by the three other things, [change competence, action competence and social compentence] because if you're not able to create results, if you're not able to be very flexible and if you're not a good colleague, then you're out very soon.

So out of that we said: there's a need for a new kind of education model or system. So we created the Kaos Pilot school, or program. In a way, we hoped that this school had the energy of a really good rave party. At the same time, the discipline is a very straight, focused board meeting. If you can imagine that, then that's Kaos Pilots. We started in 91, in Denmark. Our focus was project management because we knew that we were going to work in teams, different kinds of teams over time. And we knew for sure that one thing was very important: that you were very innovative in your thinking. Creativity as a skill. Normally you think creativity is something coming from God, but actually creativity is a very important skill and you can learn it. The last thing is leadership. Leadership in your own life, and leadership in the teams and organisations you are part of. A new kind of leadership.

In that perspective we developed a concept. Believing that it was very important that there was a good balance between theory and practise. (It is a) three year education, currently with students from all the Scandinavian countries, plus Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere. All the projects the students are dealing with are real projects. There's no paper projects, no case studies. So there will always be an external customer on the other end of the project. So we'd taken the walls down between education and market.

But it's also a high level ambition to have a moralistic view on how to create a much better balance between brain and body. Then we would like to have a good balance between individual tasks and team tasks. And for sure the format and content. So it's not the traditional way what is going on right now, that I'm standing here one way communicating with you, but a much more playful learning field and learning environment. The last thing is a good balance between global awareness and a good understanding where you're coming from.

So when we really have our party speech, we say that we've got to be able to dance with everybody. If they want to tango, we tango - with a twist of funk, jive and street, if we don't know how to tango. We dare to improvise and learn through that. But how do we do it? We do it through action. It's a very action-oriented education. There's a lot of do-ers in this game. We do it through playing. Really try to play creatively and play with concepts. Play with how to organise in different ways and then of course through reflection. And we try to let the students stare.

In the beginning, the education was of course most focussed on our own Scandinavian background and Scandinavian students. But after a few years we said to ourselves our motors go global but we still dance with our locals. We like to dance in this environment. So still the homepage is in Denmark but we knew our Scandinavian background was not enough. We were of course proud of our Scandinavian background, our democratic tradition, our social awareness, our environmental policy. But there's something that we are not that good at and that is entrepeneurship. And we're not that good at living in a multi-cultural environment. And we had to face some completely new technologies. So in '96, we opened the doors of our first outpost, in San Francisco. And the reason was that San Francisco is a very multi-cultural city. And you have Silicon Valley just around the corner. And it's a very entrepeneurial environment. Completely new organisational forms are developing in the Bay Area at the moment.

But the U.S. is not enough, we think, so right now we're heading for South Africa. And hopefully we will be able to open the doors for our first outpost in South Africa in November 1999. And at the end of this, if everything goes as we hope, we're able to also do an outpost in Asia. Why do we do that? Why do we want our students and our staff to live and work in these different kinds of environments? We really hope in a way to educate pilots for the future, people who are able to navigate in this turbulence, have a global consciousness, understand different kind of cultures, but still have a good balance between head, hand and heart. I think maybe if we do it right we could be a good example of how we create people who are able to build the new kind of companies. And maybe this is a good picture of a new company. It's self organised, it's organic; hopefully it's quite elegant and a bit dangerous also. Hopefully, it'll have a clear focus and a clear purpose and a clear principles. And maybe this is the CEO. I would like to have a CEO like this person.

But I think it all depends on if we're able to understand that, actually, business are for life. It's not life for business. And together with that outlook or viewpoint or understanding it's also very important to understand that it's much nicer to have a young mind in an old body than have an old mind in a young body.

Anyway, I think that my goal, and it's also the goal of the people I'm working with at Kaos Pilot, we would like to create a situation where you actually work as if you don't need the money, and love as if you've never been hurt, and dance as if nobody is watching. For that to happen, you really have to think 'out of the box'. I think that I don't know how you have it but sometimes I'm very tired of swimming in the same pool of thoughts. So just like a little end tease, I'll just ask: Do you want to come? ñ to our workshop on 28th November? Please check out our website at http://www.kaospilots.dk

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