Circulation

Press coverage – May 2011
Summary of clips:
•
May – Management Team (The Netherlands) –
Feature article with Dominique Turpin
•
May – Nikkei Business (Japan) – Interview with
Dominique Turpin
•
May – China Entrepreneur (China) – Columns from Bill
Fischer and Jean-Pierre Lehmann
•
May – Valor Economico (Brazil) – Dominique Turpin
interviewed on the importance of forming future leaders
•
May – Tijdschrift voor Marketing (The Netherlands) –
CMOs and Twitter, by Willem Smit
•
May 1 – The New York Times (USA) – Sunday
magazine) – Jean-Pierre Lehmann quoted on turmoil in
the Middle East and the implications on Europe
•
May 2 – Personal & Ledarskap (Sweden) – Dominique
Turpin interviewed at a business forum in Sweden
•
May 3 – Forbes (USA) – How deeply engaging
stakeholders changes everything, by Nadine Hack
•
May 4 – Les Echos (France) – Quote from Dominique
Turpin
•
May 9 – Het Financieele Dagblad (The Netherlands) –
Still waiting for the Eureka Moment, by Cyril Bouquet
and Jean-Louis Barsoux
•
May 9 – The Jakarta Post (Indonesia) – Driving
change requires courageous leadership, by Kees van
der Graaf
•
May 10 – Financial Times (UK) – Lessons to learn
from a Swiss watchmaker, by Dominique Turpin
•
May 10 – Kommersant (Russia) – Article from Carlos
Cordon
•
May 10 – Financial Times (UK) – Q&A with IMD MBA
student Galina Antova
•
May 10 – Financial Times (UK) – Doha is not about to
be resurrected, by Jean-Pierre Lehmann
•
May 13 – Le Temps (CH) – Article on the death of
Doha
continued
IMD in the news | June-July
•
May 16 – Bloomberg BusinessWeek (USA) –
Becoming a leader, by IMD MBA Howie Chan
•
May 17 – Gulf News (Dubai) – With social media it’s
good to be SICK, by Michael Wade
•
May 18 – Financial Express (India) – India scores over
China in govt & business efficiency; data from IMD’s
World Competitiveness Center
•
May 19 – The Economist (Hong Kong bureau) – Data
released from IMD’s World Competitiveness Center
•
May 19 – Business Spectator (Australia) – Becoming
a more effective idea-worker, by Bill Fischer
•
May 19 – Het Financieele Dagblad (The Netherlands)
– Suzanne Rosselet discusses the competitiveness of
Holland
•
May 21 – The Business Times (Singapore) – Finding
treasure in trash, by Stuart Read
•
May 25 – Dubai TV (Dubai) – Interview with Didier
Cossin
•
May 25 – Bilan (CH) – Ginka Toegel quoted on women
in leadership
•
May 25 – Bilan (CH) – Switzerland ranks well in
competitiveness, interview with Stéphane Garelli
•
May 25 – Bloomberg BusinessWeek (USA) – English
means business, columns from Maury Peiperl and
Karsten Jonsen
•
May 25 – Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy) – Article from Stuart
Read
•
May 26 – Financial Times (UK) – Letter from JeanPierre Lehmann
•
May 27 – The Associated Press (Syndicated) – JeanPierre Lehmann quoted on Doha Round. Among many
outlets, the article ran in The Washington Post,
Forbes, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco
Examiner
•
May 28 – Khaleej Times (Dubai) – Dr Hischam ElAgamy discusses world competitiveness at an IMD
business forum in the UAE
•
May 28 – The Financial Express (India) – Beautiful
friendships, corporate universities and business
schools, by Michael Stanford
•
May 28 – The Jakarta Post (Indonesia) – Have CMOs
joined the Twitter celebration, by Willem Smit
•
May 28 – Forbes (USA) – Made in China: Smarter
companies, by Bill Fischer
•
May 30 – La Repubblica (Italy) – Data released from
the World Competitiveness Center
•
May 30 – The National (UAE) – Quote from Dr
Hischam El-Agamy
Netherlands
May 2011
Circulation
329,557
Japan
May 2011
Circulation
150,499
China
May 2011
Circulation
150,499
China
May 2011
Circulation
110,000
Brazil
(Revista Executivo de Valor – Yearbook Magazine)
May, 2011
Netherlands
May 2011
Sunday Magazine
Circulation
995,147
USA
May 1, 2011
Marine Le Pen, France’s (Kinder, Gentler)
Extremist
By RUSSELL SHORTO
Step inside an office building in the town of Nanterre, just west of
