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This week, I kicked off a three-day Berlin learning expedition for a leadership group from a French finance company. As with any opening keynote, I faced that familiar challenge: How to transform a typical “trend presentation” into something that genuinely empowers participants throughout their entire learning journey?
Beyond the “Berlin Tech Mythology”
When corporate groups visit Berlin, they often arrive with fixed notions about our “tech culture” – imagining hordes of young developers coding in cafés by day and dancing at Berghain by night. So I started by tracing Berlin’s tech ecosystem evolution since reunification, revealing its current more mature (and yes, more sober) state.
Key insight: Cities move through innovation cycles just like organizations do. The question I posed to them: “Where does your organization currently stand in that cycle, and how might you need to update your mental models during these next three days?”
Decoding Future Narratives
Throughout their Berlin journey, these executives would hear countless proclamations about “the future” from founders and corporate innovators. Each would frame future narratives designed to sound both disruptive and inevitable.
As a critical futurist, I demonstrated how these narratives shape our expectations and – crucially – our decisions in the present. I identified four common rhetorical tropes they would encounter:
- The Deterministic Future: “This is simply what’s coming. There’s no alternative.”
- The Revolutionary Break: “Everything you know is about to become obsolete.”
- The Technology as Savior: “This solution will solve all your problems.”
- The Laggard’s Warning: “Adapt or die. You’re already behind.”
I then equipped them with a framework of questions to deconstruct these narratives:
From AI Narratives to Practical Application
With AI discussions inevitably dominating their Berlin tour, we applied these analytical tools to typical AI narratives. I traced how our cultural imagination of AI has evolved over the past century and how application discussions have continuously shifted, particularly in recent years.
The 90-minute session flew by, with participants asking detailed questions until the organizers literally had to usher them out to catch their bus to the first company visit.
What struck me most was their engagement with these analytical frameworks – the questions and discussions showed a genuine interest in applying critical thinking to their upcoming company visits.
Beyond “Innovation Tourism”
Too often, these learning journeys risk becoming exercises in “cargo culting” – blindly adopting shiny practices without critical reflection on what would actually work in your specific context.
The most valuable keynotes don’t just inspire – they equip participants with practical tools to extract meaningful, contextual insights from every conversation that follows.
If you’re planning a leadership program or conference and want to give your participants more than just trend predictions – let’s talk about creating sessions that transform passive observers into active shapers of their future.