00:00:00

Jan Pfister: Yes. Yes.

00:00:02

James Redenbaugh: Great. This meeting is being recorded. How you guys doing? Good to see you. So sorry to miss you last week my scheduler was totally messed up.

00:00:15

Jan Pfister: Okay. Well, yeah, no worries. It was Friday evening so we, we had an early Friday evening.

00:00:23

James Redenbaugh: Nice.

00:00:24

Zachary Sherman: Yeah.

00:00:24

Jan Pfister: That's no good. Yep. How good it works out today?

00:00:31

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. How are you today?

00:00:35

Jan Pfister: Yeah, can't complain. Things moving forward.

00:00:40

Zachary Sherman: Same here.

00:00:40

Jan Pfister: Same here. Yeah. The weather is kind of not too bad, not too great. So it's like a Monday.

00:00:52

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Here too. Bit over. Had some beautiful days this weekend though.

00:01:01

Jan Pfister: Yeah, actually here too, so really nice. Yeah. And by the way, so you said you go to the a. How do you say it? A Source. Aers.

00:01:14

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:01:15

Jan Pfister: That's a really beautiful place. Yeah, I think my, my brother in law has just been there. I haven't yet talked to him about it, but I looked up the pictures. I mean that is quite good.

00:01:30

James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, we're excited. We're gonna check out two of the islands there and we just, we were just booking our hotels this weekend and looking at. Oh. Adventures to do.

00:01:45

Zachary Sherman: Exciting. It's very exciting.

00:01:48

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So I'm excited to talk to you guys about the pro social market economy and curious if you've had time to have a look at the. The questionnaire I sent you and happy to get into. Get into that today and see where this conversation takes us. So what's, what's top of mind for. For you guys and where should we start?

00:02:20

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I mean we have been thinking about the questions and tech made some notes. I think something we found kind of, you know, we speak kind of for. With one voice in this. So I mean TAC is basically supporting. Supporting here the development and so we, I think we agree more or less more or less with what we, what we think. Yeah, I mean some of the questions are quite challenging, some are quite straightforward and I think it needs also you know, your input of course because you know, with the colors but what is needed or with how this feels or which, which logos or which features to repeat and all these things. I think this, I mean that's. We need to have kind of. Yeah. A discussion about these things. But yeah. On a general feature. I mean how do you prefer to do this? Do you want to go with us through the question one by one or do you want me just to reflect a bit on things that just come up based on the questionnaire and then go through. Can't hear you now. I think now it's came. Now it came back.

00:03:57

James Redenbaugh: It's back.

00:03:59

Zachary Sherman: Yeah. Now you're back.

00:04:00

Jan Pfister: Yeah, now it's back.

00:04:01

James Redenbaugh: Okay, great. I have a backup here. So, first of all, the questionnaire is really designed to. Be open. We don't nearly need to answer all of these questions. Whichever ones we can answer will be helpful. And it's also helpful to. To leave some empty because we don't need to focus on everything. And of course, questions around color and style and things like that can emerge. My cats have found the. The bag of litter. They love tearing open the bag of cat litter. If I leave it out. No, guys, this isn't. This isn't for you. Sorry about that.

00:05:08

Zachary Sherman: All good.

00:05:10

James Redenbaugh: Have to protect them.

00:05:12

Jan Pfister: So what does the cat do?

00:05:15

James Redenbaugh: The cat. The bag of cat litter that we put in the. In the litter box. They'll. They'll tear it open and litter will go everywhere.

00:05:25

Jan Pfister: Yeah, well, they want attention.

00:05:29

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, they're. We have three kittens. They're like six months old now. Oh, okay.

00:05:37

Jan Pfister: That.

00:05:40

James Redenbaugh: So, yeah, I think we can follow our. Our intuition here, see what. What feels answerable. And then also, if we feel like it, we can start looking at forms of visual inspiration or talking more about precedent or talking about site structure. So, yeah, I'm curious if there are questions in here that we can. We can start to address off the bat.

00:06:10

Jan Pfister: Yep. I mean, I can go give it a. Give it a go, and then, Zach, you just jump in, you know, and what you had also. So I think. And I think I go a bit here with your questions because, I mean, they are obviously for something there. Right. So I think the flat world, or I think overall kind of maybe first is. So there is something about paradigm shift which means to. We want to have a visitor of that homepage grasping paradigm shift. And paradigm shift is different from just a theoretical perspective that you change, you. You see things differently. So that's kind of, I guess, a challenge or a nice challenge to have. And something that came up was this flat, round world metaphor that we had, which is probably a simple way to make people, you know, think about it as one somewhere, as one story. But maybe it is also such a common example for paradigm shift that it would bit boring to have it as the main anchor of the whole page or, you know, repeatedly there. So maybe this is more kind of somewhere to bring the reader into this understanding the easiest, as everybody could relate to that when you traveled, when you plan a distance. But then another one that came up was maybe. Maybe there can be something done with, you know, dark and bright. So let's say if. If there are a lot of Dysfunctions, maybe a lot of suffering, a lot of troubles in the world. That might have to do. Also how we think about the world and how we act on it. And the paradigm, the economic paradigm that we have is a key feature of this. Then you would naturally assume that if you change the paradigm that things become a bit brighter and a bit lighter. So maybe something on that side could be done. And of course, with all these things, it's kind of tricky, right, because we want to be an approachable page where, you know, a business person can attach to and doesn't think this is kind of some religion here, as we said also. Right. So it needs to be done in a. That that's for, that's always the core. It needs to look like really approachable to the standard academic who is maybe, you know, very diligent, very rational and also the standard business person who is maybe in a way similar but just with a more business oriented mind at the same time. You want to get that change across. So I think this, this could be something to think about and if you want, I can go on a bit or if you have some. Yep, yeah.

00:09:13

James Redenbaugh: I'm curious if you can say more about the flat and the round world, because in a way we can think of this as, as world building. You know, to, to create a paradigm shift is really to create access to a new world. And we want to communicate that that world is there and worlds are big and the implications of this work are big. It's not a minor shift, it's a whole, it's a whole new world. So what is the terrain like? What are the, the rules of the new, of the new world? How does a character navigate this? You know, surely books could, could be, are being written about all of this.