Paris, and you are confronted by what the nostrils register as an
odor of the past, for it’s a rare thing these days to encounter the
lingering taint of cigarette smoke in public spaces. The trail of it
leads upstairs to a corner office and to the woman who has, in the
past few months, come to dominate French newspapers and chat
shows, where she is depicted variously as the new face of European bigotry or a herald of a new
European political realignment.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front Party, greeted me with an aggressive
handshake and the abrupt body language of a person who has a lot to do. It was mid-March. A flurry of
polls had just come out showing that she would beat Nicolas Sarkozy if the French presidential election
were held at that moment (the election will take place a year from now), and she was working hard to
press her advantage. She wore a simple navy blue suit and no jewelry, and her hair was pulled back
somewhat haphazardly, with stray wisps dangling. Her gaze is steely, but her eyes have humor in them.
Her deep voice, with its smoker’s rasp, carries authority.
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was a founder of the National Front in 1972 and served as its leader, and
perennial presidential candidate, until his retirement in January, at 82. Along the way, thanks in part to
his penchant for crisply expressed opinions — that the Nazi occupation of France was “not particularly
inhuman,” that the gas chambers were “a detail,” that “the races are unequal,” that someone with AIDS
is “a kind of leper,” that “Jews have conspired to rule the world” — he and his party became emblems of
European right-wing extremism. The height of his popularity came in 2002, when he reached second
place in the initial round of voting for president and won the right to enter a head-to-head contest with
the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac. Le Pen was trounced in that election, and his party faded as a
force to be reckoned with.
Then in January, Marine — at 42, the youngest of his three daughters — won a battle to succeed her
father as president of the party. Almost overnight, she brought the National Front not just back into the
spotlight but also into outright competition. The polls that show her matching or outpacing Sarkozy have
shuffled the French political game board. Of late, Sarkozy has fired his diversity minister, declared that
multiculturalism has been “a failure” and staged a “debate on Islam” that French Muslims saw as a swat
at them — all moves that are widely viewed as a direct response to Marine Le Pen’s rise. She derided
Sarkozy’s support for the recently enacted ban on full face veils as a pandering political maneuver that
addressed only “the tip of the iceberg” of what she views as the Islamization of French culture.
Marine Le Pen’s sudden prominence draws attention to the contrasts between her and the man she
hopes to replace. Where Sarkozy is stylish, Le Pen tends toward simplicity. Where he has become, to
many, a classic say-anything-to-please-anyone politician, Le Pen’s followers find her to be a straighttalker. Sarkozy is seen as representing the elitists who support the increasingly unpopular European
Union, while Le Pen wraps herself in the mantle of the French republic. Even in derisive nicknames, she
comes across as the stronger: Sarkozy is Monsieur Bling Bling; Le Pen has been called la peste blonde —
a play on both la peste noire, the French term for the Black Death, and, more recently, la peste brune,
which referred to the Nazi menace.
“Never in modern French history has the far right challenged like this,” Frédéric Micheau, adjunct
director of the French polling agency IFOP, told me. “This is something totally new.” This jump in
support for so polarizing a figure raises a question that has ramifications not only in France but also in
other places where the far right is resurgent: is Le Pen fille a different person from her father, or has
racism simply become mainstream?
