Dear friends and members of the NCP,
As many of us take this period of the year for reflection, contemplation and making new plans with (hopefully) new optimism, I would like to join this move, not giving a long report rather than looking forward to what we have and still may achieve together.
In any case I want to thank you for your friendship and cooperation.
Looking back, my life in 2013 has changed considerably. In a public perspective, the most fundamental decision was to ask that I may be released for retiring from my position as the General Secretary of The New Club of Paris (www.new-club-of-paris.org ), which I co-founded in 2005, together with Leif Edvinsson and Ahmed Bounfour, and which I installed as a legal body in 2006 also settling its ’headquarters’ in Vienna / Austria. The key reason to end this most fascinating job was that the Club evidently develops with great dynamics and prosperously, thereby inducing a lot more organizational work, which, in the face of my other new challenges, was no more to be managed left hand. I also believe that eight years of engagement in a key function are sufficient, and that time has come to make the chair free for a new generation with new ideas and methods.
A new and major challenge in time and responsibility was that I was invited to enter the board of a German software company which, by some unforeseeable market effects, is pressed to develop and implement new business strategies, demanding more engagement than is usual in a job like the one which I took over.
The second big new challenge emerged to further develop the Tenerife based Humboldt Cosmos Multiversity (www.humboldt-cosmos-multiversity.org ) which, thanks to the support of The New Club of Paris as co-initiator, the island’s Government (Cabildo) and its former President, as well as today one of his senior ministers, plus the local University (Universidad de La Laguna ULL) and, last but not last the Berlin based sgm company, headed by one of my assistants from 20 years ago, who now is a successful entrepreneur.
Not to forget my own activities in earning some income through execupery (www.execupery.org) and its philantrophic and idealistic counterpart, the KoKo gallery in Vienna, presenting Åuvres made by handicapped artists (www.galerie-koko.at ). In the business line of execupery, I currently engage in the characterization of regions as knowledge regions, especially of the Danube Region as a European development space. Part of this engagement is also with ’ Wikirating’ (www.wikirating.org ) as a member of its Board. Wikirating is devoted to exploit ’crowd intelligence’ in order to improve the credit judgement on countries or companies w.r.t. their credibility, better than any of the classical rating agencies can achieve. Plus, plus, plus’¦
Of course, all this would not be possible if not being supported by my family, you as my friends and partners, who, in this spirit, also help each other mutually: GREAT THANKS to you, who belong to such community.
The big wish to you and us is that the living and economic conditions in 2014 will be such that we can further foster our common projects, as we imagine and plan them. My special invitation to you is that we continue to meet frequently, at the places of common work or action, but especially at the Humboldt Cosmos Multiversity, as in its own facility ’La Casona’ in Tacoronte / Tenerife, where the next event series will take place end of March / beginning of April 2014. Feel free to join as an active participant or as a contributor – perhaps you and those accompanying youmay add some holidays ?- and if so, please let me know, how I can support you in your plans.
All my best wishes for an even brighter future
Günter Koch