A version of that reflex has entered everyday life. Outside, in the physical world, we still mostly know. Online, the ground has shifted. The first question in front of something well-made on a screen is no longer “is this good or bad?”, it’s “did a person make this?” A two-sentence LinkedIn or Instagram comment, a product description, a campaign headline. We get suspicious before we even consume the content.

BBC Bitesize now runs a monthly quiz challenging readers to tell real images from AI-generated ones. The V&A Museum in London published a quiz asking visitors to distinguish real objects from their collection from AI-generated furniture images. NPR ran a similar test on AI video. Mainstream media and cultural institutions testing their audiences on what is real. And at the same time companies worldwide are hiring people to test AI systems, robots and other tools to teach them what is real and correct in the digital world. Check any job platform and you’ll be surprised. Gig economy 3.0 hellooo.

Text, branding & style

Open Social Media on any given morning. The rhythm is the same, the hooks follow the same arc: Thoughtful. Transformative. Excited to share. Stylistic tools overused thousands of times. “The problem is not A. The problem is B.” You know the format. Saying what something is not became a signature tic of AI-generated writing. Why say what is not, when you can just say what is?

This is not about content, it’s about strategy. Just kidding. I see all of this directly in my work. When I help companies find a tone of voice or a communication positioning, the briefs have changed. Firms arrive with AI-generated drafts that are technically fine but strategically empty. The words are there and the point of view is missing. Finding what makes a brand distinct has become harder precisely because everyone is using the same tools, and ending up sounding identical.

Do we really all want to sound the same? I mean, we can, if an audience loses its critical thinking. But we shouldn’t, if they still know the difference.

A 2025 study by the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions found that simply knowing a piece of advertising content was created by AI made consumers trust it less and engage with it less, regardless of its actual quality. They called it a “trust penalty.”

Who actually made this?

I spoke with Christian Guckelsberger, Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies at Aalto University, and his colleague Niki Pennanen, PhD researcher. They study people’s experiences when interacting with creative AI, including when does a creative outcome still feel like yours? Their finding is direct. Manual writing produced the strongest sense of ownership. “The feeling of ownership shifts drastically when AI becomes a substantive contributor to the process,” they found.

The texture of that shift matters. Editing AI-generated text produced more ownership than simply prompting it, because prompting feels like directing, editing instead feels like making. The more you engage with the process, the more the work feels like yours.

Which raises a question most teams haven’t asked yet: are the people doing this work still interested in doing it?

What gets sacrificed

Guckelsberger and colleagues also studied professional creatives in the video game industry, an industry particularly exposed to what comes next because it adopts new technology early. The same people expressed excitement and genuine concern: about deskilling, about ethics, about a loss of meaningfulness.

Some participants placed the success of the final product above their own experience of making it. Guckelsberger asks directly: “Is it sustainable? What is being sacrificed along the way?” Ask me, I do it every day. Are you, too?

Creativity resists optimisation, partly because it resists definition altogether. Researchers have called it an “essentially contested concept,” one where even experts can't agree on what it is or how to measure it. Guckelsberger expects, that for many its value lives in the detour, the failed version, the decision that had no clear answer. A brief that gets optimised loses exactly what made it worth writing.

And from what I see in my work, a team that prompts its way through every project gradually loses the muscle for doing it any other way. For anyone whose work depends on a distinct voice, sounding like yourself has become a competitive position. Trust me, I’m working on it every day.

The human mind

In 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. The response at the time was to say chess was never really about intelligence anyway. Just pattern recognition and calculation. The interesting part of the human mind was somewhere else.

This has happened repeatedly since. Every time AI enters a domain we considered distinctly human, we quietly move the boundary. Mark Runco, one of the leading creativity researchers, named the risk in a 2025 paper: close engagement with artificial creativity may produce a reduced understanding of authentic human creativity. If we lose the language for what genuine creative process looks like, we become less able to support it. In education, in organisations and in our own practice.

Keep asking

Every time you stop in front of something and ask “did a person make this?”, you are doing something machines don’t do easily. Applying judgment, reading context, drawing on experience. And quietly training your own intelligence. I already said it in one of my recent pieces.

German artist and designer Sarah Illenberger put it plainly in a recent podcast. She said she stays in the saddle and holds onto what she can actually hold in her hands. After a day of physical work, she is a much more satisfied person than after a day in front of a screen. She reaches a creative level only when she can make mistakes, when things develop in her hands into something she didn’t expect beforehand. With prompting, you always have to know the result in advance. The power of accident is hard to replicate.

The more you do things differently, even when using AI, the better and more unique the results. And here’s what that gives you back: trust. In your own judgment and in your ability to tell the difference between something made and something generated. That confidence matters, in how you consume content, in how you commission work, in how you sign off on something with your name on it. If you can still feel the difference, you still have something worth trusting.

*Moritz

If you're a brand, institution, or media house looking to find your voice and in the AI age, get in touch.

The symposium, Prada Frames, had come to the complex of Santa Maria delle Grazie for the first time, under the title In Sight: now in its fifth edition and the intellectual kick-off for Salone del Mobile and Design Week with a subtle but powerful branding agenda, three days of lectures and conversations about image-making, AI and the analogue, how images circulate, whether they can still carry truth. Paola Antonelli, senior curator at MoMA, opened day one by asking how mediated images construct our spatial experience. The setting was a Renaissance sacristy attributed to Bramante, with 16th-century biblical scenes inlaid into the walls. The conversation was about AI-generated imagery and the collapse of the real.

Next to the room where Leonardo’s mural survives in its damaged, irreplaceable, entirely non-curated state, people were photographing it for posts tagged with the Milanese fashion house instead of looking at it. Nothing new, perhaps. But here the painting was a backdrop and the Instagram moment was the subject.

This is Design Week in 2026. Over 500,000 visitors moved through the city across seven days. Record passenger numbers at all three Milan airports. Hotels running near capacity, prices per night skyrocketed. The metro running well above its annual average. Fun fact: Pornhub recorded a 21 percent drop in traffic on Sunday evening, when the opening parties began. The city was, measurably, elsewhere. Milan has become the world's most stylish sellout.

The most talked-about moment was a red-carpet opening for the Californian furniture company RH entering the European market, an event that reportedly drew an unusual number of private jets to Linate. It was covered like a film premiere with a guest list to match. Someone called the whole week the new Coachella. The comparison is accurate, the difference is that at Coachella there are still, technically, good concerts and artistic entertainment.

To be fair to the week: there were fantastic projects in private apartments, historic palazzi, and independent spaces across the city. Milan's architectural depth and its design force are real, and Design Week surfaces them in ways that would otherwise stay invisible to most visitors. There's something genuinely good about walking the streets and seeing the city this alive, this international, this open.

The fashion industry is fully folded in now and seems to be substituting Fashion Weeks. A giant inflatable octopus wrapped around the facade of 10 Corso Como, fun! Fashion brand Marni redesigned Pasticceria Cucchi, an institution since 1948, down to its sugar packets, sweet! The Fuorisalone platform listed 1,300 activations citywide. Hundreds of creatives, studios, PR agents, catering companies and collaborators moved through the city for a week, producing work, generating content, mixing drinks, sending invoices to brands. I hope for them.

The big question running underneath all of it, what is real and what is artificial, turned out to be surprisingly physical. The inflatable octopus was real, the Negroni Sbagliato at the opening were real, the 16th-century frescoes were real. What felt less certain was the reason everyone had gathered around them.

What the events of design week leave behind, beyond the documentation and the invoices, is genuinely hard to locate. Design, at its most useful, is intelligent planning: a city that works better, a street that’s safer to cross, a public space that belongs to everyone. The city was a backdrop and the activations were the subject.

The city absorbed all of it, as it does every year. Milan is thriving, and design week generates €255 million for the local economy. But the city hosting the world’s largest celebration of design remains car-dominated, under-cycled, and infrastructure-strained. Milan is moving in the right direction, slowly. It has the designers. What it’s still waiting for is the will to design itself, rather than just collaborate on the next project.

Design is not surface. The version that looks best on a phone screen is the version that requires the least intelligence to produce. I’ll take the version that looks better and feels better in real life. The one that makes a city more walkable, more breathable, more genuinely public. That one is harder to photograph.

If you happened to be in Milan, what were your highlights and what didn’t you like? Hit me up.

*Moritz

I understood the logic. Budgets are tighter, timelines shorter, and the tools have become genuinely capable. Why pay five people when one person and a good model can approximate the output? Financially, the calculation makes sense and the PDF looked great.

But I kept thinking about what wasn’t in it. A colleague who would have questioned the brief. A strategist who might have redirected the concept entirely. A copywriter with a different instinct about tone. Everything that makes a creative output genuinely alive.

The solo loop

A 2025 paper published in the Journal of Organization Design puts it plainly: as an individual production tool, AI risks fragmenting workflows, isolating workers, and undermining the human-centered collaboration that drives creativity and innovation. Tasks that once required brainstorming sessions, collaborative copywriting, and iterative feedback among team members can now be largely automated, with consequences that are only beginning to show.

What a team generates together is not just the sum of individual contributions. Collective intelligence is an emergent capability: it appears in the way a team processes information, contrasts perspectives, makes decisions, and learns from outcomes. You can’t replicate that from a single person working in a closed loop with a system that, by design, tends to move forward rather than push back.

Research on this has been building for years. What makes a group smart has little to do with the average intelligence of its members. It comes from how people interact: whether they listen, whether speaking time is distributed, whether the group can read each other. A 2025 paper in ACM Collective Intelligence, warns that AI can homogenise solutions and reduce intellectual diversity, which is precisely what those group dynamics depend on.

100 voices, one invoice

I spoke recently with my friend Amy Daroukakis, a cultural strategist and founder of Culture Connectors, a global network of over 100 researchers and experts embedded across markets worldwide. Her model is a structural bet on collective intelligence. Real cultural understanding, she argues, comes from people who are actually inside a context, not aggregating signals about it from the outside.

“A point of difference is going to be people that are in market or in category thinking about the thing, but then they’re thinking about it for you,” she told me. The distinction matters more than it sounds. A cultural insight from someone based in Ghana or Lima or Warsaw carries friction, lived contradiction, the kind of situational judgment that doesn’t compress into a dataset. It also arrives with an angle you wouldn’t have thought to look for.

