The biggest asset of next decade

Not so long ago, at the beginning of the “acceleration of all things” that has characterized the 21st century until now, the greatest asset a person could possess in life was time. But that time has passed.

Everything that was created in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, at the end of the day, had the final objective of making us optimize our time, thus creating the false impression of having it.

It turns out that it is not today that many people have been talking about the reality of the opposite effect, that is, how the excess of access, information and tools and ways for us to solve things faster, took away from everyone the ability to wait , and so, a social dynamic designed to give us more time, ended up backfiring and giving everyone the terrible, ultimate (and true) feeling of “tempus fugit”: no matter the time and the moment, just like the rabbit in Alice, we're all always late.

Nothing new so far, right? Increasingly, this same social dynamic began to treat time as an asset, and often as a commodity: companies and startups popped up all over the place offering countless functions but only one value, time.

Marketing doesn't get tired of showing us that "buy this and have time for what really matters".

Of course, what we forget all the time is that money, in large part, is made up of an equation between time and energy, and spending money on things that will guarantee you more time, therefore, ends up being wasting time - which you no longer had — with things you never needed before!

But let's put all that aside, this is a very 2012 issue. The dilemma now is different.

Time is still a problem, or rather, the feeling of lack of time is a problem and yes, time is still the most salable product of all, although no one has actually bought it and few actually have it. literally offered.

Turns out the rules of the game have changed. We already understood (it took a while but we got there), that there is not much to sell time without it being a deception so that we waste more time. That's how we came to understand that it was necessary either to find new assets to call our own, or to reconfigure existing assets. Now, if time is no longer a guide, nothing else is: we started to be guided by “solutions” and there the market came to talk about solving pain. There came the entrepreneur to solve all the “pains.”

Suddenly, everyone exists to solve someone's pain.

“It was with this in mind that we, at X-solutions, decided (...)”.

There are many heroes, many pains, many medicines.

Human Centered Design can tell whatever story it wants to soothe your conscience, but at the end of the day it comes down to people wanting to invent things that other people might want to buy, pay for, directly or indirectly. The goal is to make money for someone, that's the great solution that all solutions lend themselves to solving.

The big, huge, undeniable point is that there is NOTHING wrong with that. Do what thou wilt, for it is all legal.

The fact is that everyone did the same. The “solutions” were improving.

"Grow and multiply" they say.

Each solution encourages the emergence of as many new solutions as we want. Solutions give rise to possibilities of solutions, they are a Lernaean Hydra with additives, exponentialized, and I repeat, in essence, this is neither good nor bad nor ugly: that is how it is.

The thing is, here on the other side, if I'm really going to spend time figuring out all the solutions that exist for me, I end up with no time and no energy — which was all we needed to have solved from the start.

people began to step into the future too quickly and with that came to understand that each new future explored became outdated even in the present. As Rabbi Nilton Bonder said in Alma Imoral: the future is always a form of immorality because it breaks with the status quo, which above all is the entire compendium of prevailing morality. The case, however, is the intensity of this immorality which is now no longer revolutionary, it is unscrupulous. This is the instant break syndrome: Hydra's heads have an increasingly short shelf life, they always need to renew themselves, they always need to INNOVATE.

Liquid times? No, only Bauman: volatile, invisible, ethereal times. Ethereum?

This innovation, therefore, has become (as it could hardly avoid becoming) an obligation that is both plastic and essential: innovating is necessary, it is necessary to innovate. And what is innovating? In the current simplistic and decontextualized view, it is only to break with something or propose something different: to innovate is to leave something aside to make room for something that did not yet exist or did not exist in the way it now exists.

Result? We have so many different things on the table, a lot of white elephants (and of all possible colors) and salamis and so many different things that give rise to so many other things even more different, useful and not so much, that now we are out of time, without energy and, finally, without understanding anything at all!

In this way, finally, I reach a conclusion that, unfortunately, I still cannot, at the same time, neither see nor develop, but greater good that the market could deliver to us today, that innovators could deliver to us today, that designers could delivering ourselves today, which people could deliver to people today, the greatest value we could wish for, and which, without fear of making mistakes, will be the great asset of the next decade, is consistency.

Clarity. solidity. Reliability.

We got a little tired of so much plastic and noisy micro-solution.

It's like watching those reels of oriental houses where there's a gadget for every microsecond of your domestic existence: it draws attention yes, it looks super cool yes. But outside the stories it's not okay.

In a world where the logic of inconstancy is what determines the value of innovation, the greatest asset in the world will be STABILITY.

Volatility, confusion, inexhaustible change, FOMO, and the eternal “turn around in the thirties” to which we are subjected daily amidst the infinite confusion of indistinct innovation, may even bring results that are too satisfying for many people, but perhaps we have comforted ourselves. too much with not being in the comfort zone. Is it time to break with existential nomadism? Is it time to pursue the digital sedentary? Is it time to get back into your comfort zone?

Politics, society, health, economy, technology, art and culture: the last two years have not given us peace: we have not been able to set up camp anywhere!

Everything can be “innovated”, but not everything suits me. Maybe we just want a little stability for a change.

One new coin per day. One new quote per second. The drunk and the tightrope walker are us. Where are we going to balance?

Back a little? Beginning? Can the future be at the origin? We need orior, orire, “to arise, to become visible”, a Latin word that also forms the term “origin”. The term orient, the term orient. We are all disoriented. No origin.

Maybe people just needed faster horses, Ford.

But that doesn't mean nostalgia in any way, no answer is only in the past because (anyway) time doesn't go back and anchoring changes for the future in something that has been, usually doesn't work. Especially when the past is as imaginary as the future. Nobody needs anything “great again”.

No, this all just means that the future we are wishing for may be extremely different from what we are imagining and suffocating today.

For entrepreneurs, the tip of billions is: the one who brings a stability solution wins.

Nobody can stands dancing on soapy floor anymore.