Why to work – no one asks, and why to run a business – for many people this is as well unanswerable. The usual response sounds: because of money. I work because I have to earn money, and l earn money to run a business. Pretty unsatisfactory answers.
The following is a snatch of a conversation between four voices from four companies that dominate different time forms. Topic of the conversation: The future of money and work. A fiction, of course.
Time of recording: October 03, 2023, late evening.
Duration of the recording: 2min. 47sec.
Location of the recording: THE SPY BAR, OWO London
Voice 1 (V1, yesterday)
Ryan Worth, founder and owner of Worth Systems, the world market leader in fastening systems and assembly technology.
Net worth: billions.
Gender: male.
Voice 2 (V2, today)
Francesca Pino, manager and owner of HERING, one of the world's largest luxury industrial groups.
Net worth: billions.
Gender: feminine.
Voice 3 (V3, tomorrow)
Janus Athena, head of MyKey, the group that dominates the global market for open source computational science and quantum encryption tools
Net worth: trillion.
Gender: queer.
Voice 4 (V4, the timeless)
Qí Guǎn, voice of GRIPER, the corporate group that dominates the world market for time measurement
Assets: trillion.
Gender: effaced.
Voice 2, Francesca Pino, HERING, today:
"The only interesting thing, the thing that makes life worth living, is excess after all - the pursuit of the impossible. Our chance meeting, here and now, in this place, speaks volumes. Luxury is the key word, please.”
Voice 3 Janus Athena (JA), MyKey, tomorrow:
"Unlike the impossible, the necessary is not for sale and does not turn a profit. I agree with you on that."
Voice 1 Ryan Worth, Worth Systems, yesterday:
"Well, I only agree with that under certain circumstances. Profit has always been our second priority. Our business model has always been based on performance, and our success proves us right. However, with Worth Systems necessity is for sale."
Voice 2:
"Selling what is necessary – should I laugh or should I cry? HERING opposes the market, changes the market, in one word HERING buys the market, my gosh, and does not bow to what is necessary.
Voice 3:
"Success, performance, excess, luxury – it's easy to get confused. Our business model – to use your words, my dear Ryan – is quite simply based on access. MyKey provides the keys to the world, ever expanding access."
Voice 2:
"Performance, success, abundance, access – HERING embodies this and much more to perfection, but – almost or unfortunately, as the case may be- just for the rare ones blessed with money and taste."
Voice 1:
"Dear Francesca, that may be true for HERING, but Worth Systems still counts the simple, the small people, the do-it-yourselfers and craftsmen, the handyperson and tinkerer among its target group. People for whom life between money and work is moving closer to work. Worth Systems has never felt too precious for that. And that makes us proud."
Voice 3:
"Ryan, Francesca, I think the margin between your approaches – one close to work, the other close to money – is pretty narrow. Worth Systems promises to make the possible necessary and HERING promises to answer the impossible."
Voice 1 and Voice 2, unisono:
"JA, really well said. So what?“
Voice 3:
"What matters in the future are business models that allow approaches, which are torn between money and work, success and expenditure, necessary and impossible, to fizzle out. The fact that you both devote significant sums of your wealth to collecting art shows this clearly enough, by the way."
Voice 1 and Voice 2, unisono:
"Bbu... but, but... I, I, don't believe it."
Voice 3:
"A word about the promise of MyKey – access. I have to admit, that this is basically the good old disenchanted world: knowledge is possible, for everyone, about everything. However, our digital world provides a loaded encyclopedia of unprecedented proportions. All the problems that this utopia of access always dealt with: MyKey expands the scope immeasurably."
Voice 4 Qí Guǎn, GRIPER, timeless:
"Improve quality, spend surplus, expand access. Necessary, possible, impossible. Success, excess, access – all those rattling triplicities. Business models based on those all count on cessation. They are determined by change and are all of a limited duration. In one word they are all fuzzy, if not fudge. The GRIPER approach is extremely precise measurement. Implicit knowledge, the "difficult" and, last but not least, mathematics make a quantum leap into the next dimension. Everything else is error, turbidity, opinion; striving, arbitrariness and transience.”
Voice 1:
"Extremely precise measurement – we're pretty close. There is a German proverb: "Passt, wackelt und hat Luft", kind of: Fits, wobbles and has air. That's what remains true up to this day."
Voice 4:
"JA, well, what else can you think of..."
Voice 3:
"A world full of hooks and eyes, mirrors and chandeliers, door and gate wide open and GRIPER looking outside in. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world."
Voice 2:
"It's a wonderful world: l raise my glass to that. By the way, drinks are on HERING, of course.“
It takes a concept and an idea of the basic elements of the economy – money and work – to determine a future perspective for any company: Why are people going to work and why will it be worthwhile to run a company?
To arrive at new perspectives, WhyVentures approaches business models from the angle of time: from past to present to future or, differently put, from the pre-digital and digital to the post-digital age. In the ascending post-digital age, the approaches presented in the fictional clip – the success economy of Worth Systems, the luxury economy of HERING and the access economy of MyKey – are all yesterday’s business models. Gripes of the past.
WhyVentures is looking for future business models.