Her network is structured as collective intelligence by design. She’s not selling research but the breadth and productive friction of many different points of view landing in the same conversation at the right moment. “I wouldn’t get to hear from somebody that’s based in Ghana,” she said, describing what disappears when you replace a network with a model. The loss is epistemological.

That friction is productive. It’s also what gets cut first when efficiency becomes the primary measure of a project.

What AI doesn’t give back

The most useful thing Amy said in our conversation was about feedback. One of the things human collaboration does that AI currently doesn’t is push back. You hire someone good partly because they’ll tell you no. A peer challenges your brief, questions your framing, introduces a perspective that reorients the whole thing. A system trained to be helpful will, mostly, keep moving forward.

Amy described this as part of her own value proposition: “You also hire me for no.” That single word carries something AI can’t simulate. It implies judgment, professional stake, and a willingness to make things uncomfortable in service of a better outcome. As Harvard professor Michael Porter put it: “The essence of strategy is what not to do.”

The same ACM paper notes that AI can lead to rigid structures, can be inherently deskilling, and can amplify existing biases, in part because it tends to confirm rather than challenge the direction already set. A separate McKinsey study found that organisations are 1.9 times more likely to achieve above-median financial performance when the leadership team shares a meaningful and truly aligned vision, and that alignment comes from people working through disagreement together, not from one person iterating alone.

The case for staying weird

Amy’s answer to all of this is direct: go more human, not less. “If we have to compete against AI, well then you got to be weird.” She’s describing a market shift that’s already underway. Generalist work is losing ground to deep specialism. People want someone who has seen the specific corner of the world they’re trying to understand, someone whose perspective can’t be replicated by prompt engineering.

“I’m going to be the most human I can ever be,” she said. It sounds almost defiant. I also think it’s accurate. The things that are hardest to automate are the ones that come from having been somewhere, known someone, disagreed with a room, and changed your mind because of it.

That observation matches what I see in my own work today. Clients don’t come looking for more synthesized information. They need judgment, the ability to read a context that doesn’t fit the available categories, and people who can hold uncertainty without defaulting to a template. Those capabilities live in experience, in asking questions and staying curious toward everything: the world, culture, movements, shifts, technology.

What gets lost in the loop

There’s a version of creative and strategic work where one person with good tools produces something that looks right. The brief is answered, the deliverable lands on time and the often low budget is intact. And somewhere in that transaction, the process that would have made the work genuinely better never happened.

Collective intelligence is a way of thinking that only exists between people. The questioning, the friction, the unexpected perspective from someone who came at the problem from a completely different direction. A model can mirror your thinking and extend it. Human collaboration arrives with its own point of view and refuses to let yours go unchallenged.

The Art Director’s PDF was impressive. I still wonder what the room would have come up with. AI helped me draft this text, but before sending it out, I let some friends and colleagues read it. They didn’t just say it was great and to go ahead. They challenged the input, the wording, the structure. That’s what makes the difference.

If this resonates with how you're thinking about your own work or team, I'd like to hear from you.

*Moritz

Amy Daroukakis writes about culture, community and the future of work on her Substack .

I’ve seen this more than once recently. It feels like a trained reflex: the output looks authoritative and good, so it probably is. And I get it: In fast-moving environments, stopping to interrogate something feels like introducing friction nobody wants.

But it stayed with me. Because what I was watching was accepting a document that was way too perfect for a junior (no offence) and critical thinking being quietly skipped.

One answer, no questions

There’s a generational shift happening that goes deeper than convenience. A few years ago, the concern was that people were googling everything instead of thinking. But googling still required something from you. You got ten or more results, you had to choose between them, evaluate sources, form your own view from competing information. The process was imperfect, but it was still a process.

Now asking ChatGPT or Gemini is different. You get one answer, delivered with confidence, in fluent prose, yes, now with visible sources to interrogate (but who does?) and no signal of uncertainty, because the answer feels complete. And increasingly, for a generation growing up with these tools, that’s just how you find things out. Not just at work, for everything. (Some, including me, are pushing back for other reasons entirely: quitgpt.org has gathered more than four million people pledging to cancel their subscriptions, though mostly over OpenAI’s and Sam Altman’s political entanglements rather than what the tool does to how we think.)

Last April, Ann Kowal Smith wrote a piece for Forbes identifying four human skills she argues we can’t afford to lose as AI becomes more embedded in how we work: curiosity, critical thinking, empathy and collaboration. I agree with the list, but what interests me more is the question underneath it: why are these particular skills under pressure right now, and what does that actually look like in practice?

Four human abilities worth paying attention to

Critical thinking is the most visible casualty, and the OECD’s 2024 Survey of Adult Skills confirms what many of us sense: literacy proficiency has declined or stagnated across most European countries over the past decade. The foundation on which critical thinking depends is weakening at the same time the tools that require it are getting better and faster.

Curiosity is harder to defend because it looks like inefficiency. It’s the person who follows a thread that wasn’t in the brief, reads something that wasn’t assigned, takes the long route through a topic because something felt interesting and asks questions, like children do constantly. When a tool can generate ten directions in thirty seconds, that instinct starts to feel like a waste of time. But connective thinking, the kind that finds the unexpected link or spots the question nobody else thought to ask, still depends on a mind that was allowed to be genuinely unsure for a while.

Empathy has its own substitution problem. Customer feedback becomes a sentiment score. A difficult conversation becomes a carefully worded message, often drafted with assistance. These substitutions are efficient, but efficiency in the domain of human understanding tends to reduce what it measures. You can track sentiment without understanding what someone actually feels. You can track everything without knowing what the numbers actually mean.

And then there’s how we actually meet. In 21 European OECD countries, daily face-to-face interactions with friends and family declined consistently between 2006, 2015 and 2022, with men and young people seeing the largest deteriorations. Collaboration still happens, but increasingly at a remove, asynchronous and screen-mediated, optimised for coordination rather than genuine exchange. The ability to read a room, to feel when something isn’t being said, to hold a disagreement long enough for something useful to emerge: these don’t develop in message threads.

Beyond the workplace

Taken together, these four shifts point at something cultural, not just professional. A generation is forming its relationship to knowledge, to other people, to uncertainty, inside systems that reward speed and confidence over inquiry and doubt.

We’ve been here before, in a way. Every major communication shift, let. it be print, film, television, the internet, was followed by concern about what it was doing to how we think and relate. Most of those concerns were overblown. But the question underneath them was always the same: what are we practising, and what are we letting go? That’s what I keep coming back to, and what I want to explore through the conversations I’m building this year. What they’ll look like in ten years. Or maybe only five. Most likely.

What about practising them deliberately? Reading something you didn’t search for. Having the conversation instead of sending the message. Sitting with a problem before asking a tool. If you have others, send them my way.

*Moritz

Human intelligence barely showed up at all.

That stuck with me. Not just because of that search, but because it reflects what I notice in my daily work and conversations. If machines are getting better and more present at almost everything, faster at processing, better at predicting, better at optimising, what is actually left for us? Not as a fear, but as a thought that kept coming back and started to challenge how I think.

Maybe the answer is not more technical intelligence. Maybe it’s the things machines don’t do. Judging situations, reading rooms, holding contradictions, taking responsibility. Dealing with people emotionally, not through systems.

Looking around, it feels like these abilities are under pressure. In politics, complex issues are increasingly reduced to clear positions and quick messages. Not because the problems are simple, but because complexity doesn’t travel well through media cycles. In media, speed matters more than understanding. Articles are skimmed, headlines react to headlines, and context often arrives too late, if at all. In research and science, decisions are more and more guided by protocols, metrics and efficiency targets. These systems are necessary. But they leave less room for experience, intuition and judgment in uncertain situations. In art and culture, visibility and reach often count more than depth or reflection.

This is not about blaming individuals. Most people are working under conditions they didn’t design. It’s about noticing what gets rewarded and what slowly disappears. At the same time, intelligence is celebrated everywhere. Data-driven, automated and optimised, which makes the contrast hard to ignore. We seem to invest heavily in certain forms of intelligence, while others quietly erode.

This year, Culture Shifts will focus on that tension. Through writing and conversations with people working across media, art, research, medicine and technology. I’m interested in how intelligence shows up in practice. Where it still works. Where it is delegated. And where it gets lost along the way.

That’s where my year begins. Even if it’s February already.

If you feel there’s an area where intelligence deserves a closer look this year, send me a message.

*Moritz

I also got feedback. It put me in touch with people. It led to projects, conversations, and a few genuinely interesting encounters.

So, to keep it short. I know everyone is busy. And honestly, who still reads Substack newsletters at the end of 2025 if they’re not here for Charli xcx’s entertaining pieces?

Here’s what held up, and what I worry less about now:

AI is everywhere.

So is the noise around it. Both can be filtered.

Information is abundant.

Context remains rare. Choosing depth over speed still works.

Everyone became a DJ in 2025.

Even if it’s annoying, it probably means more dancing in 2026.

Public spaces feel increasingly ruined.

Communities still work. Small ones. Intentional ones.

Everyone is on their phone all the time.

Not being on it is becoming a luxury.

Distraction has become the default reflex.

Paying attention is starting to feel avant-garde.

Listening bars are back.

Good music, decent drinks, people who actually listen.

Culture is increasingly shaped by algorithms.

Curiosity still isn’t.

Taste seems to be returning.

Slowly. Selectively. I’m betting on it.

Capitalism is still the system. Monopolies even more so.

But you can still say no. To Meta. To Amazon. To Netflix. To Spotify. To convenience itself. If you want.

Everyone talks about impact.

Very few want responsibility. That gap keeps showing.

Public discourse feels darker.

Humour and cynicism are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Fucking fascism is on the rise.

At the same time, so is the refusal to play along. Love, care, peace, diversity.

The world is loud.

Noise-cancelling technology keeps getting better. Make of that what you want.

Billionaires keep ruining things.

At least they finally got a label: parasites. Naming helps with orientation.

Reality feels fragmented.

Knowing where you stand matters more than having an opinion on everything.

Media is faster, thinner, more reactive.

Depth didn’t disappear. It just moved elsewhere.

Purpose drift is real.

So is the desire to do things properly, even if it takes longer and reaches fewer people.

So what changed for me isn’t the diagnosis. It’s how I deal with it now. I worry less about keeping up and more about staying aligned. Less about reacting in public, more about being clear in private before engaging more deliberately.

If this year was about observing and naming patterns, the next one will be more about presence. Fewer hot takes, more real encounters. Ideas tested not only in text, but in rooms, events, formats, and shared moments.