When I asked Le Pen to identify something from her childhood that formed her, she said, “20 kilos of
dynamite.” In 1976, when she was 8, a bomb tore off the front of the family’s apartment building in Paris
while they were asleep. “I realized politics could cost you your life,” she said flatly. As the daughters of a
greatly reviled politician, she and her two sisters grew up in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation —
taunted by other children and shunned by teachers. “Our childhood was marked by a sense of injustice
concerning our father,” her sister Yann Marechal wrote me in an e-mail. “We were the victims of many
forms of attack,” Le Pen told me, “of virulent press campaigns and a lot of reprobation from the elites.
That forged my character, and it also strengthened me.”
The family has a closeness, and a dedication to an iconic ideal of the French state, that seems almost
cultish. All three girls became party stalwarts; all married within the party. (One sister, however, MarieCaroline, followed her husband after he broke with the National Front.) Marine’s first two husbands
were party officials, as is her current partner, Louis Aliot. Her 12-year-old daughter, Jehanne, is named
after Joan of Arc (down to the medieval spelling); her son, Louis, who is 11 (and has a twin, Mathilde), is
named after “the whole series of great kings of France named Louis,” Le Pen said. Yann Marechal told
me that despite the four-year age difference between her and Marine, the two of them “have always lived
like twins” and that she and her children live together with Marine and her children “on the property of
my father, so that we see each other and our children regularly.” Le Pen said they all vacation together at
their father’s birthplace in Brittany.
Conspicuously absent from this family portrait is the mother. The other great scar on Le Pen’s childhood
besides the bomb, she said, was created by her mother’s leaving the family — in the arms of her father’s
biographer, no less — and her parents’ ugly divorce when she was 15. That period reached its
culmination when her mother posed nearly nude in French Playboy and told interviewers that her exhusband had a rabid hatred of Jews and privately referred to Adolf Hitler as Uncle Dolfie. Marine did
not speak to her mother for the next 15 years.
About a decade ago, Marine began to emerge as the daughter with the guts and political skills to take
over the family business. She became a lawyer and worked behind the scenes in the party, with her
father’s help, to become its vice president, edging past older male figures in the hard-nosed battle to
succeed him. Jean-Marie Le Pen built the National Front out of a collection of fringe parties with
overlapping but often conflicting agendas. The original core included avowed fascists, former members
of the Vichy government that had been loyal to Hitler, anti-Jewish zealots, anti-immigrant nationalists
and staunchly conservative Catholics. Jean-Marie held them together in part by using rhetoric that
spoke to their fears and goals; that the same rhetoric kept the party isolated from the mainstream didn’t
matter, because governing was never his objective.
Marine Le Pen has bigger ambitions, as the pollster Frédéric Micheau puts it, “to refresh the image of the
far right.” Indeed, she insists she is not a figure of the far right at all and has belittled its racism as
something for “people with small brains.” She has gambled that it is time for the party to leave the
baggage of World War II behind. Or, as she said, “I have damage to repair, damage between the French
people and the National Front.”
There are some obvious differences between Le Pen and her father, which partly account for her success
and which she spelled out for me: “I’m a different person, a woman, a mother, in my 40s, of another
generation.” There is also her political astuteness. The day before I met Le Pen, Claude Guéant,
Sarkozy’s interior minister, caused a stir by saying in a radio interview that “French people, in the face of
uncontrolled immigration, sometimes feel they are no longer in their own home.” The words went
against the careful line Sarkozy had been taking and echoed sentiments that Le Pen expressed. That
same evening, she appeared at a press conference brandishing a laminated National Front membership
card printed with the name Claude Guéant and invited him to join the party. The ploy made headlines
across the country.
“Whose idea was the membership card?” I asked as we sat down. Le Pen shot up her hand with the sharp
eagerness of a schoolgirl and smiled slyly. Then, clearly proud of her craft, she produced the card and
laid it in front of me.
Le Pen works assiduously at the fine political balancing act of remaining loyal to her father — and
maintaining the support of the party’s base — while distancing herself from the elder Le Pen’s
outrageousness. She has jettisoned her father’s frank anti-Semitism, but she keeps the anti-immigrant
policy plank as a central feature of the platform and will occasionally use headline-grabbing rhetoric, as
when in December she likened the French having to endure Muslims praying on their streets to living
under Nazi occupation.
