Hi!
If you've been with Flow Venture Weekly since the beginning, I'd like to explain why I'm changing from talking about content businesses and solopreneurship to exploring civilizational engineering, future governance, and speculative fiction, and invite you to stay for what's coming next.
The Shift That Wasn't Really a Shift
Until the 24th issue, I wrote about building aligned businesses, finding purpose in work, and designing sustainable ventures.
Then I started considering writing my first sci-fi novel.
And something clicked.
The questions I was asking about businesses were actually civilization-scale questions in disguise:
- How do we design systems that evolve?
- What structures allow for adaptation?
- How do we build worlds (personal, organizational, societal) that feel aligned with what matters?
Even though the focus shifted, the core stayed the same: how we design lives, systems, and worlds that feel aligned—just zoomed out to a civilizational scale.
The individual entrepreneur asking "how do I build something meaningful?" and the civilization designer asking "how do we build societies that thrive?" are asking fundamentally the same question.
Just at different scales.
What Changes (and What Doesn't)
My background in agriculture taught me about complex adaptive systems—how small design choices cascade into entire ecosystems. I realized these same principles apply whether you're managing a farm, building a business, or designing a civilization.
Starting today, with this issue, Flow Venture Weekly becomes a laboratory for:
Civilizational Engineering – What design principles allow societies to evolve toward resilience rather than collapse?
Future Governance – How might power structures adapt for equity, adaptability, and foresight in an AI-augmented world?
Societies to Come – Which cultural operating systems help us thrive amid accelerating technological change?
I will explore these through a mix of speculative fiction, complexity science, and systems thinking, translating academic concepts into narratives and frameworks that make civilizational design feel urgent and accessible.
Why Speculative Fiction?
Because fiction is a creative prototyping tool for civilizational futures.
Before we can build better tomorrows, we need to imagine them vividly enough to want them. Speculative fiction lets us test governance structures, explore cultural operating systems, and prototype resilient societies without waiting for the real-world consequences.
It's a lab where ideas can fail safely, and where the successful ones can become blueprints.
An Invitation to Continue
This new approach to Flow Venture Weekly is for those who think:
"I don't just want to live in whatever world arrives; I want to understand it and maybe help redesign it."
If that's you (whether you came here for business insights or are curious about this shift to civilizational thinking) I'd love for you to stay.
Every Tuesday, I'll explore:
- Big themes of human life and civilization
- Viewed through an evolutionary and systems lens
- Grounded in real questions about power, meaning, technology, and freedom
- Synthesized into conceptual frameworks and narrative experiments
Each issue will continue to take less than 4 minutes to read but aims to slightly upgrade how you see the world.
What's Coming
I'm currently writing my first speculative fiction novel and documenting the journey publicly. You'll get early drafts, thought experiments, research synthesis, and narrative explorations as I translate complexity science into story.
The shift from business to civilizations might seem dramatic, but it's really just a zoom out. I'll still be asking:
- How do we design systems that work?
- That evolve?
- That feel aligned with what we actually want from the future?
If those questions still resonate with you at this new scale, it will be a great pleasure to have you with me on this journey.
And if not? I perfectly understand. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email—no hard feelings.
But if you're even a little curious about what civilizational engineering through speculative fiction might look like...
I think you'll want to see where this goes.
Thanks for being here.
See you next Tuesday,
Hèrmàn
P.S. This is issue 25—the beginning of something new. If you ever want to look back at where we started, [all previous issues are here].