Thanks for reading, staying curious, and not confusing noise with meaning.

Happy holidays and take care.

*Moritz

It wasn’t the rule itself that struck me, but what it revealed. After years of talk about trust, flexibility, and purpose, corporate language across Europe sounds different now. Sharper, formal, almost nostalgic. Discipline. Focus. Efficiency. Words that promise clarity but often signal control.

The return-to-office wave is only one symptom. What’s really happening is a shift of attention. Through the crises of recent years, many companies had begun to focus on people, culture and long-term responsibility. Now, that attention is fragmenting, climate, inclusion and wellbeing are quietly moving down the agenda, replaced by new buzzwords: productivity, performance, AI.

Culture vs. performance

Earlier this year, a Financial Times piece asked bluntly: Has corporate purpose lost its purpose? Many European leaders admitted that the rhetoric of meaning was hard to sustain amid inflation, wars and political instability. According to Harvard Business Review, many culture programs have turned performative, more storytelling than system-building. Employees sense the dissonance because what once inspired no longer feels real.

At the same time, McKinsey reports that AI has become the gravitational centre of many boardrooms, drawing in budgets, talent and strategic attention. Technology matters, but when it absorbs every conversation, human issues slip into the background.

Europe’s quieter regression

Compared with the United States, Europe still looks balanced. Remote flexibility remains higher, social protections stronger, and most large companies still talk seriously about sustainability. But under the surface, something is eroding. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) budgets are shrinking and sustainability teams merge into compliance. HR, which just became People & Culture, is now turning into People Operations, with a greater focus on dashboards rather than dialogue.

Even brands that once treated inclusion as part of their identity are quietly stepping back. Earlier this year, Burberry confirmed the departure of its global diversity head as part of a wider restructuring, while Forbes reported that IBM and other firms are scaling back DEI programmes, citing “inherent tensions” with merit-based systems. These moves signal a broader retreat. What was once strategic culture work is now framed as overhead.

German and French surveys show declining trust in corporate sustainability promises and Italian executives increasingly frame flexible work as a privilege, not a principle. Ragazzi, come on! It doesn’t matter from where you work, if you do it successfully. Define your own principles and not just look at what’s trending right now. When culture and creativity leave the frame, so does the imagination that once made business human.

The cultural economy of purpose

Let’s be honest, the purpose-driven economy was never only about good intentions. It was an answer to exhaustion, a way for companies to find meaning after years of crisis capitalism. For a while, it worked. Culture, sustainability, and storytelling became strategy. Value and values were spoken in the same breath. But purpose also became an industry: managed, packaged, marketed. Sustainability itself became an economy, now moving well over a trillion euros each year in investments, services and branding. And, as with every cultural economy, when its symbols start to circulate faster than its substance, the meaning slowly disappears.

Now, as AI and cost-cutting dominate the agenda, the why of business is once again replaced by the how or the how much. Purpose was supposed to make companies more human; instead, the system made purpose more corporate.

How to restore attention

If distraction has become the dominant reflex, the response is not another initiative but a change in awareness. When culture shifts, you better notice or become history.

• Trust before control
  Where trust replaces surveillance, focus returns. Autonomy stimulates engagement and retention, as studies in Harvard Business Review show. When people own their work, they also own its quality.

• Space for depth
  Where depth is protected, creativity survives. Some European firms already experiment with white-space mornings or reflection sessions, free from calls and email. Thinking time becomes part of work again, not a luxury outside it.

• The long view
  Where continuity is valued over constant novelty, culture endures. Even when sustainability or inclusion no longer trend, the companies that keep them alive tend to keep their people as well.

• Reconnection
  Attention is collective, not individual. Organisations that reconnect tech, design, sustainability and HR discover that shared purpose grows in conversation, not in departments. Discuss one common challenge rather than dozens of KPIs.

• Focus as care

  Awareness is a form of empathy. The most forward-looking organisations listen to employees, customers and communities before they act. Cultures that notice people create work that matters to them.

This is not a list of idealism. It is a map of what we can do now, because we already see it happening. The question is who will scale it.

But let’s be clear, this isn’t about romanticising business. Okay, okay, I know: companies exist to grow, to make money, to compete. That’s the system we’re in, right? Still, it’s striking how quickly some leaders treat purpose as optional the moment someone like Trump or Musk declares it passé. As if meaning were a luxury product, only affordable in stable times.

Purpose isn’t the opposite of business. It’s what keeps business worth doing when everything else gets noisy. That’s why it’s worth investing in communication and meaning especially when business is thriving, not only when it struggles.

A few established companies have quietly done just that. Patagonia continues to secure environmental commitment into its ownership structure, LEGO links sustainability goals directly to executive pay, and Siemens keeps flexible work as a cornerstone of its culture.

What still matters

Maybe my friend’s company has good reasons to bring everyone back to the office. Maybe collaboration really does work better in person and culture grows faster over a coffee than on screen. But that’s not the point: his reaction and my thoughts after that morning in Turin captured something deeper:

It showed how quickly progress dissolves once attention drifts, and how fast the present can slip back to the past.

So, I’d say purpose isn’t gone, only distracted. The real work now is to stop inventing new missions and finish the ones we already started.

*Moritz

It’s a strange feeling. For as long as we can remember, creativity was what defined us: the ability to imagine, to make something new, to express what couldn’t be measured. Now, those same skills are being simulated by systems that have never felt curiosity or doubt. The question isn’t whether AI will replace creative work, it already has in many places. The question is what remains for us when it does. What we’re witnessing is not the end of creativity, but the end of its monopoly.

The creative replacement

In just a few years, creativity has quietly become one of the most automated human activities. According to a 2025 McKinsey report, employees across industries are adopting generative tools faster than most leaders expect. In creative and media fields, AI has already become part of everyday workflows, assisting with writing, design and content development while freeing up time for direction and strategy. What used to be manual, idea-driven work has turned into a collaboration between human intuition and machine precision — one that many still find both useful and unsettling.

Digital platforms like Suno and Udio have produced millions of AI-generated songs since their launch in 2023, more than human musicians release in an entire year. Text, images and videos can now be generated, adapted and multiplied with a single prompt. With OpenAI’s Sora, even full cinematic scenes can be created from short text descriptions, realistic enough to blur the line between imagination and simulation.

Behind this flood of creation lies an uncomfortable truth: all of it is built on us. Every model learns from our words, our images, our music. What AI generates is not invention but inheritance, the sum of what humanity has already created, compressed into probability. But the creative industries are starting to push back. Rolling Stone and Penske Media sued Google for using their content to train its models without consent. Artists have found their distinct styles replicated in datasets they never approved. The line between influence and exploitation is dissolving faster than copyright law can keep up.

The hidden cost of AI

There’s another price we rarely see. As philosopher and AI expert Kate Crawford writes in Atlas of AI, artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is deeply material, powered by energy, mined resources and human labour. A Financial Times investigation revealed that a single large data centre can consume as much water as a small city. Training one large language model can emit as much CO₂ as five cars over their entire lifetimes.

What we call “the cloud” is in reality a global network of cables, factories and warehouses that make our creativity possible, but also make it costly. So while AI feels weightless and effortless, it’s neither. Every generated image, every text, every song that never needed a musician has a footprint. What we gain in speed, we lose in substance.

When the digital gets boring

Curiously, the more digital our world becomes, the less it excites me. Each new “AI breakthrough” lands with less enthusiasm. The novelty has worn off. The future, once thrilling, has started to feel predictable. And maybe that’s why the analogue is quietly coming back. Vinyl records are selling more and more (44 million in 2024). Film cameras are back in fashion. People are rediscovering the value of touch, slowness and imperfection.

The more our culture becomes artificial, the more we crave what feels alive. When everything is generated, authenticity becomes an act of resistance.

AI is never creative. Only productive.

There’s a simple but essential distinction: AI is not creative, it’s productive. It can generate, recombine and remix almost endlessly, but it can’t imagine. It can’t feel the impulse that leads to creation in the first place. Creativity is not about output. It’s about consciousness, the act of transforming an inner state into something others can feel. Machines can simulate that transformation, but they don’t experience the world they describe.

That’s what makes human creativity irreplaceable. It’s not the skill. It’s the need. We create not because it’s efficient, but because we must, to make sense of the world, to communicate, to leave traces that mean something.

Redefining creativity in the age of AI

Perhaps this is what creativity will come to mean in the years ahead: less about producing, more about interpreting. Less about novelty, more about meaning. Artists like Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are exploring what ethical, consent-based AI could look like, giving creators agency over how their data is used. Others, like the London-based producer Vegyn, use AI not as a shortcut but as an instrument. His project Headache, created with writer Francis Hornsby Clark, features an AI voice woven through his compositions. Synthetic yet deeply human, a dialogue between author and algorithm that still carries his distinct rhythm and emotion. “I’m one of the first people that have neither a heart nor a brain,” the voice says at one point, a reminder that even when machines speak beautifully, it’s still us who give them something to say.

Museums are experimenting with AI to make archives more accessible, but it still takes human curators to decide what stories are worth telling and which ones shouldn’t be told again. In a world that can generate infinite versions of anything, creativity becomes perception, seeing what matters and what doesn’t, knowing what to keep, what to discard, what to amplify.

Perception becomes a form of authorship, shaping culture not by adding more but by deciding what deserves attention. Machines can make things. We can make sense of them. In a sea of automated output, perception becomes the new imagination — a quieter, slower creativity built on awareness rather than acceleration.

So what does that look like in practice? Reading fewer things but reading them deeper. Curating your feeds instead of scrolling them. Sharing work in person, not just online. Supporting human-made things, an album, an exhibition, a book, because they carry the trace of someone’s time.

We still need to create

The real reason to keep creating isn’t economic or ethical, it’s existential. Creativity is how we stay alive. It’s how we connect, process and orient ourselves in a world that increasingly runs without us. When you write, paint, play or design, you reaffirm your place in reality. You slow down the acceleration of automation and remember what it feels like to choose. Every creative act, however small, is a statement: I’m not a spectator, I’m a participant. To create is not only to express yourself, but to keep a space open for imagination, something societies lose when everything becomes optimised.

And that’s why we have to keep creating, not to compete with AI, but to remain human alongside it.

Creation as resistance

To be creative today is to resist the reduction of life to data. It’s to value the imperfect, the personal, the unquantifiable. It’s to make something slowly, consciously, with care, not because it’s better than what a machine can do, but because it means something to you. AI can generate a thousand versions of beauty, but it can’t feel awe. It can simulate depth, but not understanding. Maybe creativity, in this new world, isn’t about making something new at all, but about remembering what it means to be here.

*Moritz

One way out of that loop is to talk to people outside your own field. Someone who’s not part of your private or professional micro-bubble. Suddenly, other realities open up and other stories are being told. And that’s when it becomes clear: imagination is not decoration, it is infrastructure. It holds together how we see the world, what we believe is possible, and how we act on it.

Protest as a rehearsal

You can see this every time infrastructure is repurposed. Just a few weeks ago in Italy, tens of thousands of protesters blocked ports, highways, and stations in solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinians and it keeps going. For a few hours, streets meant for cars and rails meant for commerce became platforms of resistance and solidarity. Peaceful protest is not only disruption, it is construction, a rehearsal of another society that insists: it can’t go on like this, something needs to change.

Designing better systems

But imagination also shows up in the infrastructures we choose to design. Cities that experiment with free public transport in Luxembourg or Tallinn (residents only), or that expand high-speed rail to replace short flights, are imagining mobility as a right, not a privilege. And in places like Vienna, Paris, or Berlin, overheated streets are being redesigned into shaded places to gather and breathe: streets that cool and protect people instead of just moving cars. And regulation plays a role too: just this month, Italy became the first EU country to pass a comprehensive law on AI, aligning with the EU’s AI Act. It sets limits on harmful uses like deepfakes, protects children, and enforces transparency in workplaces and public sectors. It frames AI not as a runaway threat without limits but as infrastructure for rights, safety, and innovation.

Platforms like Reasons to be Cheerful collect and share exactly these kinds of stories, concrete examples of how imagination, turned into practice, can reshape systems and make better futures visible.

As Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Derek Thompson of The Atlantic argue in their recent book Abundance – How we build a better future, the real bottleneck isn’t technology, it’s imagination combined with policy. Too often we allow red tape, scarcity thinking, or political inertia to stop us from building the infrastructure that could actually deliver more: more clean energy, more affordable housing, more accessible mobility. Their point is simple but powerful: abundance is possible, if we dare to imagine it and refuse to accept stagnation as the norm.

These examples matter because they remind us that reality is not fixed. Infrastructures can be bent, repurposed, expanded. They are blueprints of what we value.

The risk of regression

And yet, imagination is fragile. Look at Trump’s America, where regression is sold as vision, where walls are celebrated over bridges, where the future is narrowed to nostalgia and fear. I mean, he just attacked the UN at the General Assembly, dismissing climate action, global cooperation, and institutions as corrupt or useless. That kind of rhetoric doesn’t just threaten policy, it seeks to suffocate imagination.

If we stop picturing alternatives, we stop building them. So now, more than ever, we need to continue doing the good things already in motion: pushing for clean public transport, preparing our streets for hotter days, regulating technology and fostering solidarity and equality. Because believing in something that changes positively isn’t naive, it’s necessary.

So the task is simple, and urgent: keep imagination alive as infrastructure. Reinforce the realities that open up futures, not the ones that shrink them. Everything that challenges the status quo, everything that fails to serve the many rather than the few, is proof that other futures are possible, if we dare to imagine them, and refuse to follow those who don’t.

Which infrastructure do you want to reinforce?

Strategy today is less about forecasting and more about shaping. Through the stories we tell, the debates we host, and the futures we choose to take seriously.

*Moritz

Culture Shifts is the communications consultancy for a new present, based in Milan. We prepare companies & organisations for present and future challenges through strategic positioning, cultural research & solution-based brand consulting in times of cultural change, impact economy and artificial intelligence.

But something else felt off and not so thriving. For all the physical discipline and lifestyle optimisation, there was a strange emptiness in the air. Bookshops rather empty, only a few on the beach caught reading a book or magazines, cinemas replaced by wellness clubs, small independent businesses gone — turned into Botox studios or gym equipment stores. In Milan, and in many other cities too, culture seems to be losing ground to “care.”

And not just in public space. The same is true online. Everything looks polished. Balanced. Flat. From fashion to interiors, from social media to branding — today’s visual culture is designed to be pleasing, scrollable, easily digestible. Nothing interrupts. Nothing lingers.

Maybe that’s the point. With polycrises on every side — economic, political, social, ecological, existential — what else are we supposed to focus on, if not the unimportant, flat and the boring?

Welcome to the flat era

There’s a point where subtlety stops being a choice and becomes a reflex. That point might be now. Today’s visual culture isn’t loud, it’s smooth. It flows past you. You scroll, you nod, you double tap and just minutes later, you can’t remember a single thing you just saw.

Even in fashion, a domain that once thrived on strong opinions and sharper silhouettes, things have softened. Everything looks nice. Nothing sticks. And if you think outside of campaign aesthetics — even personal style follows the script. Same haircut. Same filter. Same ‘inspo’ screenshots recycled in different time zones. The broccoli cut for boys. That neutral-toned outfit that says “I’m minimalist, but expensive.”

It’s not that everyone and everything looks the same. But the language of looking has shrunk. And taste, once a space for curiosity or contradiction, feels increasingly like something that’s been templated in advance.

Was it always like this?

Probably not. At least not quite like this. In earlier decades, taste was more visibly fought over. What counted as “good taste” wasn’t fixed — it was challenged, mocked, overthrown. Think of punk versus disco. Or brutalism versus postmodernism. Or the whole point of the Memphis Group, which seemed to ask: why be elegant when you can be confusing? Their colorful, asymmetrical, post‑modern objects didn’t just flout good taste, they rewrote it.

Even bad taste was interesting. Susan Sontag called it “camp”. It’s a love for the exaggerated, the unnatural, the over-the-top. Camp wasn’t tasteful, but it knew it wasn’t. That self-awareness made it sharp. Today, we have aesthetics that look good but say nothing.

The more the system learned to predict what works, the less room we left for what doesn’t. And what doesn’t perform often turns out to be the thing worth seeing.

A culture without friction

There’s something about visual sameness that doesn’t just flatten images — it dulls attention. If nothing interrupts you, you stop noticing. If every image fits, nothing stands out. And that’s new. Or at least more visible than before.

We used to have more time to look. Posters on the street, still images in a magazine, a music video that aired several times a week. Visual impressions lingered longer. Today, we’re exposed to more images in an hour than most people saw in a day just two decades ago. But exposure isn’t the same as experience. Seeing more doesn’t mean seeing better. Often, it just means forgetting faster.

German philosopher Walter Benjamin warned that the mechanical reproduction of art would erode its aura, its unique presence in time and space. Now, even the copy has lost its aura. Every image is produced for scale, for frictionless engagement, for the feed — and for AI, which now reproduces reproductions until the bitter end.

What happened to taste?

Once upon a time, taste was personal. Or at least, it pretended to be. It was something people argued over. Defended. Collected. Changed their minds about. There was such a thing as bad and good taste, and it mattered, because it meant there was still something at stake.

Now? Most taste feels crowd-sourced. Smooth around the edges. Something we inherit from the feed, not something we build for ourselves. Of course, taste has never been neutral. French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu famously showed that it’s bound up with class, education, and cultural capital. What you like isn’t just about you — it signals who you are, or who you want to be. But even within those structures, people used to use taste to stand out. To claim a position.

Now it feels like we’re mostly trying not to get it wrong. Not to offend the algorithm. Not to post something that looks off.

Optimised aesthetics, declining attention

When every post, ad, or image is tailored to trigger engagement, it’s no surprise we end up with repetition. The problem isn’t just that things look the same, it’s that they feel designed to be liked, not to be felt.

What makes an image stick? Sometimes it’s the imperfection. The shadow in the wrong place. The strange composition. The pause it creates. But visual culture today is obsessed with clarity, not ambiguity. With polish, not texture. With speed, not slowness.

In Travels in Hyperreality, Italian writer and semiologist Umberto Eco wrote about American wax museums where the replicas were more “perfect” than real life — teeth whiter, costumes cleaner, lighting more flattering. Reality, he said, was being replaced by something more consumable.

Today’s visual world is a hyperreal scroll. Designed not to confuse, but to convert.

So what’s left?

There’s a particular fatigue that comes not from chaos, but from consistency. We’re not overwhelmed by contrast. We’re dulled by coherence. And this dullness has consequences. Not just for creativity, but for memory.

If every new campaign, product or person feels vaguely familiar, what are we actually holding on to? Taste, in the real sense, hasn’t disappeared. But it’s harder to spot, and harder to trust.

In a time when everything can be replicated, the only real marker of originality is attention, not the kind that seeks validation, but the kind that notices what doesn’t fit. Taste today might just be the ability to say: No, I don’t like that. Or better: I like this — even if nobody else does. And to know why you like it. Or don’t.

So how do we get our taste back? It starts with noticing. With choosing not to scroll past what feels slightly off. With collecting what moves us — even if it doesn’t fit. That’s true for people, and just as true for brands. If everything looks like everything else, the real act of differentiation isn’t louder design or smarter content. It’s attention. Taste isn’t about trends. It’s about tension.

Seeing less, looking better

We’re constantly told we need to “see more.” But maybe we don’t. Maybe what we need is fewer images, more presence. Fewer aesthetic hits, more visual tension. Maybe what we’re really after is a moment of stillness in a stream of sameness.

A reminder that seeing isn’t the same as watching, and that looking is not just a habit but a skill. Taste: real, personal, even slightly weird taste, is how we remember we have that skill.

But do we still need it? Let’s discuss!

*Moritz

Culture Shifts is the communications consultancy for a new present, based in Milan. We prepare companies & organisations for present and future challenges through strategic positioning, cultural research & solution-based brand consulting in times of cultural change, impact economy and artificial intelligence.

But then it was orbiting everywhere. Even non-populist, I assumed, non-clickbait media like The Guardian picked it up (c’mon … ). A CEO and his HR lead. An awkward concert moment. And the internet, doing what it does best: expose, dissect, escalate. I moved on. Not because it wasn’t juicy, but because it felt like the hundredth iteration of the same pattern: a minor private incident turned into a global micro-drama, then swallowed by the algorithm.

And yet: tens of millions watched, shared, judged. The public trial didn’t unfold in a courtroom, it played out on the news and phone screens, in real time, under the guise of entertainment. Another private moment turned global spectacle. Another example of how little room we leave for imperfection, privacy, or simply being. Without being seen.

And meanwhile: a genocide continues in Gaza. On camera. A war in Ukraine. On camera. The rise of an American authoritarian president happening live. On camera. Tech billionaires plot their next world-changing ventures. A bit more hidden. And entire social systems are on edge. But sure, let’s dissect an affair.

This isn’t moral outrage. It’s exhaustion. And a deep discomfort with how warped our sense of relevance and humanity has become.

A continuation of the blur

I wrote earlier this year about the erosion of public space. How cafés, parks, and airports have become private zones where we tune each other out. But what happens when the inverse kicks in? When privacy itself collapses? When even our most fleeting, intimate, unguarded moments get pulled into the public sphere?

There’s no off-switch anymore. Everything is potentially visible. Conversations. Relationships. Mistakes. A colleague at a bar. A partner’s expression at the wrong time. Any moment that lives longer online than it did in real life.

We’ve stopped distinguishing between presence and performance. Between being somewhere and broadcasting that we are.

The end of exclusivity

It’s a fact. At concerts, raves, public events, almost everyone is filming. Not a highlight. Not a chorus. The entire performance. Some people even livestream it. And I can’t help but wonder: have we confused participation with documentation?

Exclusivity used to mean: you had to be there. Now it means: you’re the one who shared it first. Or maybe, you weren’t even there? We used to carry memories home. Now we carry footage we never watch in data clouds.

Same with video podcasts. Why, exactly, does something built for listening need to be filmed? It’s a strange paradox: performance has overtaken content. Visibility trumps meaning. And only what’s seen still qualifies as real. But does it? In a world of deepfakes and generative AI?

We’ve started to believe that moments that aren’t shared somehow don’t exist. That privacy equals irrelevance. But it’s not true. It’s just that our reference points have been flattened. Everyone is a micro-celebrity. Every moment a performance. Every audience a potential threat.

The quiet turn inward

There’s a growing shift, though less loud, but more interesting. More people are choosing not to post. Not because they’ve vanished, but because they’re recalibrating. A recent Atlantic piece titled “How to Disappear” explored how the new premium isn’t visibility, it’s discretion. It mentioned how consultancies now help clients, mostly wealthy ones, vanish online, leaving no digital trace.

Whatever the reason, the ability to choose when and how you show up—and to disappear, not in fear but in freedom—might be one of the most important cultural shifts of 2025 and beyond.

I feel it too. I share less than I used to. Not because I’m hiding, but because the public has become more aggressive, more entitled, more ready to dox, distort, or destroy. And I’m not the only one. People are slowly learning that what’s valuable isn’t what trends. It’s what remains yours.

Reclaiming presence

This isn’t about nostalgia for a pre-digital world. It’s about reestablishing boundaries. About remembering that not everything belongs to everyone. “Cameras off” doesn’t mean silence or secrecy. It means space. It means giving moments the dignity to stay unrecorded. State-controlled surveillance is already huge, so why also supporting it as an individual? “Cameras off” means valuing attention over exposure. It means reminding ourselves: this is mine. This experience. This feeling. This fragile, imperfect moment that doesn’t need to be seen to matter.

What now? A few takeaways

We’re not going back. But we can move forward more deliberately. Whether you’re navigating your own digital life or shaping how an organisation shows up in public, a few questions might help:

For individuals:

• Do I need to share this—or am I just trained to?

• Who is this for, and what does it cost me to post it?

• Can I create more moments that are just mine. Unseen, unshared, and still meaningful?

For brands, institutions, and communicators:

• Are we communicating for attention or for value?

• What does discretion look like in our messaging?

• Could intimacy, privacy, or slowness be part of our strategy? Not a flaw, but a feature?

We live in a world where visibility is default, and silence feels radical. But not everything should be said. Not everything should be filmed. Some things should just be felt—deeply, privately, and without the need to prove anything to anyone.

Cameras used to have a shutter that stayed closed until you pressed it. Today’s smartphone and surveillance cameras are always on, watching, waiting, ready to capture.

Cameras off. Not always, but often enough to remember what it’s like to be truly there.

*Moritz

Culture Shifts is the communications consultancy for a new present, based in Milan. We prepare companies & organisations for present and future challenges through strategic positioning, cultural research & solution-based brand consulting in times of cultural change, impact economy and artificial intelligence.

It’s not about quick fixes, not about empty optimism. It’s about real, thoughtful approaches to some of the most urgent challenges of our time.

In the first three episodes released, I’m joined by thinkers from different industries who are shifting perspectives in their fields – and who show that reimagining systems, structures, and narratives is not just necessary, but possible.

Design & Systemic Change

Design has long been associated with aesthetics, but today it plays a much bigger role – it’s a tool for systemic change. In the first conversation of the season, award-winning design critic and Design Emergency co-founder Alice Rawsthorn shares how design is evolving to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges: from the climate crisis to humanitarian emergencies.

We talk about what distinguishes impactful design from surface-level solutions, why collaboration and inclusivity are essential, and how designers worldwide are influencing policy and reshaping everyday life. Alice also reflects on why storytelling matters – not to simplify problems, but to make complex solutions accessible, meaningful, and human.

🔊 Listen here: Beyond Aesthetics: Alice Rawsthorn on How Design Can Solve Global Challenges

Museums & Institutions

Museums for contemporary art today are at crossroads. Are they just exhibition spaces or already agents of contemporary change? In this episode, Bart van der Heide, Director of Museion Bolzano, discusses how institutions can evolve beyond exhibition spaces to actively engage with the social, political, and ecological challenges of our time.

We explore the tension between ambition and tradition, the complexities of measuring real-world impact, and why museums must move beyond just counting visitor numbers. Bart shares insights from Museion’s transformation since 2020, his vision for institutions that are both locally rooted and globally relevant – and why cultural leadership now demands much more than curating exhibitions.

🔊 Listen here: Rethinking Museums: Bart van der Heide on Innovation, Impact & Cultural Agents

Architecture & Storytelling

Architecture often speaks through its structures – but it also shapes how we understand the world. In this conversation, Beatrice Galilee, curator, critic, and co-founder of The World Around, argues for a broader view: one where architecture becomes a platform for storytelling, social innovation, and environmental action.

We discuss how architecture can (and must) break beyond its traditional boundaries, why amplifying diverse voices is crucial for real change, and how initiatives like the Young Climate Prize are redefining who gets to imagine the future. Beatrice shows how architecture can serve as a connector across disciplines – and why solutions today require thinking across scales: from the intimate to the planetary.

🔊 Listen here: From Structure to Story: Beatrice Galilee on Rethinking Architecture's Narrative

Why This Season Matters

Solutions are rarely simple. They demand shifting perspectives, bridging silos, and reimagining how we work together. And it’s fantastic to see how many people are out there working on impactful change. So through these conversations, I hope to open a space where complexity isn’t something to fear, but something we can navigate with creativity, courage, and collaboration – through various industries and communities.

We'll have more interesting guests from a variety of backgrounds this season. Stay tuned and subscribe.

You can listen to the Culture Shifts Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I’m always happy to get feedback, or if you have a guest in mind that you think should be part of this season.

Thank you.

*Moritz

I knew what she meant and it worried me. It’s not just about misinformation, AI-generated fakes, or media bubbles. It’s the sheer volume of crises, all competing for our attention. Every day, our feeds throw new urgencies at us. Every headline demands our outrage. The weight of the world is one push notification away.

And yet, paradoxically, the more we see, the less we feel able to act – even in our own little realities. The result? Many people disengage, not out of apathy, but out of exhaustion. Others retreat into their own carefully curated realities, where algorithms reinforce what they already believe. Some brands, social media platforms, and political movements have embraced this fragmentation, crafting tailored narratives rather than seeking common ground.

So, how do you navigate this? How do you stay informed without being overwhelmed? How do you engage with reality without losing yourself in the chaos? And how can you try to make things better when you think it’s not worth it anymore?

Dark Mode. On?

We are living in what some have called the “Dark Mode Shift” of public discourse – where cynicism, irony, and doom have become the default. Edmond Lau, designer, art director and content creator shaped this expression some weeks ago on LinkedIn. It isn’t just about aesthetics but reflects a deeper political and cultural shift. Politicians, brands, and media increasingly lean into this, understanding that negativity drives engagement. The rise of figures like Elon Musk and other – let’s just face it: toxic, megalomaniac males – the resurgence of nationalist rhetoric across Europe, or even corporate rebrands that play into dystopian aesthetics (think Balenciaga’s post-apocalyptic shows & campaigns) all reflect this shift.

Meanwhile, news consumption has changed. Instead of sitting down to read a newspaper, we absorb fragmented, algorithm-driven updates – pushed to us in a way that maximises urgency but minimises context. Studies show that constant exposure to negative news increases anxiety and decreases our ability to process information critically – and makes us dumber. “It’s official” as the pop culture magazine Dazed & Confused wrote earlier this month in a piece based on actual research. And when everything feels like a crisis, it becomes harder to distinguish what truly matters. While becoming less intelligent may be a tempting shortcut to coping with it all, let’s not go that far.

Choose Your Reality!

The easy response is to shut it all out. Comfortable, I know, but also too easy – as many do already. But there’s a difference between focusing your attention and avoiding reality.

Wait, what reality again? Mine, yours, theirs?

Instead of letting the algorithm decide what you should care about, take control:

Seek news instead of waiting for it to find you. Read newspapers or magazines instead of scrolling headlines. Follow trusted sources or journalists here on Substack or Blogs with long-form analysis rather than doom-filled tweets. Choose depth over shock value. The initiative Our World in Data is a good example.

Set boundaries. Not every crisis deserves your mental energy all the time. Just because something is trending doesn’t mean it should dictate your day, cultural strategist Matt Klein said on our podcast last year.

Recognise the limits of your influence. You don’t have to have know about everything. Instead of being consumed by issues you can’t change, ask: What can I meaningfully engage with or how can I productively contribute to my environment?

Create Stability in Your Own Sphere

If the world feels unstable, the best thing you can do is strengthen your own foundation. This applies both personally and professionally. Instead of passively reacting to global chaos, take action where it matters:

In your career: We all have a role to play. Whether you work in media, branding, or any other industry, think about the narratives you're amplifying. Are you reinforcing division and fear, or contributing to understanding and solutions?

In your network: Conversations shape perception. Try to encourage discussions that go beyond headlines, ask better questions, and foster understanding rather than polarisation.

In your daily life: Real-world engagement matters more than digital outrage. Think about supporting local initiatives, build relationships outside your bubble, focus on tangible actions - and do look up from your screen sometimes, it changes a lot!

Awareness and Action. A Balance Act.

In a world where narratives shape our realities, making sure we engage with the right ones might be the most strategic move of all.

We can’t control the flood of information, but we can control how we engage with it. So instead of being overwhelmed by everything why not focus on something? Instead of passively consuming, let’s actively seek. Instead of doomscrolling, let’s do something that reinforces a sense of agency.

Reality isn’t something we passively receive. It’s something we build. And in a world of fragmented truths, the most powerful thing we can do is create clarity – starting with our own.

*Moritz

Culture Shifts is the communications consultancy for a new present, based in Milan. We prepare companies & organisations for present and future challenges through strategic positioning, cultural research & solution-based brand consulting in times of cultural change, impact economy and artificial intelligence.

Instead of acknowledging the request, he relayed my words to his wife, making it sound like I was the problem. When he finally hung up, he turned to me and said, “Now my wife is going to be mad at me because I had to end the call. That’s on you.”

Fine by me.

It’s one of those moments that makes me wonder: Have we completely given up on public space as something shared?

It’s not just phone calls. It’s thousands of reels at full blast on the metro, people watching content through their phone speakers in cafés. It’s a growing indifference to the fact that, yes, other people exist – and maybe, just maybe, they don’t want to be part of your personal bubble.

I looked around that morning, waiting for someone else to react. Nothing. People either had their own screens in front of them or were simply numb to it. And that’s what worries me most. It’s not just that this happens – it’s that it’s no longer seen as a problem.

Maybe it’s not a problem at all?

How Did We Get Here?

The smartphone always on may be the clearest example, but it’s just one symptom of a broader cultural shift. Public spaces – streets, cafés, restaurants, metros, parks, you name it – are no longer shared environments. Instead, they’ve become extensions of our private lives, with little regard for those around us.

The Digital Bubble

As easy and entertaining as it is to get lost in our screens, we all know how much they've eroded our concentration - both individually and as a society. Studies have shown that the mere presence of a smartphone can reduce cognitive performance. And already in 2005 research showed that regularly checking your email can lower your IQ by up to 10 points - twice the effect seen in studies of marijuana use. Imagine the decline now in 2025 with constant digital distraction.

Meanwhile, public spaces increasingly resemble a scene from a zombie apocalypse. The Guardian recently highlighted how "smartphone zombies" are now a global phenomenon – heads down, oblivious to the world around them. If public spaces once encouraged interaction, they now serve as a backdrop for individual digital worlds.

We don’t just miss accidents waiting to happen – we also overlook the small, human moments that make public spaces feel alive. The beauty of a quiet or even loud street. Someone in need of help. The basic awareness to cross the street without bumping into someone, a smile.

Just the other day, I saw a person so deep in their social media feed that they walked straight into a traffic light and hit their head.

I kind of liked it. A moment of poetic justice.

But it made me think: if we’re oblivious to physical obstacles, how much else are we missing? The world around us, the people next to us, the small interactions that once made public spaces feel alive.

The Public-Private Blur

But this isn’t just about tech – it’s cultural. A few shifts have made public spaces feel more private:

• Remote Work Culture

  More people work outside, in cafés, trains and airports, treating them like personal offices – whether it’s Zoom calls in a quiet space or a restaurant doubling as a private meeting room.

• The “Always-On” Mindset

  We’ve been conditioned to expect constant engagement, and now our lives feel incomplete without it, even in the most shared of spaces. If people are watching Netflix on their commute, recording content in public, or playing voice messages aloud, it’s because the need for personal engagement outweighs any awareness of public life.

Even professionals who should be hyper-aware – security guards, police officers, bus drivers – are often glued to their phones. Just recently in Milan, I saw two soldiers of the "Operation Secure Streets" patrolling in their military jeep, both lost in their screens.

It might seem funny, but it’s a sign of just how out of touch we’ve become with our surroundings.

Solutions – An Attempt

So, what can be done? Some initiatives have started take action:

• Expanding "Quiet Zones" in public transport, stations, bars are expanding in some European countries, though enforcement remains tricky.

• Public campaigns on digital etiquette could help shift norms – just as we once educated people about not smoking indoors or littering.

• Banning smartphones in certain environments: Some schools and cultural venues are already introducing restrictions. Could other locations follow?

• France has issued fines for phone calls on loudspeaker in public transport – one man was recently fined €200 at a train station under noise control laws. But is fining people really the solution?

Perhaps the most effective approach isn’t punishment but social recalibration. Social norms changed. The same could happen here. It starts with awareness. Noticing others. Seeing public space as shared, not just background noise to our private lives.

Rebuilding Public Life

This conversation isn’t just about the smartphone. It’s about how we coexist in public spaces in an era of hyper-individualism. At its core, public life is a collective experience – and right now, it feels like we’re losing the script – to me at least.

I don't want to be the guy who talks about "society" as if I have all the answers. But I don't think this is inevitable. We don't have to accept the slow erosion of public life into a chaotic mess of speakerphone calls, viral videos and the total societal collapse.

The good news? Awareness is the first step toward change. Maybe we won’t completely undo the FaceTime-in-a-crowded-gate phenomenon, but if we restore even a little sense of shared responsibility, we might just make public life feel public and nice again.

And if that businessman’s wife is still mad at him? Well, I can live with that.

Do you feel public spaces have become more self-centered? What small change can you make today to help restore a sense of shared space in the public places you frequent? Let’s discuss – or fight?

*Moritz

Yet, finding solutions isn’t just about innovation – it’s about seeing challenges clearly and communicating them effectively. Thoughtful communication and strategy are at the heart of any meaningful change, whether it’s reshaping urban spaces, creating ethical supply chains, or building trust among stakeholders.

From City to City

When exploring solutions to today’s challenges, I often find inspiration in places and initiatives I’ve experienced firsthand. Milan, the city I currently live in, for instance, has taught me that even cities with deeply rooted histories, cultures and structures can reinvent themselves when new ideas meet collaboration and beat conservative politics and reactionary mindsets.

Milan’s Urban Transformation

Milan has redefined itself over the past decade, evolving from an industrial city to a hub of sustainability, design, and innovation. Yet, challenges like an over-reliance on cars, the limitations of its public transport system and the need of more green spaces remind us that transformation is an ongoing journey. The transformation of the Porta Nuova district exemplifies how partnerships can spark impactful urban renewal. Once an underused industrial area, Porta Nuova is now home to projects like the Bosco Verticale, a park, restaurants, offices and shops combining architecture with environmental sustainability.

A similar approach – ok you can call it gentrification – is shaping the Scalo Porta Romana district, where Fondazione Prada laid the groundwork for transformation a decade ago. As the first cultural institution in the area, it brought new life to the southern part of the city. Now, the district is being further reimagined with the Olympic Village for the 2026 Winter Games, a central park, restaurants and new urban spaces for living and working – 100 percent car free. These projects reflect Milan’s ability to use culture and design as catalysts for sustainable development.

What made these transformations possible is collaboration between architects, city planners, and private investors, united by a narrative positioning Milan as a leader in green urbanism.

Museion: A Cultural Platform

During a recent visit to Museion in Bolzano, I found myself reflecting on how cultural institutions are transforming to meet societal challenges. Originally a modern art museum, Museion has evolved into a dynamic cultural platform under the leadership of director Bart van der Heide. The institution engages with challenges like climate change, identity politics and inequality through contemporary art and collaborative initiatives.

Museion’s programs – ranging from interdisciplinary talks to community-driven projects – go beyond exhibitions, fostering partnerships with local and international artists, cultural organisations, and academic institutions. This transformation highlights the power of cultural institutions to shape narratives and actively contribute to addressing global challenges. This raises the question of what role art could play in solving today’s challenges and what solutions it can give us.

The 15-Minute City Solution

Paris provides another inspiring example of collaborative urban transformation. Led by Mayor Anne Hidalgo and scientist Carlos Moreno, the city has adopted the 15-minute city concept, where residents can access essential services – schools, healthcare, shops, and green spaces – within a short walk or bike ride. Policies such as pedestrianising major streets, expanding bike lanes, and greening public spaces reflect a cultural shift toward prioritising sustainability and community well-being.

This vision required not just policy but a powerful narrative to build trust and inspire buy-in from citizens. Through clear communication and collaboration with urban planners, businesses, and the residents feedback, Paris’s transformation proves that cities can adapt to modern needs without losing their identity. Today in Paris more people use bikes than cars to commute – and you still can get a pain au chocolat and see the Eiffel Tower, don’t you? If your city embraced these ideas, how do you think it would change your daily life?

Why Good Solutions Begin with the Right Questions

These examples of transformation – from urban renewal to cultural reinvention – share a common denominator: they began with a clear understanding of the problem and its context. But this clarity is often overlooked. One of the biggest barriers to effective problem-solving is the tendency to jump straight into action. According to recent research in the renowned Harvard Business Review (HBR), companies and institutions often devote too little time to understanding the problem before attempting to solve it. This rush to act limits their ability to design innovative solutions.

Effective problem-framing is essential. It involves looking at challenges from multiple perspectives – like adjusting the angle, aperture, and focus of a camera lens (Not your smartphone’s one obviously). A wide-angle view might reveal broader systemic issues, while a portrait lens focuses on root causes. By exploring these distinct "frames," organisations can uncover new insights and generate more innovative ideas.

The HBR framework introduces five phases to approach problem-framing:

1. Expand: Identify all aspects of the problem.

2. Examine: Delve into root causes.

3. Empathise: Understand key stakeholders’ perspectives.

4. Elevate: Consider the problem in a broader context.

5. Envision: Map out a path toward the desired outcome.

This structured approach reminds us that solutions don’t come from quick fixes – they emerge from asking the right questions and engaging diverse perspectives.

Communication: Building Understanding in an Age of Misinformation

Not only across the given examples one common thread emerges: solutions must resonate with the people they affect. Communication is the bridge between a solution and its stakeholders, ensuring clarity, alignment, and engagement. But in an era of misinformation, fake news, autocracies and declining trust in institutions, fact-based communication is more critical than ever. Narratives must be transparent, inclusive, and forward-thinking to build trust and inspire action. Success hinges on compelling, credible stories. Yet, in parts of the world, success now depends on the opposite kind of narrative – forcing us to reflect on the growing divide in communication ethics and to question what is really being communicated (online and offline)!

Strategy: Turning Vision into Action

If communication builds understanding, strategy ensures execution. A well-crafted strategy aligns resources, people, and goals to turn ambitious ideas into tangible realities. The projects and examples I mentioned are only a few happening and underscore the importance of strategic foresight in driving lasting impact. By framing the right narrative through clear communication, these initiatives exemplify how strategy transforms ideas into solutions.

Of course, solutions don’t happen in a vacuum – they require looking ahead and anticipating emerging trends. This is where thinkers like the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman and institutions like the UN offer critical insights. Bregman’s work on systemic change, such as universal basic income, reminds us that bold ideas—when clearly communicated – can shift public opinion and spark policy change.

Similarly, the UNDP’s Signals Spotlight 2024 provides a powerful lens for exploring how visionary, collaborative approaches can drive global progress. By identifying trends like green energy or decentralised decision-making, it highlights the opportunities waiting to be transformed into solutions.

Looking Ahead

As we navigate an increasingly complex world, one thing becomes clear: solutions aren’t just about fixing problems – they’re about imagining possibilities. In 2025, Culture Shifts is dedicating its podcast season to “Solutions.” This series will spotlight individuals, businesses, and communities tackling today’s challenges with creativity and impact. From sustainable innovations to systemic shifts, each episode will explore stories of ingenuity and progress.

Join us as we discover what it takes to turn challenges into opportunities – and solutions into lasting change. And get in touch if you have any feedback or ideas, if you want to be a guest on our podcast – or if you need advice on finding the right solutions-based strategy.

* Moritz


Culture Shifts is the communications consultancy for a new present, based in Milan. We prepare companies for present and future challenges through strategic positioning, cultural research & solution-based brand consulting in times of cultural change, impact economy and artificial intelligence.

The Dubai Future Forum 2024, now in its third edition under the umbrella of the Empowering Generations theme, brought together over 2.500 experts, futurists, policymakers, CEOs, and visionaries from more than 100 countries to confront and solve pressing global challenges. From the conversations I joined, one thing is clear: we cannot predict the future. We must build it, and we can start by shaping the radical solutions and narratives of today.

How to create the future(s)?

The forum highlighted the need to move away from passive future thinking and towards active future creation. Dr. Patrick Noack, Executive Director of Future, Foresight and Imagination at Dubai Future Foundation, provided a compelling perspective during a fireside chat titled 'Concepts of Time: How Do They Shape Our Future?' alongside experimental philosopher Jonathan Keats and Anne Beate Hovind, Chair of the Future Library Trust.

“Humans share 60 % of their DNA with a banana and a day fly. But we can make an impact.” Dr. Patrick Noack.

While the panelists explored the importance of long-term thinking for a sustainable future, this humorous but profound reminder underscored that while we may share traits with simple organisms, our capacity for meaningful action is unparalleled. Rather than get caught up in forecasting, we need to focus on solving today’s challenges with urgency and creativity.

Discussions also explored protopian thinking, which emphasizes pragmatic, incremental progress over utopian ideals or dystopian fears. This approach was echoed by calls for "radical collaboration," particularly between the arts and sciences, to address complex global issues like sustainability and social equity.

Cathedral Thinking

One concept that stayed with me was Cathedral Thinking: committing to long-term projects that might outlive us. Just as medieval cathedral builders (Duomo, Milan; Sagrada Familia, Barcelona) began their work knowing they wouldn’t see its completion, we too must invest in solutions for future generations, even if the results – and technological tools – are decades or centuries away.

The Museum of the Future itself is a manifestation of this philosophy. Equally compelling was the forum’s emphasis on space exploration as a strategy for ensuring Earth’s sustainability, a vivid reminder that tackling crises such as climate change requires not only innovative technology but also ambitious imagination.

The Art of Positive Futures

Why are positive futures so hard to imagine, especially in today’s challenging global landscape? A recurring theme at the forum was that negative scenarios come easily –they’re rooted in fears of what might go wrong. Positive futures, by contrast, require us to envision and solve unprecedented problems.

This is where storytelling becomes a powerful tool. It’s not just about inspiring hope; it’s about building actionable blueprints for change. These stories demand imagination, intellectual rigor, and the courage to confront complexity.

The forum emphasised the role of storytelling in fostering political imagination –crafting narratives that galvanize action and invite collaboration. Whether envisioning equitable technologies or tackling climate challenges, stories are the bridge between bold ideas and collective action.

Stories that Shape

As a strategist and storyteller, I left the Dubai Future Forum reminded of the immense power narratives hold. They don’t just entertain or inform – they define how we act. But to wield this power responsibly, we need to move beyond overused platitudes like “The future is now” or “Building a better tomorrow.”

Instead, we should focus on creating spaces or platforms for genuine dialogue. At the forum, I saw the impact of diverse perspectives coming together to challenge assumptions, spark new ideas, and foster collaboration. Discussions explored critical themes such as longevity cities, the transformative role of AI in humanity’s evolution, reimagining childhood in a digital age, and the future of storytelling itself.

Take, for example, the call to prioritise radical solutions made by several key speakers at the event. These included innovations in food security, with alternative proteins and vertical farming emerging as crucial strategies to feed a growing population sustainably. Or the call for more inclusive technologies – systems that are designed to serve the underrepresented, not just the privileged. That’s the kind of storytelling we need – stories that aren’t just about selling an idea but about setting up stronger foundations together.

Looking Ahead

For brands, organisations, and individuals, shaping the future starts today. Ok, I use this narrative once – but the Dubai Future Forum reinforced its truth. While predicting the future is impossible, building it is within our grasp. Radical solutions require impactful storytelling, diverse collaboration, and unwavering dedication to progress. As I flew back to Europe, it felt like returning not just to another time zone but almost to the past – yet inspired and equipped with fresh ideas to drive meaningful change in communication and strategy.

Let’s connect. Whether you're tackling challenges in storytelling, communication strategy, or envisioning positive futures, I’d love to explore how we can work on impactful solutions together. What ideas or initiatives are inspiring you to think differently about the future? Let’s keep the conversation going.

*Moritz

As consumers increasingly seek authenticity and purpose, brands have the opportunity to engage in conversations that matter. Imagine spaces where the dialogue around culture, sustainability, community and social responsibility is front and centre. It's time for brands to embrace collaborations that prioritise impact over image, invite diverse perspectives and promote lasting relationships.

In this article, I’ll explore how companies and organisations can create these meaningful dialogues and turn cultural activations into powerful platforms for positive and long lasting change.

Subscribe now

The Era of Collaboration (x)

Today's business landscape is filled with brands activating their image through collaborations that often lack depth. Whether it's a luxury car manufacturer teaming up with a designer for a limited-edition vehicle, fashion brands collaborating with artists, or tech giants hosting panels with celebrities, the focus frequently skews towards promoting products rather than fostering substantial conversations. However, more companies are now realising the potential of cultural collaborations and platform-building to create deeper connections.

Companies like Google and Gucci have demonstrated how powerful collaborations can go beyond product promotion and social washing. Google's ‘Impact Challenge’ supports social issues, while Gucci's 'Changemakers' initiative empowers diverse voices in art and activism. These platforms show that brands can influence society by providing spaces for real dialogue and action.

Cultural Platforms

Many brands are increasingly recognising the importance of engaging with art and culture as a way of supporting intellectual and creative dialogue. To create meaningful collaborations, organisations must go beyond the usual suspects of marketing and design. Engaging voices from fields like art, science, and activism adds depth and relevance. For example, Prada’s "Prada Frames" symposium, curated by design studio Formafantasma, brings together experts from various disciplines to address issues like ecology and technology, creating a platform that pushes critical dialogue while expanding cultural agendas.

Other luxury conglomerates such as Kering and LVMH have embraced the arts through sponsorship of major art fairs, exhibitions and even built their own museums, to provide platforms for artists, thinkers and designers to explore contemporary issues. Examples are the Fondation Louis Vuitton or the Pinault Collection, which have become global hubs for cultural exchange and artistic expression. Of course, this strengthens the brand's cultural footprint in the first place, but also contributes to the broader conversation about the role of art in society.

Chanel's ongoing collaboration with cultural institutions to fund artist residencies demonstrates how fashion brands position themselves among the creative community by providing space and support for artistic and intellectual growth.

Creating Meaningful Dialogues

To create authentic engagement, companies can connect with the right people, initiate panels, workshops and events that prioritise dialogue over products. No one cares about the product, if a brand’s purpose is not right. By creating forums where diverse voices can share insights and experiences, brands can facilitate meaningful conversations that resonate with their stakeholders.

In addition, the use of digital platforms and social media can amplify these discussions. Companies can work with thought leaders and influencers to create online series or webinars focused on relevant issues. This approach not only extends the reach of the conversation, but also allows for real-time interaction and feedback from a wider audience.

Expanding Horizons

The outdoor brand Patagonia is a case in point, consistently pushing environmental activism ahead of its products. Now as a foundation, the brand’s commitment to donating a portion of its profits to environmental causes is an example of how brand identity can be aligned with real societal contributions, encouraging customers to participate in broader conversations about sustainability.

Another notable example of a company operating on a foundation-like model is Rolex, which reinvests its profits in various philanthropic initiatives. By engaging in meaningful activities and projects, Rolex not only promotes excellence in craftsmanship, but also supports education, sports, the arts and environmental conservation. This approach allows the watchmaker to align itself with important causes while maintaining its reputation as a leader in the luxury industry.

Easier said than done, all of this activity requires a shift in mindset - from viewing collaborations as transactional engagements to recognising them as real opportunities for meaningful change.

Organising for Impact

To start building these cultural platforms, companies can follow these simple steps:

1. Define a Purpose – What deeper societal or cultural impact do you want to make?

2. Build Meaningful Connections – Who are the collaborators that can contribute different perspectives and fit your company?

3. Empower Change – How can you create space for new ideas to flourish and inspire broader conversations?

Just start!

As brands face a more aware audience, the focus must shift from product-centric marketing to creating spaces that foster genuine, purpose-driven dialogue. In a world driven by consumerism, let's challenge ourselves to look beyond the bottom line and focus on what really matters - creating a better, more sustainable future for all. With less products, and more platforms for art, culture, societal & environmental issues and intercultural exchange.

Please let me know if I missed a recent initiative or brand engagement that has had significant impact. And get in touch if you want to find out how to define a purpose or find the right connections.