00:10:23

Jan Pfister: And.

00:10:25

James Redenbaugh: You know, cities and nations could be built in this, in this world. But for a user who's just being exposed to this for the first time, how do we show them that this, this world is here and give them what they need to start their journey on it? Almost like a video game, I think is a good metaphor. When the game loads up and when the game is, is marketed, you start to get a sense of, of the world and what's possible there. And there was, there was one point where we went from 2D video games to 3D video games. And we're talking about this, this shift from the flat world to the, to the round world. And there's lots of intellectual distinctions that we could make about that and claims that we could make about what's, what's possible and what opportunities it opens up. But in terms of design, I'm interested in the, the, the emotion as well and how to make that evident. So yeah, just to say please, please share more about this world.

00:11:54

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I think, I think so. I think I mentioned last time with this flat world, round world metaphor. The world is kind of the same. It's just how you think about it is different.

00:12:05

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:12:06

Jan Pfister: That means this is already the paradigm is anyway or some paradigm is operating so or so. And if you would take natural science, the paradigm would be probably right. There will be regularities that are stable in a sense of, you know, stone falls always down. There are natural laws somehow. But then when you go to the social aspect, then the theory or how you think about it influences also the actual phenomena. So, meaning. Yeah, if you change the paradigm of what economic performance is and how you evaluate it, it means also you start acting differently. I guess that's, I mean that's already a bit further I guess than what, what you meant now. But now translating that more simple to. To the round world, flat world and the traveler. Yeah. So the world is always around, I guess, if that's the right paradigm. But if you think of it flat, you will design wrong distances. You will think you can't travel certain distances, which you actually could travel. You make mistakes in all kinds of forms, but you also often arrive at the location because kind of the map still works, at least locally. So in the same kind of, I think, you know, for example, building on individual optimization and putting people in competition and measuring individual performances this way, of course it leads to performance. Of course. I mean in sports competitions you get the best sprinters this way. But if you want to look at an organization, you want to have thinking of performance more relational. And I guess even, even the sports competitor that wins the competition will probably have naturally a good team behind with good relations that, you know, coach and the physio and whatever that's behind it as well. So without that or when the coach, when they, for example. It's actually a good example. You know, when you think of sports people that have not a good coach or whether it's kind of conflict in it, usually the sports person also doesn't perform well. So in that sense performance comes from relationship is the argument here. Yeah. So point to make is the paradigm is anyway already operating. The question is which one do we think is operating and based on which one do we make decisions? And assuming there is a better paradigm that would be more accurate, more reasonable, it would help to. We would Be making different decisions.

00:15:00

James Redenbaugh: Yes.

00:15:02

Jan Pfister: So and translating that again to an organizational environment, I guess we could visualize, you know, some kind of collective work, a team or whatever. It can pan out quite differently in that atmosphere. Whether you operate from one paradigm where you, let's say, put people in extreme competition and, you know, there's no social support or anything, versus in another setting where you think differently about it. You think of the group needs to perform well and work well together, and what the group does also to the outside world needs to be so that it is not exploitative. Logically, you have better investors that are more. Better in the sense of more loyal investors or more meaningful investors that kind of care about the meaning of a business. Same with employees. Same with anybody that is a stakeholder of it.

00:16:00

Zachary Sherman: And maybe at the risk of over explaining this, but maybe something that comes to mind for me is kind of a. Kind of a combination of the flat world and round world and light and dark is. James, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Stranger Things if you've ever watched that show. Okay, so you have. I mean, this is at least how I'm kind of visualizing this. You have these two different worlds, right, that Jan is. Is talking about and these different rules, like how there are many things that are similar, but the, the change in paradigm and the way that individuals are. Are acting is kind of this difference, you see, between the light and the dark. And now with this type of reference from media, I'm not exactly talking about all of the death and decay and vinage like that type of imagery, but definitely the, you know, the darkness and the, the lightness on the other side, which is kind of the, you know, the. Their normal world in which they live in would be this, this pro. Social world. But then the, you know, the other side, however you want to visualize it, could be something like that where it's this flipped world. So it's somewhat. It's somewhat between the flat world, round world metaphor and this light, dark kind of combines those two things. But perhaps that helps visualize kind of what Yan's talking about here.

00:17:37

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, definitely.

00:17:39

Zachary Sherman: Jan, are you familiar with that show?

00:17:41

Jan Pfister: No. No.

00:17:42

Zachary Sherman: Okay, well, it's like there's a, a parallel world kind of. That's like very much like what you're describing where you have one, okay, bright, normal, like functioning side, and then you have one side where it's a direct copy of the entire world. Like the buildings are there, some of the people are there, but everything is falling apart, decaying dark. Like there's evilness or whatever you want to call it, taking over that world, kind of that. That positioning. So I think it kind of makes sense visually.

00:18:18

Jan Pfister: Yeah. I mean, it could be somehow. I mean, just as. As an option, as we are opening here, it's. It could be somehow, you know, the same setting and you see the same setting, maybe more dark and, you know, things are exactly not working. And then kind of the same setting that kind of works in a different way, where people, you know, act differently, treat nature differently, treat each other differently, versus. Yeah. So maybe that's kind of a good way to look at it.

00:18:53

James Redenbaugh: So. Yeah. Zachary.

00:18:58

Zachary Sherman: Sorry.

00:18:58

Jan Pfister: Yeah. No. Yep.

00:18:59

James Redenbaugh: Oh, no. I thought somebody would say something. I'm curious what you guys thought of this image here. I also have a similar one here, trying to illustrate this concept that we talked about. Moving from, like, flat, orthogonal, rectilinear world. This geometry feels very kind of business as usual to me to this world that's not only round, but there's new kinds of interconnections. There's new kinds of colors as well. The lines are curvilinear. So does to you guys, does this speak to what we're talking about here? And this was a slightly different version over here.

