The Collectivity Revolution

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Says author Yuval Harari, that the capacity to organize ourselves collectively through a “fiction” or an intagible or abstract concept agreement –such as money- is the singled-out most distinctive characteristic of humans beings vs other species. In the managerial sphere of brands, corporations and organizations of all sorts, the question today, is: Should money still be considered the most valuable asset? Will it disappear? What will it be replaced with? What is value and which are the values ruling our current-future society? Shifting paradigms are proposing new ideas and tools to face the now inevitable purpose of maintaining our own sustainability: both as organizations and as humans. In so, how do rising collective responses differ from the individualistic approaches of the last Century? In the challenge but also the opportunity of our times, what kind of world do we want to live in and how are we going to get there? Argumenting the principle that brands operate in societies, not just markets, students of this course will be encouraged to have critical views and to openly participate in the ethics discussions behind examples show-casing how collective entities of all sorts are currently coping/adapting to new context reality and how the innovation challenges of a Post “non-entirely” human era, as well as those derived from our consciousness over the natural limits of our planetary resources, are transforming our way of life, our values scale of expectations and thus our companies and enterprises managerial practices.

The course in all will underpin examples of COLLECTIVENESS in the context of a ultra-highly CONNECTED society that can no longer solve the global challenges of the future, following individual strengths or singled-out efforts; following examples the innovation and knowledge transfer capabilities and responsibilities of in specific sectors/issues such as food and nutrition, architecture and living design, health and genomic sciences, fashion and responsible consumerism and production or travel&tourism and urban and global mobility, among others. The Collectivity Revolution is an account of the new paradigms of management and commerce across businesses and its communities, as a whole. The title of the course responds to a play-on-words between the terms Collective and Connection and the Revolutionary outcomes of its merging forces.