The creative industries need to be ever-fresh. Michael Conrad of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership talks about what it takes to create like a bossHe knew there was plenty of talent out there, but the young Michael Conrad was having a hard time hiring creatives for his ad agency in the 1980s. Again and again, he would see...
The city that brought forth Wittgenstein, Freud and Schrödinger, Vienna is again a hotbed of ideas and scientific researchWhen refugee scientists Paul E. Lazarsfeld (sociologist at Columbia University) and Oskar Morgenstern (economist at Princeton) returned to Vienna in the late 1950s, they were appalled by research center. Vienna was also a hotspot for the the lack of intellectual potential. “No...
Academia and business don’t mix? A group of Austrians set out to bridge the gap, and business is booming
Great ideas are born in the laboratories, classrooms and think tanks of Austria’s educational institutions. Many, however, languish awaiting peer review and publication, become integrated into someone else’s research, or are exploited commercially by foreign businesses. Often, neither Austrian academics nor their...
The Holy Trinity of a formal education is classroom, exam, diploma. This model is being challenged all over the worldTen-year-old Mohammed sits cross-legged in his family’s tent in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. It is 2013 and he is reminiscing about his childhood in Daraa, the birthplace of the revolution in Syria, which he escaped in 2012 amid fighting...
You don't have to be a seeded pro to participate in Austria's organized tennis tournaments
There are plenty of things I should be worrying about. There are the presidential elections here and in the U. S. for starters. But if I’m being truly honest, the niggling concern I can’t get out of my head right now is a problem with...
Some holiday traditions are lost in translationStuck in the polyester tights of my questionably short Marie Antoinette costume, I contemplated if I had finally outgrown Halloween. My partner-in-crime, a very handsome skeletal gentleman, waited patiently with his painted nose buried in a book as our crotchety Viennese taxi driver griped under his breath all the way to the 10th...
Barry G. Gale brings high-brow rigor to a low-brow subject in Love in Vienna: The Sigmund Freud - Minna Bernays AffairAs Barry G. Gale admits in a vital passage in Love in Vienna, “Affairs by their very nature are secretive, so it is not always easy to find evidence that they occurred.” He goes on to say that this...
On our path to a knowledge society, understanding the world around us is ever more importantManager, Wikimedia AustriaWe might use them every day, but few of us stop to consider who is behind the biggest online platforms. As the standard go-to source for information, Wikipedia has become an institution that is often taken for granted. Although it is an...
Le Burger throws out convention and leaves it all up to youA walk down Mariahilfer Straße is like life in fast-forward. Businesses shut down and new ones take their place, while others just get a seasonal facelift.One storefront on Vienna’s longest shopping drag managed to pull off a trifecta of all of the above: Where a McDonald’s once stood, an...