00:20:08

Jan Pfister: I mean, now as you describe it, I see it a bit better. I mean, I wouldn't now from. Of course, visually see immediately here what is meant. Because that's. So. Just to understand so with this picture. The purpose of this picture is this kind of like a base or for a visualization of it or just kind of to play around with what we.

00:20:40

James Redenbaugh: Had more play, you know? Yeah, yeah.

00:20:46

Jan Pfister: I mean, I. I only now actually see that there are people. So, I mean, it looked very technical. It looked like. It looked like kind of some electricity grid with. Or something like that. So I wouldn't now naturally associate this with what we talk about here. But now when I see it clear that these are, of course, people.

00:21:09

Zachary Sherman: Yeah, I'm in the. I'm in the same boat. I think I see it more now. But something that I would be worried about is that there are perhaps some people that would prefer the left side anyway, that they're more. They would prefer it more organized, like, depending on what you're talking about. But just the feeling that you get from the image, there might be some that prefer the left.

00:21:36

Jan Pfister: Yeah, that's true, actually. I think actually that in a way it should actually be. The left side is more orderly.

00:21:42

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:21:43

Jan Pfister: Which maybe if the right paradigm works, things become more orderly than chaotic. So, yeah, that's A good,.

00:21:53

James Redenbaugh: Interesting, good association. Yeah.

00:21:56

Zachary Sherman: So.

00:22:00

James Redenbaugh: What might this world look like? What visually, if we were to use metaphors, what, what comes to mind? If you picture, picture the world adopting a pro social market economy, what could it look like 50 years from now compared to if it, if it didn't?

00:22:34

Jan Pfister: Yeah. Actually something that came to mind was if you think of a nervous system and if you think that in a, in a normal business context people are quite often, you know, stressed, put to work, kind of given the feeling that they're not enough, I need to work more or exploited or all these things, then I think from a nervous system perspective, probably people work quite often in the fight or flight mode. And, and I think if you would have a pro social paradigm working, that doesn't mean that this doesn't happen, but that there is maybe a bit more the, the other state, you know, kind of to one is flight or fight or the other is. What's the other one called? Are you familiar with, with this James, with the nervous system and the.

00:23:36

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, kind of.

00:23:41

Jan Pfister: So, so essentially, you know, more being in peace, being more relaxed while performing, for example, to be creative. Of course you can be creative under pressure quite a bit, but at the same time you need also, I guess, you know, being relaxed and get the intuition to come to you this way. So in, under, under I think the old paradigm it is probably built up that people are logically quite stressed. So this is one visualization or one aspect that could, could come in because of course if you have a pro social market economy working and works this way, it should affect, well being. It should affect, you know, being more sustainable in how we act. It should affect also compliance in the sense of people are more reliable rather than, you know, exploiting the rules for their benefit. I mean it goes into kind of, it's a more ethical organization in a sense because people and groups self regulate so people hold each other accountable. While the other way is you have a world where just everybody does what they, you know, want to do without, without any limits. And of course with digitalization AI, I mean there are these risks. You know, individualization becomes bigger. Holding each other accountable can, can be reduced. I mean it depends how it's used. They are. But I mean definitely that just to say that as well. Of course the AI discussion is also important here as it, as it will change the world quite a bit. And what kind of norms that you build into AI is again dependent on the paradigm that you use to just randomly bring up different topics.

00:26:01

James Redenbaugh: Mm.

00:26:05

Jan Pfister: I mean I can go on with Saying more things. You, you need to tell me. Yeah, there's plenty of things to say. So.

00:26:13

James Redenbaugh: So, yeah, but let's look at this together. So this is a very early mock up that I generated using your, your copy doc. It's got lots of rough edges right now, but can be helpful for us to see the, the structure and the layout that we're talking about. And on the homepage here we have this, you know, another way of looking at the, this dichotomy with the old paradigm, individual optimization, disconnected dots and then the pro social paradigm, they're getting connected in a nice way. And there's lots of ways that we could take this, we could even animate it in the background and kind of do something clever to show the organization. And I don't want to oversimplify things and have people think that it's simply about connecting dots because I know a lot, a lot else is, is going on here. And I'll also mention the, what happens in the HERO on the homepage is probably the most important and the area that we'll, we'll bring the most focus to. But it's important to not get hung up on that too much as well because we want it to emerge and reflect the site as a whole and the rest of the content. So this will, this idea will be in development for some time. We don't need to figure it out today at all. Just, you know, beginning the conversation about that. So looking at the rest of the site as well, we frame the problem over here, we talk about the architecture. I think that this is a really helpful section. We can come up with different icons to illustrate the domains of the framework, which can help people kind of digest and understand what's it practically, what this is and what's being talked about. How pro social design reshapes the market itself. Variation, selection, retention, this. Similarly, you know, we could decide how to illustrate these things, make it visual,.

00:29:07

Jan Pfister: Visual.

00:29:10

James Redenbaugh: Tailored entry points across for audience. And this is like, I, I don't think we'll say this on the website, but we can say something like, you know, is something inviting the user to identify themselves in here and find the route that's right for them. And international research and practice collaboration, who's involved, little profiles, news and upcoming events. If we have those simple calendar call to action. Share your email Rich Footer. We can talk about a logo as well. How do we want to brand this whole thing? And then, and you guys can explore this later. It's, it's basically just taking your content and formatting it for the web, which I hope is helpful. Right now all the nav items are in the navigation. I don't know if we'll want all of these up here. Obviously they're. They're kind of jammed in here. We have a join today. Call to action. I don't know if that's the. The call to action that we're going to want, but. We want some kind of call to action up there so we can think about that. News and events. Simple calendar evaluation tools, toolkit, roadmap. So yeah, curious how it is for you guys to see a mock up and what feelings you have about it so far.

00:31:13

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I think it gives a first structure which is really good. I think color wise. I think it is.

00:31:24

James Redenbaugh: It's.

