Retracting into the manageability of intellectual and professional allotment gardens is not only exhausting. It also costs us over large areas what makes our society sustainable. In a digitally networked world, the longing for simple solutions and unambiguous answers vanishes into a siren song of false hopes. More than ever, we all depend on each other - despite all the differences that separate us.

This is not social romance. The self-talk that we negotiate by withdrawing into filter bubbles, fan groups and expert committees calms our need for security, orientation and belonging. But it doesn't help us any further when it comes to working on the great challenges of our time. Climate change, migration, the radical restructuring of our working world, the gaping gap between rich and poor - all thesewicked problemsevade simple solutions and cannot be solved single-handedly. For nobody. 

What we need for this is the interconnection of different perspectives. This includes the openness to allow different views to stand side by side as being of equal value. To perceive contradictions not as a threat, but as an enrichment. To be able to see the world from different angles and to make connections.

Without curiosity and enthusiasm for a cross-disciplinary discussion, we will not get very far. Our world has become too small to simply avoid each other.

For more than 10 years, the Next Society Foundation has been working to bring people and organizations from different contexts into conversation with one another. During this time, the foundation has initiated a variety of projects, all of which pursue the goal of making the world in all its diversity tangible - not understanding the foreign as an enemy of fear, but rather as a source of inspiration and irritation.

The work is based on the insight that new cultural techniques are required so that a “Next Society” (Peter Drucker) is attractive and worth living in not only for a few, but also for the rest of us.

The foundation launches work projects at regular intervals that deal with central aspects of a “neighborly society”.

The current focus is on dealing with data and algorithms - a key feature of our future that, unlike digital, is hardly conceivable.