Thesis 1: If the game changes, it does not help to change the rules of the game.

In the coming years, digitization will place high demands on the innovative ability of corporations. In recent years, however, these have been trimmed down to a culture of small-step improvement.

Thesis 2: Shareholder value has conditioned the corporate culture to the financial.

Through the shareholder value orientation, the acquisition of money has moved to the centre of the company’s purpose: This leads to the fact that also the employees predominantly work only for the paycheck.

Thesis 3: Only meaningfulness can connect companies and employees.

The actual connecting factor beyond the securing of existence between company and employee can only be the sense: Why do we exist – why do we do what we do?

Thesis 4: Enterprises are social multi-complex systems and not hierarchically controllable.

There is no strictly rational acting Homo Öconomicus; people are social beings and therefore companies are social multi-complex systems, and not linearly controllable from above.

Thesis 5: Hierarchical organizations make people small instead of big.

The organizational model “pyramidal hierarchy” originates from 18th century agriculture. Today it makes people small and concentrates responsibility on a few hierarchies.

Thesis 6: Innovation arises at the margins of organisations.

Innovations do not emerge centrally controlled, but at the edges of a system.

Thesis 7: Sales-oriented corporate communication is outdated.

The Internet exposes hollow marketing promises and requires companies to engage in an honest dialogue with their customers using human language. In order to achieve this, the company’s internal dialogue must also become open and authentic. Everything “selling-related” is out of place here and is felt.

Thesis 8: Personal responsibility and trust instead of power and fragmentation characterize successful companies.

The pyramidal hierarchy is based on power, control, fragmentation and at best leads to efficiency. Self-organisation is based on trust and personal responsibility and leads to quick decisions and innovation.

Thesis 9: Corporate structures, not leadership, must change.

It is the corporate structures that give birth to the culture – more than the behavior of the executives.

Thesis 10: For Generation Y, income and work-life balance compensate for the lack of meaningfulness in companies.

Generation Y is only prepared to do much if it can act and grow independently (see start-up culture). Since corporate groups do not offer this, they optimize themselves there on the basis of the factors income and work-life balance.