00:31:27

Jan Pfister: Too. Not fresh enough somehow. It's in my view it's kind of a bit. It's kind of like a newspaper that kind of, you know, got old and bit yellowish.

00:31:40

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:31:41

Jan Pfister: So. So I think it needs to be something a bit more. Yeah. Fresher that way otherwise. Yeah. Zach, what do you think?

00:31:59

Zachary Sherman: I mean, I think it's cool to see the layout of the slides already, you know, at least in a rough draft form like this. Thought the calendar was a nice touch too. I'm in agreement with the colors. I mean to me it kind of seems like a. Maybe a museum's homepage or something like just the color scheme, how it's laid out, but something like that or a library. So I'm with, I'm with Jan on that. I'd like to join today. I mean it's going to look different, but each page, the way each page is kind of lined up, I think is. Is pretty nice. But we can get there with the color scheme and I, I'm not sure. Jan, how do you feel about the. I don't know what to call it, the animation on the homepage, but I know to not get stuck on that because we're gonna be working with that.

00:32:53

Jan Pfister: You mean the animation with the figure with the dots and the lines?

00:32:57

Zachary Sherman: Yeah. Is that something that you like or.

00:33:01

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I mean it's quite so. If, if we speak here of humans and how they act, it becomes quite technical here to see. I mean as you said yourself, right. So you see dots and lines. This is kind of. I mean, I get it, what's there. But maybe if that can be illustrated in some way, you know, more like kind of with this. What we described is a bit essentially before with kind of, you know, do we care about our own? Do we. I mean thinking this way, are we individuals separate, you know, on this planet doing our stuff, or are we all connected naturally? Because you can't do any step basically without something that somebody else has done for you or in one way or another.

00:33:53

James Redenbaugh: Right.

00:33:53

Jan Pfister: So we use here technology as done by somebody else. All kind of, I mean, anything if you think has been done by somebody else.

00:34:02

James Redenbaugh: So.

00:34:02

Jan Pfister: And I think we are not so aware of this because we think we are doing all that stuff ourselves. So from the performance measurement systems and how we evaluate ourselves from first school year onwards, basically. So can this be. You know what I mean? Can this be more visualized in a way? Because I think the reader needs to think a bit what this means. Quite abstract visually. Yeah, I mean, it looks kind of like, okay, it's not dots, so it's lines.

00:34:42

James Redenbaugh: Exactly, exactly.

00:34:46

Jan Pfister: I mean, it is, it is good. Maybe it needs to be. I, I'm, you know, we are working here. I don't know what, what's right and wrong. Just testing out what are the possibilities.

00:34:58

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. And we'll play with lots of things and see what emerges. And I really like this sentence, these sentences. In an interdependent world, performance no longer comes from optimizing individuals. It emerges from the quality of the relationships that connect them. So some visual that shows illustrates those relationships, which perhaps shouldn't be reduced to lines between points, but it could be more of a tapestry or a weaving or a meshwork or a network or. There's all kinds of possibilities there. But I think that we do want to find a way to illustrate relationships and what can emerge from there besides looking at people together, you know, or stock photos of people, people together, which might say relationship, but would be pictures of individuals. When we see stock photos of people, we don't, we don't think, oh, look at their relationship together. We think about these, these individuals. And the point is to bring attention to, to the space between. So we'll, we'll definitely find ways of playing with that and, and hopefully visual.

00:36:51

Jan Pfister: Maybe just before we continue as you, as we speak. I think this is really key for this, what we do here. The, the core is bringing out these relationships and relations. And I think that's also how we exp. I mean, that's how we expand this paradigm in a. In a different direction. And I think important here is also to say it's not just kind of, you know, to have. It's not about just having good relationships with everybody. I think it is having clear relationships also. Right. So it's kind of. When you think of the CDPs, it is about protecting from relations that exploit. For example. That means also sometimes it can also be kind of protecting, let's say an organization or a group from a relation that is exploitative. Or it can be. Yeah, so. Or let's say an employee, you know, that is, that is despite several times being warned or kind of have been making issues, it's maybe needs a separation from that group. So it, it's not just like oh we are all nice. It means relationships need to be managed to the good for the group, for the self regulation and of course that everybody, you know can flourish and be the best. But that means also the other side of it so that it doesn't become just flowery here in the sense. I mean just as to nuance that a bit. And of course these CDPs are essentially the diagnostic for making this kind of what. What is the shared purpose, an identity that such a group has or group relation between different people. How does the group is it able to self regulate which that contains those elements that I just talked about. And another aspect that is really crucial for our version of this is that the CDP1 has this sustainability aspect in it because. And I think that would be also good if you have those, you know, four. If you think of four logos or four visualizations of those four principles that it becomes clear that the shared purpose needs to be in alignment with sustainability principles because otherwise you can create a mafia and be pro social and you know, so that. That needs to be clear in the forprint for so.

00:39:32

James Redenbaugh: Cool. Great lot to digest there and sit with. I want to bring our attention back for some time to the visuals and this isn't meant to be a visual. Yeah, I mean it could be a starting place for, for the visuals. But I'm curious about aesthetic and I'll close that for now. You mentioned freshness. You shared some precedence in the document. But visually what qualities do you think this website should have? And are you having any ideas about color, typography, things like that?

00:40:41

Jan Pfister: Yeah, well, I think what we discussed or already also wrote I think is more bright, like fresh as you just said. You know, I think I, I really want to see also what, what. What comes up. But I think Doug, we've discussed that before. So it's. I mean I had in in a way, you know, bright white background, black, blue, red. But that's very classic. Of course that kind of is probably not what's the best version. But that's kind of what comes to mind just to have clarity, you know that you. That when you get on the page, there is clarity and at the same time there is visual visually that it looks really well. Well done. Right.

00:41:38

James Redenbaugh: So.

00:41:38

Jan Pfister: So both, you know, it shouldn't be kind of everywhere a lot of stuff going on so that you lose it in it more kind of you go it. It's very clear, organized. But at the same time that there are visuals that while there's quality behind it, there is not just kind of some simple page. There is something that conveys the message, if that explains.

