May your power be with you
Next Generation University, Sociocracy for Grand Challenges
Description
The world has grand challenges, like climate change and pandemic. We see a Next Generation University (NGU) that can respond to grand challenges and the need for sociocracy to make the NGU organization effective. With each NGU a new pillar is added and a transformation of existing pillars. The 1st generation universities are scholarly institutes dating back to ancient times. The 2nd generation universities date back to the 16th century. They are our current classic universities who have a 2nd pillar on research next the 1st pillar of education. Only in the last century do we see a 3rd generation, most explicitly as Technical Universities (TU) adding a 3rd pillar of technology transfer. A 3rd pillar was needed because science became so complex that transfer needed assistance. Today a 4th pillar is needed because grand challenges are so complex that integration needs assistance.
How a 4th generation university could work has been described in theory (Kiemen 2015). The changes to all existing pillars would play a significant role and help us understand the enablers for the 4th pillar. Earlier research has explored how the 1st pillar on education could change and ongoing research is exploring how the 2nd pillar on research can change. Some smaller experiments on the 3rd pillar have been done too. While NGU is the bigger context, this talk is about neonresearch.nl, a project where sociocracy is applied by 35 researchers to accelerate the transition to zero-emission energy and mobility.
Bio
Mixel Kiemen.
My passion for sense making has led to a path deep into science and technology to eventually gain a spiritual breakthrough. It is a life long journey following a road less traveled to explore the mysteries around the origin of life.
Specialising in software engineering, my research starts by using agent-based modelling investigate creativity (2002-2004). Unexpected findings made my research pivot to more complex and deep challenge on collective intelligence, creating an interdisciplinary PhD (2005-2015). After some years as entrepreneur, using collective intelligence for change management, I would become a digital shaman (2017). With little knowledge about depth psychology and zero-knowledge about spirituality it truly was tumbling down the rabbit hole. I took a spiritual sabbatical to profoundly investigate my new domain on personal development, to return to workspace in 2018 with the focus on how organisation creates collective intelligence by methods like e.g. sociocracy.
In 2020 I became part of a big crossover research project helping to accelerate the transition to zero-emission energy and mobility. Applying self-governance to research teams. In my talk I will go into the experience on sociocracy as enabler to improve research collaboration.
