• Holistic understanding and cross-competence development
• Critical analysis
• Conseptual understanding and R&D
• Experimental projects
• Living labs, human testbeds
• General context: creative economy, creative industries

Social, cultural and technological changes (global and local levels)

• Some key notions & directions (economy): creative economy, experience economy, entertainment economy, design economy, story economy, image economy, participatory economy
• Some key notions & directions (society): information society, media society, techno society, biosociety, risk society
• Globalization - its consequences (sustainable development, global governance, social responsibility, corporate citizenship, etc.)
• Global + local = glocal (regionalism)
• Global signs of change; trends and weak signals
• Speed: accelerating rhythm of life and economy

New tribes and identities

• Global brands and lifestyles
• Hypermobile lifestyles (nomads with mobile instruments, travellers, cosmocrats, global jetset, etc.)
• Slow lifestyles (slow food, slow city)
• Postmodern and transmodern lifestyles
• Identity tuning: from given lifestyles to "own design"
• From static products to customized brands
• "No logo" and "antibranding" movements (green & ethical customers)

New media: social media, interactive media, hybrid media

• Participatory media (blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging, social bookmarking, media sharing [music, photo, video], mashups, podcasts, participatory video projects, videoblogs)
• Virtual societies, virtual lifestyles
• New trends and developments in marketing: viral & buzz marketing, long tail, news sources
• Wellness/well-being technologies, therapeutic well-being design
• Socio-economic impacts of ubiquitous (r)evolution

Cross-competence & transdisciplinarity

• New requirements for knowledge and understanding
• Cultural changes of various competence fields
• Birth of new competence areas
• Cross-competence training and consulting
• Fusion of competencies
• Integrated knowledge management

Creativity and innovative environments

• Creativity and serendipity
• Innovation systems/environments & branding (design, architecture, communication, marketing, art and media)
• New innovation process models
• Fusion of technology waves and innovations
• Participatory innovation environment (24/7 principle)
• 24 hour DesignLab (online design community & online research community, real time problem solving, brainstorming lab)
• Social and lifestyle companies
• Cross-competence & education
• New viewponts, ways and means for education (24 hour LearningLab)

Accelerating intelligence

• Future trends of computing: nanotechnology, quantum computing, grid computing, AI (artificial intelligence), eletronic paper, RSS, personal info agents, etc.
• From connecting people to connecting everything (ubiquitous)
• Ambience design, ambient intelligence
• Ubiquitous (r)evolution
• Smart materials and spaces
• Smart architecture and smart advertising
• Wearable computing (WearComp), wearable intelligence
• Participatory branding (online, do your own brand)
• Emergence of innovation media
• Co-operation between design and technology (design and science)
• Accelerating intelligence & education

Local dimensions

• Locality as brand - participatory models (project)
• Cross-competence training & development (design, architecture, communication, marketing, art and media mixed with other locality development competence areas)
• Sustainable Information Society: Civic participation
• Challenges of creative areas (city, town, region, etc.)