00:42:03

Zachary Sherman: Yeah, and. And also with the colors, I mean something that from the beginning we've been talking about is being different than the pro social world where they have their site, where it's kind of a black background with a lot of bright colors. And that's generally how their. Their site is. But something that we're focused on, like Jan said, is that we have it. It's bright, it's a light background. And perhaps with the, the current design of the website that you have right now, I mean, obviously we, we like a lot of the features, but the, the one thing being that there's that cream or that, that light brown that kind of makes it seem old and dated. So I'm just emphasizing again that bright new professional. But as far as typeface, I mean, Jan, did you like the. The typeface that was used on the website right now? Did you have any feelings about it?

00:43:12

Jan Pfister: How was it again? I mean, I was actually wondering what it would that be like. This performance is relational and then you know that it's bit kind of stretched. That was. That is probably not making it so clear. So I don't know the typeface for making it clear. Would it need to be. So there are different ones here anyway. Right. So one is times, I guess there in the performance is relational below and then further below it's a different font, the text. We are living through a period of overlapping challenges.

00:43:53

James Redenbaugh: Yes. Yeah. So we have a headline font and a body font. The body font is inter. The headline font is called Interaction Frances. They're both pretty. I mean, I like them both a lot, I use them a lot, but they're pretty generic right now. But in general, you know, one big typographic decision is if we want to have a serif font that has the articulations here or a sans serif font. I'll show you what I mean by this real quick. And we can have, we don't want too many fonts, but we can have multiple fonts. Interacting on the site together.

00:45:10

Jan Pfister: I mean something, something that goes to the through the mind now is if you think that there is a, you know, page, particularly for academics with resources and papers and, you know, information for academics, how to research this. And then there is a part of the page which is for practitioners to find simple entry to. What would that mean? Tools wise? I wonder whether there could be some font that is like, you know, the overall font for the page, but then also within those subcategories, for example, for scholars, Times New Roman type of writing, you know, kind of like a typewriter writing for the practitioners. Something more straightforward. Yeah, something like that. There could be a nuance of this or whether this is better to avoid and have it just one consistent form for everything is a question.

00:46:11

James Redenbaugh: I think it's a good idea. We can also find a font family that can do both.

00:46:29

Jan Pfister: So naturally we call it this Pro Social is kind of the S is small lettered. And yeah, that's also. So with the Pro Social homepages, as you have created that. So we are kind of corporate. So how to say. We are a different identity and a different project that is inspired of course by them and there is cooperation, but in a sense we have a different identity, I think.

00:47:05

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, totally. So here we use only sans serif fonts. It's very modern. I'm curious. Yeah. And we'll play with different things and give. Give options. But I'm curious if we could find a good serif font that can feel both modern, contemporary, relevant and also. Classic, academic, able to be used in. In multiple ways. But we'll play with this, we'll get into it. I'm curious in this, in this part here, this question around aesthetic direction, these two kind of scenes contrasted, I'm curious, which draws you more in relation to this project.

00:48:32

Jan Pfister: So you know, actually now as I look at it again, in a way, I think almost the academic part is a bit, the first, first picture, maybe a bit more modernized, but something like that. Whilst the. The part for practitioners and policymakers that will be more of a modern, modern, fresh organization. We be, you know, new built with some greenery around and you know, with a big park, if that makes sense. Yeah, because there is of course the academic side, you know, deeply into long standing decades of research from which we built, including, you know, evolutionary science and Ostrom and in performance management, 100 years of research or 50 years at least. So that's kind of one side of it. But then of course we study the practice and the practice needs to be up to speed with the newest.

00:49:36

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So some kind of blend grounded in this and emerging into. Into more modern. I won't say futuristic, but.

00:49:56

Jan Pfister: And here I have actually one more question for you. So, because I was thinking, in some sense, what is almost need to be two web pages, you know, where. Where you have the academic side for this and where you have the practitioner side, not to say to do two pages, but you know, to what extent?

00:50:24

Zachary Sherman: Like how separate should they really be?

00:50:27

Jan Pfister: Yeah. How much separate? Yeah,.

00:50:33

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, it's valid.

00:50:44

Jan Pfister: Cheers.

00:50:46

James Redenbaugh: Cheers. I think it could work well to have a complementary aesthetic. Not necessarily super contrasty black and white, but different color pattern palettes, different font variations. I wonder if that's just a Google Doc. This site, for example, is very different. Different pages here have entirely different color schemes and feel within the same structure, but it. The whole color scheme changes, making it feel almost like a different. A different website. Perhaps we don't want to be that dramatic, but it's one. One possibility.

00:52:12

Jan Pfister: Yeah. In a way it is an interesting. So if you have kind of the overall surface and then you click on the research site and then it appears a bit different, of course, I mean, I think it should be still clearly one identity for the whole homepage so that it doesn't feel like there's kind of some patchwork of different sites. But to create a bit of a difference might actually be quite useful for. Because I think something I want to avoid is that this becomes kind of, especially in academia, seen as some consulting page. It should be because that's a bit the risk, you know, because we make paradigm shift and when you think of paradigm shift, it affects naturally to practice and you want to influence practitioners, but still it's an academic thing that we do here. So in that sense, if the academic part makes it really visibly clear, there is, you know, serious research to be done on this. And at the same time there are features that kind of can inspire practitioners or. Out of which of course can be advising and consulting to some stand. But it shouldn't end up. It should. Should be both, if that makes sense.

00:53:39

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, I want to share a Pinterest board here and see. If there are aesthetic directions starting to resonate. So I'm just beginning to collect a few things here. There's some like, solar punky, geodesic visions for the future. I don't know if we want to go that route, but could be cool. But what I want to focus on first is picking a. An aesthetic direction and. And a visual language. I feel like there's going to be a way to play with shapes that could be advantageous here. This is a. Some kind of scientific diagram. But I like the. The isometric nature of these forms. The. The hexagonal geometry and. And the. The details in that. I don't know some. Something about that is drawing me. We could also play with visuals. This is a dark aesthetic. I don't know why it won't let me either way zoom in on this or I think.

