Sociologist, Management Researcher, and Economic Journalist
Holger Rust combines decades of scientific research, practical consulting, and journalistic experience to convey leadership, future research, strategic thinking, and professional elegance in a rapidly changing economy in an understandable and entertaining manner through inspiring lectures.
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Born in 1946, he studied sociology, political science, and philosophy from 1965 to 1970. At the age of 24, he earned his Ph.D., and by 30, he completed his habilitation. This was followed by an academic career at universities including Hamburg, Salzburg, Vienna, and Hanover, where he taught for many years as a board member of the Institute of Sociology until his retirement. Even after his retirement, he continued to research, focusing on economic sociology.
Central to his work is the theme of so-called future research, both in the academic and practical aspects of his teaching, research, and consulting activities, as well as his active journalistic work.
His now decades-long consulting activities and research collaborations as a Scientific Consultant – partly in responsible positions, but always in long-term engagements – with corporations, medium-sized enterprises, and political institutions have led to profound practical experiences in various economic and economy-related fields of action.
He is the author of influential, mostly empirically based professional and non-fiction books on dealing with unpredictable challenges, on the attitudes and ambitions of emerging leaders, as well as on the fundamentals and techniques of applied research. Additionally, he is known as a prominent critic of so-called “trend research,” to which his precise, entertaining, and esteemed polemics are dedicated. The latest and most current of his more than 35 works are listed at the end of this brief portrait.
Furthermore, he has decades of experience in journalism, including:
– from 1993 to 1995 as an advisor to the publishers for the rebranding of Austria’s second-largest daily newspaper, Kurier;
– in 1994 and 1995 as a member of the editorial board of Austria’s leading business magazine, trend, also for organizing a relaunch; subsequently there from 1995 to 1999 as an author;
– from 1999 to 2002 as an exclusive author for Manager Magazin (Spiegel-Verlag Hamburg);
– from 2008 to 2019 as a columnist and author for Harvard Business Manager; as well as numerous other journalistic and feuilleton contributions.
In this way — and in exchange with numerous graduates — the insights and experiences of a long professional life in teaching and research, as well as from long-term engagements in science, consulting, and journalism, come together. The result of this work is reflected in his two lectures (see the descriptions), both of which are considered an inspiration for future-oriented management in a rapidly changing economy.
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The lecture begins with an entertainingly illustrated tour d’horizon through the repeatedly emerging “new normalities” of the past decades and draws the conclusion formulated in the title: Nothing is more transient than the future.
Transformations, crises, but also successes and planned innovations always lead to unexpected consequences – both in a positive and negative sense, or simply modifying and opening up new options. With every solution, with every concept, the process begins anew. The consequences are different and often contradictory for various actors. The quality of futures is never the same for everyone.
Based on this diagnosis, the question of appropriate responses to unplannable consequences and undesirable effects of meticulously planned futures comes to the fore.
So what is possible?
The significance of “cultural algorithms”
Initially, it is about identifying latent modules, patterns, and development paths that manifest in countless variations and determine everyday life. The school of thought underlying this approach and Holger Rust’s work traditionally refers to these modules and their composition into patterns as “Pattern Variables” – in later terminology also as “cultural algorithms.”
This is not to be confused with the so-called “megatrends” often propagated by trend researchers in loud and meaningless Anglicisms. The mainstream of econometrics, attempting to model futures mathematically, or the attempt to outsource such models to the domains of Artificial Intelligence, repeatedly fails demonstrably.
Third Culture in Management
In this lecture, Rust confronts both schools of thought in an amusing-essayistic and simultaneously scientifically grounded manner. Surprising examples are drawn upon, which also document the history of spectacular mispredictions. The result is a plea for a “Third Culture in Management.”
In this context, constructive and individually variable concepts of serious foresight research are discussed as the basis of any planning. The most promising solution, according to the consensus of all serious research approaches since Igor Ansoff’s concept of “Weak Signal Research” in the early 1970s, lies in the anticipatory work of a diversely composed group of people (workforces, associations), led by inspiring leaders.
