Understand the present by anticipating the future: the four years of Morning Future
We could look at our world, observing it from afar, with no ambitions for change. Or we could let ourselves be guided and inspired to imagine our future, becoming our own catalysts for change.
Four years ago, on 5 July 2017, The Adecco Group launched Morning Future in partnership with Vita and Linkiesta. A lot has happened in the course of these four years: the surge of fake news, a pandemic, global lockdown, and finally the extraordinary feat of vaccines. So many things have changed, so many things will change, and as of today, we are also changing a little. Building on our first four years, four years in which this editorial experience, unique in Italy in terms of quality and vision, has conveyed ideas, opened up spaces and sparked thoughts and discussion.
But most importantly, it spawned innovation. How? Multiplying knowledge. The world has never been so hungry for knowledge as it is today. Only by working on knowledge, taught Alvin Toffler, can we truly aspire to become more skilled, more curious (‘stay hungry’, remember?) more cultured, designing more inclusive and better societies.
Let’s start with the figures: over 700 in-depth articles on topics such as digital and environmental transitions, education, training, social inclusion, work –—and its dynamics, skills, capabilities— in a world changing at an unprecedented speed; 45 video interviews; 200 interviewees. Stories, best practices, analyses, insights, data, scenarios handed over to the healthy and free curiosity of our readers. And they have paid us back. Over the past twelve months, Morning Future has attracted an average of nearly 50,000 visitors: a figure that has more than doubled compared to four years ago. This is a sign that the curiosity to understand the world, to act in the world, which drove The Adecco Group to open this window on our time, has reached a first, yet incredibly important milestone: broadening the scope and readiness for change.
We are living a new phase. A phase in which the value of networks emerged with increasing strength. Peter Senge’s prophecy that we don’t need smart individuals as much as shared intelligence is coming true. After all, we have discovered that today’s problems always stem from the (wrong) ‘solutions’ we gave ourselves yesterday, solutions for problems in the workplace, in the world of organisation and learning, but also in everything to do with our social systems. That is why it is essential to look towards the future. Intercepting trends that are shaping our world in the wake of the Great Reset triggered by the pandemic.
The world is beginning to speak a new language. While the worlds of work and education are becoming increasingly hybrid landscapes, straddling analogue and digital —smart & agile work and hybrid learning are still the talk of the town— the economy is increasingly speaking the language of sustainability, as finance embraces the language of impact, and the parlance of the social world is the language of diversity and inclusion.
But one theme is emerging vigorously across the different fields and disciplines: trust. Even though the pandemic entailed an escalation of controls, that model has shown its limits and flaws. Companies and organisations are reshaping themselves around trust, social and working relationships are increasingly rediscovering this ‘civic virtue’. Alongside financial capital (resources), technological capital (means) and human capital (people), we now see a burgeoning trust capital. Our performance, just like company performance, is increasingly dependent on the ability to manage the first three. Yet this trust capital, increasingly identified with goals and objectives, is receiving more and more attention in our world. A world where social and economic, environmental and technological can no longer remain segregated. We began this journey from trust, ahead of our time, four years ago. We shall always continue building on the bedrock of trust to inspire, guide and, above all, imagine a shared, inclusive and sustainable future. Within the reach of a click, within the reach of everyone.