00:55:27

Jan Pfister: Yeah. I mean something that comes just to mind now as you show these. These things. One is. Yeah, that's really cool. One is that discussion we had. It's about planet. But I think one more that comes to mind is it's about nature maybe having you know bringing in more of nature trees or water or whatever animals. But of course so that it kind of relates to companies and organizations and people. But you know that kind of that it's not detached that.

00:56:14

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

00:56:17

Jan Pfister: But yeah I think trees came to mind for some reason. But I mean I don't. I don't mean that there should be now a tree in front of the page. So it's just. I think visually that nature plays a role here as we talk about sustainability as well.

00:56:34

James Redenbaugh: Mm.

00:56:38

Jan Pfister: And planet. And the bigger system makes sense. Yeah but bigger.

00:56:49

James Redenbaugh: Do we think we want a logo for pro social market economy? A form to represent the concept, A singular form.

00:57:05

Jan Pfister: Yeah. I mean if we come up with a. With a really great visualization that will be. Would be of course useful. I guess it would need to include these things that we discussed about the relations planet. I mean in the ultimate purpose of this project is to think of the future of humanity and nature on this planet. Of course you can say beyond that planet as well. But I guess that's what it is and how people interact and do business or however they do the economy in the future. And I guess another point of it is that pro social market economy has to do with cultural evolution in the market. So through more self governance than pure regulation or pure markets.

00:58:16

James Redenbaugh: Cool.

00:58:20

Jan Pfister: I mean this just for the record because I guess you record all this. I guess this. This is the core of. Of this is to say you can't create collective performance only with mark pure market transactions without any social norms in it. Nor can you have nor can you regulate everything. So you need to create conditions for self regulation in organizations. And the way you do it is by and through economic performance kind of that it makes sense for people to.

00:58:56

James Redenbaugh: Do this.

00:58:59

Jan Pfister: That you perform better actually when you create cultures where self regulation happens to achieve shared purposes and the current systems often undermine self regulation.

00:59:14

Zachary Sherman: And of course all of this is going to be very easy to place into a stylized.

00:59:20

Jan Pfister: Of course, I mean I'm. I'm just saying it for the record because I know there is AI also helping. So. So yeah, true. But yeah,.

00:59:36

James Redenbaugh: I'm curious to ask. Not sure if this will be relevant to. To this process or not, but for my own understanding now I made this assessment for a website we're working on for the Hollow movement and we ask users to gauge their responses to these different questions. We have this one question on economic orientation and I'm curious how we would. How you would answer these questions. So maybe we could go through these really quick and then see what it produces. So market based. This first statement is market based solutions are the most efficient way to solve problems at scale. How. How true is this statement for you?

01:00:58

Jan Pfister: So the most efficient way. Yeah, I guess it is very efficient.

01:01:03

James Redenbaugh: Quite true.

01:01:04

Jan Pfister: Yeah. At least. Quite true.

01:01:05

James Redenbaugh: Quite true. Cool. We need fundamentally new economic models beyond markets.

01:01:22

Jan Pfister: Well, of course what our argument is here from now, purely speaking from our argument, this is not necessarily needed. You need a better culture in the market and a better, better environment in the market that builds up to self regulation. So you don't need necessarily all new because markets are an efficient way to regulate.

01:01:53

James Redenbaugh: So somewhat, A little.

01:01:57

Jan Pfister: Somewhat, yeah.

01:02:03

James Redenbaugh: I use market tools strategically when building towards new models. You probably do, yeah, completely.

01:02:15

Jan Pfister: Because it is a academic market here. And by the way, the previous one would be I think only a little bit.

01:02:22

James Redenbaugh: Only a little, yeah. Okay. Impact is the foundation. Financial models should serve the mission.

01:02:39

Jan Pfister: Yeah, completely true.

01:02:45

James Redenbaugh: Financial sustainability is the foundation. Impact flows from there.

01:02:54

Jan Pfister: So what is meant by financial sustainability?

01:02:59

James Redenbaugh: That's a good question. It's. I would probably put you on the lower end of the spectrum. It's to contrast this, you know that, that.

01:03:11

Jan Pfister: So yeah, no, it's the mission that. The content, the substantial mission.

01:03:16

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah. And then lastly, I hold financial rigor and mission alignment as inseparable.

01:03:29

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I mean, yeah.

01:03:34

James Redenbaugh: Here.

01:03:35

Jan Pfister: I mean in se. It's so. I mean this comes I think from the corner that you need to have the financials right then. And then you have also mission. And I guess our point is you have a mission and then the financials follow from this as well. I mean, somewhere there. Yeah, I guess it's difficult to understand the question.

01:03:55

James Redenbaugh: Cool, great. That's helpful. You're having me rethink these questions now as well. I wonder if there's a better mechanism we use. But. And we're just focusing on this one, it's placed us probably close to where I was before. I'm not sure what I should have looked at what my. Because I'm editing my own profile now. But the assessment basically gauges people in this territory between being grounded, being visionary, or being integrative. Most people in the hollow movement pro social world are probably going to lean integrative. And your. Your responses are definitely integrative and leaning towards visionary, which is great. A slight. A slight lean into the visionary. The three poles in economic orientation are market, which maybe we should rethink because market is not the enemy. So I want to come back to that. And then commons all depends.

01:05:27

Jan Pfister: I mean, I guess some people see it as an enemy. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole area in our fields that kind of sees market need to be abandoned. But I mean, there is a whole system in the world that works based on markets. So you will need to do really radical changes, I think, for this. Which is kind of a bit utopian then.

01:05:50

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, but it sounds like you're definitely bridging. You speak both languages, you can navigate conventional markets strategically while channeling resources towards new economic models, using each system to strengthen the other. Is that accurate?

01:06:11

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah.

01:06:14

James Redenbaugh: Cool. So if, if we were to pick one word to characterize the old paradigm other than market, what would it be?