Solving a “Wicked Problem”
On this basis, the tricky (because seemingly contradictory) task of any management can be solved:
On the one hand, to develop organisational routines that ensure long-term economic success;
On the other hand, to organise the possibility of flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges in the short term.
The Personnel Question
In the end, the most important contradiction is addressed: The fact that many young professionals are willing to integrate innovative thinking patterns into economic everyday life and many leaders theoretically welcome such an innovation culture. At the same time, it becomes apparent that these needs of the demonstrably existing “mentality milieu” are often not realised.
Why?
Because there is another problem: Power lies in the hands of a milieu-dominated, key figure-dominated, and digitalistic system, in which quarterly profits are more important than securing long-term success. Holger Rust’s research shows that this leads to an increasing reluctance among young people to take on leadership positions with personnel responsibility. Many companies thus fall into the trap of latent conservatism.
The ancient secret of professional elegance and inspiring leadership
Keynote speech, dinner speech, impulse for entertaining-thoughtful conclusions and the transitions from the day’s programme to inspiring conversations in the evening.
Whatever topic shapes conferences, anniversaries, customer events, or strategy retreats – a central question always arises: What characterises the ideal leader of the 21st Century Economy, in view of the turbulence of unplannable transformation processes and unexpected crises? In their demeanour, style, actions?
Holger Rust explores this question and bases his equally entertaining and surprising plea for professional elegance and charisma on two sources:
his own research work on the views and intentions of the next generation of leaders over more than 30 years;
and a book that was published almost 500 years ago, specifically in 1528: Il Libro del Cortegiano. It was written by the envoy and nobleman Baldassare Castiglione as a record of four (fictional) evenings of conversation at the court of Urbino in the Italian Marches in 1507.
Unlike Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli (1509), the Cortegiano is not directed at the top leadership circles, but primarily – in today’s terminology – at the second and third management levels, those crucial tiers where leadership talents grow.
Castiglione develops a humanistic model of the ideal Cortegiano, based on differentiated education, from which strategic arguments and solutions for unexpected problems can be effortlessly formulated in discourse, without superficiality or affectation. Characters that – to use Castiglione’s famous term – embody Sprezzatura. This fosters trust and creativity.
This essentially means that acquired competence, elegance, and composure appear natural – effortless, casual, sovereign. Even today, an internet search yields millions of hits, mostly only in the context of fashionable attitudes, which often represent only superficial expressions of artificial characters. It is important to distinguish between superficial affectation and genuine Sprezzatura.
Il Cortegiano is also a book about strategy in times of crisis, which is not surprising, as the era of Machiavelli and Castiglione was marked by conflicts, wars, and feuds, and knowledge became obsolete at a rapid pace, even before new knowledge could unfold its effect.
The relevance for today’s trends such as “key figure formalism” (often blind trust in AI solutions) on the one hand and the countless guides for managers and self-proclaimed futurists on the other is obvious.
Particularly interesting is the role of the ladies at court, which is humorously staged and simultaneously hotly debated. The conversations are inspired and moderated by two court ladies: Elisabetta Gonzaga, then Princess at the court of Urbino, and her sister-in-law Emilia Pia. This part of the discourse provides surprisingly modern insights into a humanistic ethic of professional life through education and experience of mature, elegant, and composed personalities, regardless of gender. According to Castiglione, the ladies embody the virtù of Sprezzatura in its purest form.
Castiglione and his messages are worth rediscovering, especially in times when the loss of wholeness, sustainability, open exchange without aggression, and communal problem-solving is increasingly threatened.
Holger Rust addresses this message in an entertaining, inspiring, and festive lecture about the legacy of a nobleman and envoy at the court of Urbino – that city where the eternal values of the Renaissance were to be realised in every respect – illustrated with the latest research findings.
The duration: one hour, to the second.
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