In an exclusive interview, Swedish economist and writer Kjell Nordström talked with N1’s Ivana Dragicevic about digital transition, the importance of creativity and authenticity, as well as social changes and the future.

In 2009, the Thinkers 50, global ranking of “management thinkers,” listed Nordstrom and his colleague Jonas Ridderstrale, with whom he wrote his bestsellers Funky Business (2000) and Karaoke Capitalism (2003), as among the most influential global thinkers in the field of management. In his research and public speeches, Nordström focuses on corporate strategy, globalisation, and multinational corporations.

He visited Zagreb last week for a Digital Takeover conference, the largest such event in the region, which focuses on boosting investment in digital communication, as well as transforming the digital scene in Croatia.

“Digitalisation will live side-by-side with us,” Nordström told N1. “The next 20-30 years will be absolutely mind-boggling.”

The humanity as a whole, however, tends to be a bit sceptical about change. Political changes all over the world seem to show people have lost faith in the meaning of life, and every change brings with it its victims and winners.

The victims of this change, according to Nordström, are young, undereducated men.

“Young, uneducated men are suffering in many countries around the world today, and they are really the losers in this development,” he said.

Some 10 percent of all the jobs around the world today consist of driving vehicles, be it lorries, trucks, or something else, he said. And it is not women who do those jobs, it is men.

“And it’s uneducated men. And these men, even if in many cases they don’t have an education, they are not stupid. They sense they maybe won’t have a job in 10 years.”

This is visible in the behaviour of voters, he explained. For example, Brexit.

“Elderly men, who will die in the next 5-10 years because they are 80 now, together with under-employed men, dominate the Brexiteers. And you know what they do? They leave the problem to young women in London,” he said.

The winners, according to Nordström, are cities.

“London is one third of the British economy. One city, one tiny part of the island. St Petersburg and Moscow are 70 percent of the Russian economy, and this is a country where you fly from one end to the other for 9 hours, and you see nothing in terms of economic activity,” he said.

As a result, he added, mayors are popping up as the real powerhouses of the political system today, and the dynamics of the city is becoming more and more relevant in this new landscape.

“You don’t have to be big to play the game any more,” he said. “You can be small, but you must act big.”

Croatia, however, has more pressing problems than just its size. According to last year’s global competitiveness report, published by the World Economic Forum, Croatia ranked 136th out of 140 countries in terms of critical thinking in teaching.

Entering the world of competition and planning for the future in which success will rely on creativity and innovation can seem impossible with such a starting position.

“What’s important today is attractiveness,” Nordström said. “That does not mean that you are interesting as an investment opportunity or something, simply that you are attractive for human beings – that people would like to live there, see their children grow up there, that there are good schools there. Liveability attracts people.”

How do you know your city is attractive? According to Nordström, if artists, musicians, bohemians, come there.

“Liveability is everything – schools, housing, education, judiciary, non-corrupt environment… it’s everything. It’s not about branding, it’s not about taking the easy road, it’s creating the environment in which someone from Tallinn can say, ‘Let’s move to Zagreb, hip and cool things are happening in Zagreb.’”

What it boils down to, ultimately, is authenticity, he said.

So how do we equip the next generation for the future, then? What do we teach them? Nordström believes we must teach children how to learn.

“Not the learning in itself, because knowledge comes and goes. The ability to learn is more important than what you have actually learned,” he said. “We come from a tradition where you essentially go to school, and that’s it. You learn what you learn and you’re supposed to live on that for the next 50 years. Our kids will have two or three rounds, at least, of different areas where they work.”

The challenge for the future generations, therefore, is to develop the “ability to learn, and to learn more, and to keep learning”.