01:06:36

Jan Pfister: Somehow the word control comes into mind. I don't know why. Everything is very controlled, but I'm not sure that. Just spontaneous. So I think it is. So the old paradigm is more. Zach, what do you think?

01:07:14

Zachary Sherman: I don't know. I was thinking. Maybe not like I don't want to characterize as. As the most important word being selfish or cutthroat or something like that, but I think that leans in the direction that we're trying to go.

01:07:36

Jan Pfister: Yeah, I think that that's really true.

01:07:38

Zachary Sherman: So it's not sure if it's the best one, but.

01:07:42

Jan Pfister: Yes. Well, I mean, I guess it goes there into self. Yeah, self interest. Overly building on self interest, essentially. I mean, that's the reason why we talk about pro social and why we came up with pro social as the counter for markets being self interested. That's why you have a lot of dysfunctionality, while self interest as such is not the problem, but only if it's too much.

01:08:17

James Redenbaugh: Cool.

01:08:18

Jan Pfister: So yeah, selfish. This is it.

01:08:22

James Redenbaugh: Got it. And can you tell me more about the. The market in pro social market economy? Why is. Why is it in the name?

01:08:39

Jan Pfister: Yeah, so the. So the idea here is that you have. Since markets are the way they are at this point, so more exploitative, more dysfunctional. In many ways not sustainable. And it's basically justified in the business world right now because this is the way we do things. We know we should do it better, we know we should be sustainable. But nobody does it or not many do it essentially because it's still justified in the culture to act differently. So that's why we talk about this cultural evolution that needs to happen in the market. And if you go backwards, basically. So how would such a cultural evolution happening be happening and how can it be influenced? It can only be influenced by convincing or making aware that economic performance is achieved through a cultural change in organizations where pro social becomes the driving force of economic value creation. So that's why the, the pro social market is more the. The vision or the evolution of the. The markets. Once a pro social paradigm is adopted more consistently, where more people, more organizations start realizing that organizing this way leads to better performance and then you have a competition for pro sociality, another competition for efficiency, purely so competition for service. You want to do the best service or people for your stakeholders.

01:10:27

Zachary Sherman: Maybe in a way it's a reminder that it's not a separate economy, but it is the market economy. It's not something that's operating outside of what's going on now. It is the new evolution of it would maybe be one benefit of having a market in the name as well.

01:10:47

Jan Pfister: Yeah, yeah. And I think the. If you think of the market economy and go to Africa, to Congo or if you go to US or if you go to Sweden or Finland, you might have very different cultures in the markets. You know, corruption, sustainability, social care. There are very different market cultures. And the pro social market economy is essentially an aspiration for a very particular market culture that you want to establish. And you want to establish it by going back to the smallest groups, kind of how do you manage teams, how do you manage organizations, how do we compete? And when it becomes visible, you know, since you are familiar with the pro social world page, you know very well. So if, if the pro social groups outperform the groups dominated by self interest, naturally you have changes happening. Naturally you would start having different business models, different business principles with different, you know, the pages that you create, I guess Holacracy and which ones. Yeah, you created I think right. Of those management principles that go in that direction. So you have much more of those sub meaning the, the, the values in the market change what you want to achieve. Very long story. It's not so easy to explain. But I mean the point is cultural evolution in the market achieved through a paradigm shift. In how we organize and how we compete and kind of making awareness of that in private and public sector and therefore having different performance measurement and management, how you design it, how you use it in a way that kind of. That supports the CDPs essentially.

01:12:52

James Redenbaugh: Great. Cool. They can understanding this more and more and will continue to improve my understanding and hopefully get to a place of seeing it more from the inside with you and feeling it. That comes with time. Yeah. I want to touch briefly on color. You mentioned avoiding corporate blues and activists greens. I think that we should try to pick a primary color and that leaves orange and red and yellow and purple fundamentally. And of course there's infinite, infinite color possibilities within all of that. Also non corporate blues and non activist greens. Is there a. Well, first of all, do you have a favorite color personally? Is there a color that represents what we're talking about?

01:14:22

Jan Pfister: Well, if you talk about my personal color, I think it has always been yellow, which is probably not the best color for this, so. But also blue.

01:14:39

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

01:14:40

Jan Pfister: What would be the best color for this? Tough to say to be honest. I think it's a tough choice to make. So blue is more cold often.

01:14:59

Zachary Sherman: Right.

01:15:00

Jan Pfister: Yellow, green is more. Is more hopeful. But then also it becomes quickly, you know, this is all just sustainability stuff, which it is, but it should be packaged, not that people realize it in. I mean, at first. Right. It should be. This is about performance and this is about creating money, making money, let's put it. I mean for. For business organizations. And then kind of through the package of it, it actually changes it to. Towards these things. So yeah, that leaves me. What else is there? Red. Red is too, I guess too fiery.

01:15:41

James Redenbaugh: Aggressive.

01:15:42

Jan Pfister: Yeah, too aggressive. So what else do we have? Yeah, I guess it is somewhere between. Between blue and green.

01:15:59

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Purple probably too mystical. Purple spin drift here. Orange. Yeah, orange. Gold is a possibility and we can play with things, see what it. What it feels like. And likely we'll have multiple colors interacting on the website. But I like to think about if we were to letter press a flyer in one ink onto white, white paper, what color would we choose for that? And I'm kind of between something in the blue green spectrum without, you know, teal is a little on the nose with the teal organizations and whatnot. But I love green. I love teals. We all love teal, turquoise, that spectrum. But there also might be something in the gold orange, yellow domain that. That could work well here as well. So worth. Worth playing with. I think that will end up pursuing two divergent styles at once. And Then we can gauge the validity of both and, and get your take and then either combine them or go in one direction or the other. And I think one, that one should be in the more warm hues because there's arguments to be made for that in this. There's a lot of warmth in this and the relationality is, is key. And there's arguments to be made for the cool earth tones as well. I have this stone on my desk. Let's see if it'll focus. No, that has like these turquoises and, and blues in there. So definitely could be something in there. We'll also want to play with how. How do we use images on the website? Is it going to be, you know, in my mind, I see one, one path where we avoid images and it's more about graphics, diagrams, and putting the words forward in a nice way, not giving people too many pictures to get lost in. On the other hand, we could play with using. Images in a key way to tell a story, not unlike what we do here, Clean aesthetic. And then we have some, you know, water, cosmos, earth imagery to tell a story about human centered organizations. And they've actually changed the text since we, since we picked these images. But you could see that there is a way to use image in ways that reinforce the story of what we're talking about. Images of, of Earth. We talked about images of people, images of relationship. And I don't have a clear answer for that yet, but I think I.

