Wastage as a Misunderstanding

Wolf Lotter is speaking at Schloss Köngen at 20th September 2005 

Wolf Lotter, 43, is responsible for the department of development and main focus for the business magazine, Brand eins. He writes the monthly leader for the main focuses of Brand eins. His new book was published by the Münchener Hanser Verlag in spring 2006, which was dedicated to the discussion of the unit system versus the variety system.

Wastage as a Misunderstanding

“Why is it so difficult for Germany, once such a proud and successful industrial country, to catch up with the new economy? 

Why do political and social forces so visibly fail to learn from global models and adapt their own national economies, as well as everyday life in companies, to the new times? 

My thesis is as follows:

Because in no other cultural sphere do unity and simplification play such a huge role as here. 

Germany has internalised the industrial principle on all levels. Growth and advancement still apply as the result of a linear process. Meaning more and more of the same. If that no longer works, as it has not since the 1970s, old virtues such as miserliness and compulsive saving, the most unpleasant effects of protestant ethics, are becoming new identity founders. However, success cannot be saved, and omission creates no new prospects. The word “wastage” has become a faux-pas in industrialisation. Before, it didn’t mean anything bad, as it doesn’t now but rather it describes the most important function of the new economy: diversity and variety. In this context, wastage means creating a lot in order to have a solution ready for as many problems as possible.

In the past two hundred years, we have learned everything about lumping together. Instead of exhausting what is possible through different requirements and abilities, we have created a state and a society aimed at the blatant standardisation of an abstract plan. For some time, this will go well, as standardisation initially provides an overview. However, with time, from unity will come simplicity.

Wastage is the constant of capitalism as well as nature. Just as with a non-regulated, virtually strangulated market, the evolution provides an unmanageable versatility of forms and variations, and the number of paths leading to a result is potentially unlimited.

Diversity and variety do not demand homogeneous solution approaches and plans, but rather the right selection in terms of commercial ability. This is a demanding process, during which the responsibility returns to the individual.

It isn’t “simplify your life” that is heralded as a solution but rather the ability to draw the right conclusions through active knowledge about behaviour. Anyone who wants to progress must think in an extravagant way.”