*Moritz

The podcast is now in its third season and when we were planning the new season earlier this year, we wanted to focus on a topic that could be of interest to anyone out there:

We wanted to talk to our guests about the new way of being creative in our time, shaped by digital, artificial intelligence and endless opportunities to enhance creative work.

In our “The New Creativity” season we invite thought leaders, visionaries and experts to share their insights on redefining creativity in our ever-evolving world. It's all about getting real insights and strategies for creatives, showing how this blend of culture and innovation can transform art, business, communications and more.

As the season has been running for a few months now, I wanted to give you an overview of the episodes we've already released - to give you a chance to choose what you want to hear, or what you explicitly don't want to hear.

Colour & cars

We kicked off with Stella Clarke, an innovative Australian engineer based at BMW Group's Munich headquarters, who has recently led her team to a groundbreaking achievement in automotive technology. They've created concept cars that change colour at the touch of a button, using advanced E-ink technology similar to that found in your favourite e-readers.

To explore how Stella's work is not only transforming cars, but also reshaping our relationship with technology, creativity, art and the future of design, listen to the podcast here:

🔊 Chameleon Cars: Stella Clarke, BMW Group engineer, on creativity, machine learning and colour-changing vehicles

Future trends

How can you creatively advise on what the future holds? That's a question I ask myself when clients want to know the next big trend, new movements or possible scenarios. To find out, I realised that there's a huge network of cultural strategists and futurologists out there.

In this episode, cultural strategists & trend forecasters Amy Daroukakis and Chloé de Ruffray provide a fascinating insight into their world of cultural strategy and trend forecasting. Their expertise spans many different industries, working with renowned brands such as LVMH, Google and other clients in the beauty, luxury and lifestyle sectors. Listen here:

🔊 Decoding Trends: Amy Daroukakis & Chloé de Ruffray on cultural strategy and trend forecasting

AI, art & tech

While researching how institutions and curators are using artificial intelligence in their work and research today, I thought about inviting the renowned curator and writer Hans Ulrich Obrist. I was delighted that he could fit a session into his busy schedule and I found out that at the Serpentine Galleries in London, where he's artistic director, AI, art and technology have gone hand in hand for 10 years.

In our conversation, we talk about how art intersects with these emerging fields. Hans Ulrich Obrist also explores the symbiotic relationship between artists and the corporate world, and discusses the crucial role that creatives play in shaping the vision of companies and boards as they face the challenges of the 21st century. Listen here:

🔊 Talking AI, Art & Technology with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Business ecosystems

Running a business also requires creativity. Not just in the concept, product or service, but in creating a sustainable network and ecosystem. Selling is out, ecosystem building is in! To delve a little deeper into this topic, I had the pleasure of speaking with Miruna Turbatu, Director of Brand & Business Ecosystems at TLGG Group - a consultancy and agency in Berlin.

In this episode, Miruna discusses the concept of ecosystems in business. She defines ecosystems at the level of corporate strategy, product and market, and growth. She highlights the importance of building sustainable and resilient relationships within ecosystems, as well as creating and sharing value. Listen here:

🔊 Navigating & Growing Business Ecosystems. A conversation with Miruna Turbatu

To sum up: It's exciting to hear how people in different fields and industries are working creatively - with the help of AI and other tools, or even without. The possibilities are endless. In our podcast production, AI is already being used to remove echo or delay in voices, for example, or to make the podcast sound nice and smooth on your favourite platform. It also helps us create questionnaires for our guests.

But it's still us humans who meet and talk to each other. And we will continue to do so. Stay tuned for more exciting guests like neuroscientists, cultural producers, futurists, artists, designers, entrepreneurs among others.

I'd love it if you'd give the podcast a listen and leave some comments or feedback. It's available on your preferred platform.

🔊 Culture Shifts Magazine Podcast

If you have someone in mind I should talk to, let me know! I'll be happy to consider it.

Thanks for your support.

*Moritz

Why am I even writing about it? What used to be a week focused on design and furniture, Milan Design Week, has in recent years shifted into a huge brand activation, product and collaboration circus, with car companies teaming up with design, restaurants hosting creative people or presenting new cookware, fashion brands diving into the world of interior and product design - apart from their clothing and accessories. I mean, you have to jump on the train, don't you?

But one major fashion house, instead of presenting a product or launching a special item, created a meaningful space for discourse and theory and stood out.

Being home

Now in its third year, Milanese fashion and philanthropy powerhouse Prada presents Prada Frames, a symposium curated by Formafantasma, the Milanese design studio led by Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi. The designers work with many brands on design & furniture, their studio investigates the ecological, historical and social forces shaping the discipline of design today – but for the Prada Frames format, they become hosts for intellectual, political and cultural exchange.

In the heart of Milan's fashion district, in this year's venue, the Bagatti Valsecchi museum, many international intellectuals, designers, architects, philosophers, researchers and thinkers came together in intimate keynote sessions to talk about 'being home', which was also the title of the multidisciplinary symposium.

With an introduction by design critic and writer Alice Rawsthorn before each session, speakers such as London-based architect Jayden Ali and biologist Brigitte Baptiste spoke about the complex relationship between our natural environment, human heritage and design. Actress and activist Isabella Rossellini gave a video interview about being creative in her home, and scientist Francoise Vergès discussed the power dynamics of water. It was refreshing to listen to the sessions and experience how our modern and future world is built around the idea and desire to be 'at home'. Whether it is to rest, to be intimate, to be productive or just to be – home has been, historically, a space where socio-economic norms have been shaped – and it will be also in the future, hopefully.

A space for discourse & knowledge

Leading AI researcher and artist Kate Crawford gave a keynote speech on the rise of artificial intelligence in our homes and how it is changing the political, power and work relationship. In other words, even if AI can potentially help you be smarter, the downsides and negative impacts on society and the environment are greater. Several other panelists throughout the days also explored our relationship as humans to nature and technology, and how our ongoing process of becoming cyborgs is already well advanced in some societies.

Go critical thinking

I was lucky enough to be able to attend several of the presentations and talks and was surprised at how unfiltered and open each of the panelists was. The audience was confronted with uncomfortable topics and truths. Because I’d say, design is more than just products, design is what shapes the world and how we as humans define our environment, whether by hand or with the help of technology.

Prada Frames was neither a presentation of products nor an introduction to new commercial ideas - it was a pure collection of research, vision and the sharing of knowledge and wisdom by humanists, at a time when critical thinking is increasingly being swallowed up by the surface of visually appealing goods and images or by the rise of technological developments.

In short, sharing knowledge and creating spaces for discourse is, in my view, currently the best marketing you can do. And finally, wouldn’t we all like to wear the sleek outfits worn by the hosts, Formafantasma, and some of their guests, who wore nothing but Prada during the sessions?

*Moritz

All the sessions of the symposium have been recorded and are now available now on KoozArch and on all podcast platforms.

Of course, as in other European and global cities, there's plenty of advertising. On billboards, in bus stations or even stamped on the pavement. But this is not what makes me wonder. It's about the design of squares, the branding of landmarks, streets, parks and other public spaces.

Brands – the modern religion

Passing the historic and beautiful Duomo, which is constantly being renovated, you see a giant Samsung screen advertising the company's products 24/7. OK, it's on the back of the church, but it's still very present. The same thing happened to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona a few years ago. I turn around, huge Gucci logo on a house here, and a Martini sign there. I'm not saying there shouldn't be sponsors on the foundations of landmarks - I'm just thinking of more subtle methods that suit the purpose and the landmark – and our eyes.

Well, it's about money, of course. In cities where there is money in the public purse, or at least distributed for the public good, local authorities should be more active, and in those where there is less money, companies can provide support.

Public philantrophism

As a result of politics (yes, really) in Italy, the public sector seems to be more invisible, which is why the big fashion houses and, apparently, Chinese tech companies have been taking over the maintenance of important landmarks for many years. Examples include the Colosseum in Rome, restored by TOD'S Diego della Valle, and the Spanish Steps by Bulgari.

In 2017, Starbucks planted palm trees in Milan's famous Piazza Duomo - a controversial move, presumably to persuade the city to open a coffee shop by the American chain. (In 2018, it was the first to open in Italy). Now the palm trees were being removed and new trees planted. This time with the full sponsorship of the Zegna fashion house. Of course it adds value and looks nice, but the interests here are too one-sided. I totally agree with the planting of squares, but how can brands and municipalities find a nice balance?

Ad and branding free zones

So as we are already surrounded by too much advertising and brand names, I plead for some public ad-free zones. Sure, they don't have to be in the heart of the city, like Milan's Duomo or New York's Times Square - that wouldn't be in anyone's interest, given the number of people who visit and take photos there every day. According to the website EnjoyTravel, Milan was the most Instagrammed place in the world in 2023. I won't give you the numbers, but it must be a lot.

Anyway, back to the ad-free places, where there is no brand logo on a building, no bench that I can sit on thanks to brand x, or a green park that I can walk through because this company paid for it and planted flowers with the company's logo on them. No, just a nice place paid for by the government and a detox for our oversaturated brains.

You’re not even from here

After I posted on LinkedIn about this topic, to invite people to share ideas or strategies on how to find the right balance between the public and the companies that invest in these places, I got different feedback. Some said I should not talk about this as I'm not even from here or a politician (fun fact: Many of the Italian politicians aren't even politicians) and some wondered how this kind of sponsorship was happening in Milan. A representative of the city of Helsinki (capital of the happiest country in the world for the 7th time in a row) posted that in Helsinki the city owns most of the land and this kind of "branding" wouldn't be possible - at least for the moment. She now sees it as very controversial. I'm not comparing Helsinki to Milan or Italy to Finland, but you can always learn something or be inspired.

Call for ideas and discussion

One idea could be not to let every brand that pays enough take over public spaces or decide its programme, but to propose projects that help the public and the citizens. This would also benefit the brand's image in a more sustainable and long-term way. In an 2014 interview I found in the Guardian about city branding, Afdhel Aziz, former brand director of Absolut Vodka, said that brands that want to experiment need to "tread carefully" and not approach it from a "selfish" point of view that is mainly concerned with the size of the logo. In fact, it is not just about positioning brands to score points in terms of brand repair, but how to create a delightful consumer experience so that people will voluntarily tell others about it, Aziz said.

What do you think? And do you know of any places or landmarks that have been created or redesigned primarily by companies or brands?

I'd love to read your comments or views on how this issue is handled in your city and country. You can also send me an email.

Until then, I don't go to church and I don't buy Samsung. Lol.

*Moritz