01:20:12

Jan Pfister: Could imagine a few, you know, pictures might be good to build in somehow. Like just looking at this, what you just showed with this landscape and some people, but maybe not, not too central somehow that it's more supportive.

01:20:30

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Cool. And then I wanted to ask, in the architecture, the design mechanisms, You mentioned that a bunch of times in Document, Would you characterize this framework as. Basically I want to ask what is, what does design mean for it mean to you?

01:21:25

Jan Pfister: So to what. What do you refer now? To read the question or.

01:21:31

James Redenbaugh: It's not a question in the, in the document, in your content, you know, you have the four design mechanisms and you talk about like designing these systems. And I think that there's something, One goal of the website I think we could articulate as an empowering users to design. I guess I want to ask, you know, what are they designing and how do we want to empower them?

01:22:15

Jan Pfister: So I guess it's the design mechanisms that we would give to practitioners, which are these kind of four functions of the CTP's like shared purpose and identity aligned with sustainability, self Regulation, self governance and multi level alignment. So I guess there the idea is to, to give practitioners an idea of what they need to look for, how this plays out in practice. When they analyze their performance management systems, it's basically diagnostic. So you can see what does your performance management system support and enable and what does it undermine of these criteria. And at the same time you can use it more interventionist in a sense of, or you know, to, to design a system aligned with it that you have basically the conditions in place in a team organization or organization that makes self regulation happening. So this is the broader picture that builds directly on, on evolutionary theory. And then of course you can go into much more detail and cases and we study now all kinds of places from private companies to universities to social work to, and so on. You can, can then study this and use it in all kinds of settings. Is that what you meant? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess that I think this would be cool to, to have. I mean the mechanisms are the same on the academic side or on the practitioner side, but for the practitioner side I think it would be cool if this could be illustrated, you know, to make it really approachable to practitioners.

01:24:14

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah.

01:24:17

Jan Pfister: And yeah, so I don't know how much information we gave you now on.

01:24:22

James Redenbaugh: That, but yeah, that's helpful. So I'm going to continue to digest this Also if there's other context you want to share with me, these studies or, or more writing. I mean there's a lot, a lot here that I'm still digesting but I want to come deeper into, you know, my understanding of these topics and then I'll share questions with you specific to my own understanding of what this is and make sure that I'm grokking it correctly so that we can design it together. And then we'll start to explore these aesthetic paths and see gauge if we're on the right track for starting to, to find the, the mood and the visual language that can work for us here. And then we'll, we'll start applying that, that visual language to the site design. But I'm definitely learning a lot here and feeling closer to what this is and how it wants to be defined online. So I'm really grateful for your guys's time in answering my questions and I can update our, our branding doc to fill in some of the questions that we've answered today. And then also if there's more in there, if you want to give it a peruse and see if other questions jump out at you, if, if other inputs can be answered. You can ignore the. The Yan Zachary separation. That's just for giving you each a space to input and see what the other has. Has added. But yeah, before we wrap here, I'm curious if anything else is. Is present for you guys, if there's anything else that you want to share about the project?

01:27:03

Jan Pfister: No, I think was. It's great to go through this and to develop these ideas. I guess it needs really this time to think what's actually needed and it makes you also think more what is actually, you know, what. What needs to be on that page. So from our side, what. What do you want us. So is it so you will send another questionnaire or you update the document. What would you. What do we need to do? What is our homework? Or do we have homework?

01:27:40

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, the homework is to spend more time with the questionnaire and see if there's more that you want to share in these questions. And I will, I'll just email you questions as I spend more time with the content. My own research to see if there's. If you can help me more with my own understanding of. Of the topic and if there's. I think that there's a lot on the. A lot that you've shared already. But if there's more, a pertinent paper or a study or something like this to help me understand this better, feel free to share that and I can digest that as well.

01:28:34

Jan Pfister: Yeah. Yeah, that will do. And timing wise, so do we we schedule a new meeting once you come back to us? Is that how we do it or.

01:28:44

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, maybe in about a week and a half or something like that. I think we should meet again and dig deeper.

01:28:54

Jan Pfister: Okay, good. Then we'll schedule. Yeah.

01:29:02

James Redenbaugh: Okay, great. Good.

01:29:05

Jan Pfister: Zak, you have anything missed?

01:29:08

Zachary Sherman: No, I mean, I think we covered quite a bit, but we can look again at the questions. I think it was cool just to see the first framing of the website even.

01:29:17

James Redenbaugh: Oh yeah. And I'll also share that.

01:29:19

Zachary Sherman: So I think it's cool to see how the proposed headings, everything lines up and you know, we can work work from there. I think that was a. That was the coolest part for me. And then when we were talking about logos, obviously that's a difficult question for us to answer, but perhaps we could think about the colors. If you go the two different directions. I think that would be cool to see as well and maybe easier for us to decide which we want to go with. So. But I mean, I. It's looking cool. This is looking pretty cool.

01:29:54

James Redenbaugh: Great. Awesome.

01:29:55

Jan Pfister: Yeah. And it is complex, isn't it? To kind of. I mean, your job is kind of. We feed you just the kind of old kind of stuff and then get.

01:30:04

James Redenbaugh: Yeah.

01:30:04

Jan Pfister: So exciting to see what you come up. Yeah.

01:30:08

James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Great. Well, thank you guys so much. I'll be in touch and see you soon.

01:30:16

Jan Pfister: Good. Yep. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye.