After having studied, Michael Klotsche founded an engineering office specialized in transmission of warmth and substances. He is blogging on Nuevalandia (German).

Would you please explain who you are and what you do?
Since childhood I’ve been fascinated by natural processes. As a child I used to read books about sciences and scientific magazines. This hasn’t changed up to today and so I decided to become an engineer of machines.

To me it is evident that our current relation with nature and techniques already by now has catastrophic effects on nature as well as on our society. For me this has to do with the fact that people became unworldly. We just don’t see anymore the expenditure hidden beyond the things be it our food, the mobile or our clothes.

Due to the global economy we are far away from the consequences of our consumption. We don’t have to look into the eyes of the slaves in the cheap wages countries while they sew our clothes or stick together our mobiles.

The aim of my work is that things of our daily lives may be produced increasingly in our regions. In my opinion intermediate technologies play a key-role for this.

You are running an engineering office for intermediate technologies, what do you mean by this?
There are various definitions of intermediate technologies and even more misunderstandings. The author Ernst-Friedrich Schumacher describes in his book “Small is beautiful” intermediate technologies as those technologies whose investments per working-place could be financed with the income of one man year.

For myself I describe intermediate technologies as technological concepts of regional affordable machines, manufacturing procedures and products that enable men to use the resources of their region in a sustainable way in order to create their own life basis. This implicates that intermediate technology may be different in any region. What Europeans could call a technological retrogression might be in other parts of the world appropriate technology on the currently possible state of technique. Understanding this means to have a great emphasis towards the people you work with. Men should become again the owner of their life basis.

What exactly is your work about?
I’m doing development work for medium-sized companies, selling my ice detection system for wind turbines in cooperation with a production firm, working as an energy consultant and giving lectures at technical colleges and adult education centers. Further more once the week I give lessons in guitar at a primary school in order to get out of the office from time to time. And I’ m committed to the “Elbtaler Förderverein” which aims to implement the regional currency “Elbtaler” here in Dresden.

Does the term “intermediate technology” (Mittlere Technologie) correspond with the English “appropriate technologies” in your understanding?
In principle, yes. But according to the definition in Wikipedia “appropriate technologies” is mainly used in developing countries. But Schumacher stressed also the point that the owner of the life basis should achieve of economical and political self-sufficiency.

Ernst-Friedrich Schumacher quotes in his book “Small is beautiful” (page 30) the author Aldous Huxley who wanted to equip “usual men” with production means in order to make them independent of “the rich men”. According to Huxley the property of the production means economical and political power.

Personally, beside aspects of development aid I see also the distribution of power in as many as possible hands - also in industrialized countries.

People of these countries has given away voluntarily their power already by long. In my opinion, distribution of power is a kind of grassroots democracy, be it in form of production means and life basics.

It is interesting that in German-spoken Wikipedia the term “Mittlere Technologien” is not yet to be found. This might have to be done with the popularity of Schumacher in England but not in Germany.

You describe an interesting method to finance new developments: the sold prototype. Could you describe this further?
At the university, I’ve seen how world-class research is practised usually: first you have to loan lots of money to build an expensive prototype or a plant. Afterwards you do the research work on it. And then the prototypes are thrown away.

Owner of the produced knowledge are the investors of the research project. That’s how research is driven by investors towards maximized earnings. But what about people who don’t have money but who need new developments?

Here nature itself gives the answer: A little nut e.g. contains fat, starch, proteins and nutrients. So it contains everything necessary to grow. As soon as the first leaves reach the sunlight, the plant produces its energy on its own and becomes a big tree by time.

So, if a new invention should be brought to market, a customer/user has to be found who may generate real revenues with this invention. This is analogous to the metaphor with the nut: first the necessary soil needs to be there. That’s why a user of the technology has to be found first. Then an working prototype is developed and manufactured which is sold to the user. With the proceeds of the sale the prototype can be developed further. More about the details on how to manufacture a working prototype from the very beginning, I will tell later.

It’s important to start small even if the prototype is so small that it fits into a beer glass.

The most important question in this context: How do you find customers who are willing to pay for the prototype?
I’m listening to people. That’s what it is about. Everywhere people are complaining, e.g. a plumber about the fat sediments in tubes. He is a potential new customer. I talk to people complaining and ask them what they would pay for a prototype. Then I analyze if the prototype could be realized. Afterwards I calculate the price and develop a mathematical model. After optimizing the prototype in this way, I produce it within cost limitations. That’s how I avoid developing against the market

You reflected much on economical concepts such as self financing, free hardware, optimal firms. Have you made experiences with this? Do you know other entrepreneurs who practise these concepts?
By the method of self financing I’ve made good experiences up to now. My ice recognition system for wind turbines was developed without loaning money, my own capital or subsidies. Only my costs of living I had to finance for several months on my own. Self financing is quite normal in the software branch. There software is regularly updated while the customer has already bought or used it.

The “optimal firm” was first a theoretical concept based on my perception of concentrated power. I was thinking about how economical monopolies may be decomposited in a self organizing way. My idea was that smaller companies are more stable in the free market. But to be small means also not to be able to serve too many customers. That’s how this optimal firm will have an optimal size any time leaving also space for competitors. That’s why it is called an “optimal firm”.

Last year, I got to know the bio farm “Drachenmühle” in Schweta which is a selforganizing and free of hierarchies form of organization which fulfils in my opinion the qualities of an optimal organization. One issue there was to build a bio fertilizer in order to produce warm water and to heat a greenhouse.

Open Source Hardware is a quite explosive chapter on its own. It is about breaking monopolies of technologies aroused by using patents. The principle of Open Source Hardware is to protect the source, i.e. the invention itself as a pattern of use and to publish it openly and make it available for all.

Everyone may develop his own system based on the rights of protection. So my utility patents expire at a time and from there they are free for everyone.

Linux is the top example for the potential of the Open Source idea. Here there has developed a variety of systems that left to my mind competitors as Microsoft behind. Think of what consequences the Open Source idea could mean concerning patents of culture plants. In this area is much to be done.

Could you describe forms of organization like the “Drachenmühle” further?
In principle, the optimal firm I experienced is a workshop. Many independent firms behave as if they were a single big firm. They bundle their resources on project basis and together they have the opportunities of a big group. But any of these firm remain independent and beyond the workshop they follow their daily business. There is no hierarchy and no rules.

The workshop is coordinated by a focalizer, a kind of Moderator who brings together the participants and mediates the workshop to binding assurances. Each firm contracts with their customers. Even the role of the focalizer is not fixed to a person. For certain tasks or project phases a specialist could take over the leadership. It is important that the goal of the workshop has to be defined well in advance by the customer.

The only precondition is that all participants have an orientation to the target and success and the willingness to speak frankly with all participants. The lack of hierarchy enables quick decisions and progress in the workshop.

My ice recognizing system arised in a similar way. While I didn’t have today’s knowledge about intermediate technologies and optimal firms it cost me quite much and it wasn’t a very easy time.

Concerning the use of utility patents: did I understand you correctly that you use patents in order to prevent patents of others? Isn’t there the danger that someone patents OS designs and may charge for them?
Exactly! My understanding: patents exists to find another way to solve the problem. A patent does not really protect a monopoly. But it is impossible to patent the same invention a second time because then the invention would not be new. This means security. The worst thing that may happen to an investor is that he puts years of work in a product and a lawyer’s office claims him later to pay compensation. This blackmail practice is absolutely legal and may ruin the inventor in the long run. So a utility patents in Germany costs 40,- € and protects you from these guys.

You said that a network for intermediate technologies is desirable, even necessary. Does it or same sort of exist already?
Yes, it does. It is existing and it always has been existing. Most creative people don`t know that they are already part of a “scale-free network”. There is also the theory of “the small world”. It says that soemone knows the whole world connected via seven nodes even if we consider that reality is a little more complex. There are so many creative persons who use intermediate technology by their common sense already by long.

E.g., I find it fascinating how a man called William Kamkwamba from Malawi supplied his village with electrical power by constructing wind turbines with local materials.

I guess that the quantity of examples for intermediate technology is hardly surveyable. But many creative persons think that they are on their own. This is not true. That’s why it is important to understand the phenomenon of the scalefree network and the theory of the small world. How big is the chance that the two of us met among 700 million Europeans? The chance to win in Lotto is much higher. In a scalefree network this probability is much bigger. It seems to be reasonable: you talk to people about topics you believe they are interested in.

And if the topic is “intermediate technologies” it takes its way through the network and arrives at the right persons

The open question at the end: what is really important to you?
I think this is one of the most difficult questions because there’s so much that is important to me. Friends and my family are very meaningful to me. But most important is to feel happy with myself. Perhaps this sounds very egoistic, so let me explain:

To be happy with me does not mean to be arrogant but to accept the own actual state and to draw conclusions for future behaviour out of it. In my opinion you can’t hurt a man who is really contented with himself. A man that is contented with himself won’t close his ears to the words of others in order to protect his ego.

To me contentedness with myself is key in order to remain open to the view of other people without giving up myself.