Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale
Re-energize! How to compete beyond competencies
While most successful contemporary companies claim that they compete on competence, the stark truth is that we’re all becoming increasingly ignorant. Whether people like it or not, there is a widening gap between what we know and what you know. On top of that, things just got more complicated. In the modern global village, the different parts of the world economy and our societies are interdependent to an extent that we have never ever witnessed before. At the junction of Stupidity Street and Complexity Avenue we are forced to radically rethink the traditional recipes for success.
Jonas will focus on three key ideas to help us deal with the ignorance-interdependence paradox. Firstly, he will address the issue of how we must build firms that profit from the wisdom of crowds and mimic the principles of successful self-organizing systems. Secondly, when the future cannot be predicted it must be created. Jonas will elaborate on what it will take to lead a company that is as good at innovation as the organization of the past was at exploitation.
The final idea focuses on the evolution of competitiveness. Access to advanced intellectual capital is now necessary, but it’s in many cases no longer sufficient for the creation of sustainable competitive advantages. The new challenge is the one of utilizing the full potential of the intellectual and psychological & social capital of the firm. Jonas outlines how to create a re-energized firm that excels at envisioning the future, engaging talent and executing for success. To maximize skill, will and thrill, as a leader you must help a diverse set of people in advancing individual competence, confidence and courage, whilst also enabling corporate-wide creativity, communication and cooperation by providing common ground and a purpose; individual freedom within the confines of a corporate religion.
This session will provide an overall framework for understanding what to do and what not to do in order to create competitive advantages in the new world of commerce, with a focus on tools for envisioning future opportunities, engaging talent and executing strategies, all backed up by practical examples from some of the world’s most successful corporations.
About Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle
Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He cuts through the madness and hyperbole surrounding the global economy with a truly global appeal. His uncompromising, imaginative and decidedly fresh take on contemporary business life makes him one of the world’s most sought after and appreciated speakers. The 2007 Thinkers 50, the world’s first ranking of management thinkers, ranked Ridderstråle and his partner Dr. Kjell A. Nordström at number thirteen in the world. Forget dry theories, Ridderstråles ideas work. He makes things happen. Ridderstråle acts as an advisor and consultant to a number of multinational corporations and runs his own Business Improvement Group.
Dr. Ridderstråle holds an MBA and a PhD in international business and has been recognized as Sweden’s outstanding young academic of the year. Formerly, he was an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics where he was responsible for the school’s Advanced Management Program - a five week top-management program that attracts the elite of Scandinavian executives. Ridderstråle is currently a visiting professor at Ashridge Business School in the UK. His research focuses on new organizational models and leadership styles in the information age and has been published in leading academic journals, including Business Strategy Review, Organization Science and CritcalEYE Magazine. Ridderstråle contributed to the best-selling Financial Times Handbook of Management and Business: The Ultimate Resource. He is on the editorial board of The Capstone Business Encyclopaedia.
Ridderstråle is the author of three business books together with Kjell A. Nordström. His latest book, "Funky Business Forever," the long awaited update to the international bestseller. "Funky Business Forever "takes a look back on the later half of the millenniums first decade and provides evolved thinking and commentary in a way that is truly funky and down to business. The previous book "Karaoke Capitalism: Management for Mankind" is a globally celebrated manifesto on how to make it in the new world of commerce. Individuals with endless choice dominate the karaoke economy. The trouble for business is that the karaoke club is also home to institutionalized imitation. Copycats abound. The first book, "Funky Business: Talent makes capital dance "quickly became an international bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies. The book was recently ranked at number 16 in a Bloomsbury survey of the best business books of all time.
Jonas Ridderstråle has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. In March 2004, he appeared on CNN's program "Global Office" for a long interview on the ideas behind the books. Dr. Ridderstråle has also been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, Financial Times, Stern, Paris Match, and many other publications worldwide.