She insists that her message on immigration is not xenophobic but rather commonsensical. She pointed
repeatedly to the United States as a model: “In France, we often say the U.S. is a multicultural society,
but it’s not. It’s multiethnic but one single culture. I don’t say that nobody should enter our country. On
the contrary, in the old days immigrants entered France and blended in. They adopted the French
language and traditions. Whereas now entire communities set themselves up within France, governed by
their own codes and traditions.”
The economic crisis in the European Union has worked to her advantage as well. As a French nationalist
and an anti-E.U. voice, she has called for France to drop the euro and return to the franc.
The real secret to her success, however, may be in her adroit scrambling of traditional leftist and rightist
positions. Signaling a clear break from her father and the right in general, she has come out with a
detailed critique of capitalism and a position promoting the state as the protector of ordinary people.
“For a long time, the National Front upheld the idea that the state always does things more expensively
and less well than the private sector,” she told me. “But I’m convinced that’s not true. The reason is the
inevitable quest for profitability, which is inherent in the private sector. There are certain domains which
are so vital to the well-being of citizens that they must at all costs be kept out of the private sector and
the law of supply and demand.” The government, therefore, should be entrusted with health care,
education, transportation, banking and energy.
When I pointed out that in the U.S. she would sound like a left-wing politician, she shot back, “Yes, but
Obama is way to the right of us,” and opined that proper government oversight would have averted the
American financial crisis.
Le Pen’s mix of far-right nationalism and frankly leftist economics is related to the platforms of other
fringe parties in Europe that have surged recently, and some critics see the combination as darkly
reminiscent. “This appeared in the 1920s and 1930s,” says Patrick Lozès, president of the Council
Representing the Associations of the Black People of France (CRAN), who has recently engaged in a
public spat with Le Pen. “Those who a few decades ago saw the Jews as the enemy now use Muslims,
saying, ‘They are among us, but they will never be like us, will never share our values.’ ”
Some French intellectuals on the left have been watching Le Pen with a combination of awe and
trepidation. “She has totally reoriented the party toward low-skilled, low-income people,” says Laurent
Bouvet, a professor of political science at the University of Nice who studies France’s far right.
Traditionally, he noted, blue-collar workers in public-sector jobs voted for the socialists, while bluecollar workers in industries might vote for the right, often the National Front. “But all of these people
fear the change that comes with opening up the economy. And she is providing an answer to their fear.”
In other words, Le Pen’s economic stance is drawing interest from the left as well as the right. And she is
doing something similar on immigration. Where the far right formerly adopted a clash-of-civilizations
approach — Christianity versus Islam — Le Pen has donned the cloak of secularism as a value system
that is under threat. “She is saying that the problem is not that they are Muslims but that they want to
impose their values on our country,” Bouvet says. “That is a big innovation. She pretends to defend gays,
Jews, women. The National Front never defended Jews before. They were anti-Semitic — how could
they? Now she says to Jews, ‘You have to be careful about Muslims, and I am here to defend you.’ And
she says she is here to defend women and gays, in the name of freedom, secularism and the republic.
This is really, really new. It’s not a shift to the left but to a third dimension for French politics.”
Le Pen took over the reins of the party just as mass upheavals destabilized the Middle
East. “It’s kind of an Orwellian scenario,” says Jean-Pierre Lehmann, professor of
international political economy at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“You have the youngest population in the world on one side of the Mediterranean and the
oldest population on the other side. And now you have mayhem in the Muslim countries,
which will continue, so that there will be more pressure on people who want to escape.
And Europeans will see their lifestyle in danger. Le Pen’s party plays on fear, and this
situation is easily exploitable.”
Sarkozy’s recent and highly visible use of the French military has given Le Pen another opening to
exploit. She is opposed to his involvements in Libya and Ivory Coast and to globalist enterprises in
general; she sees the uprisings in the Middle East to be partly a result of “policies put into place by the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization toward an impoverishment of the
North African countries.” Sarkozy’s aligning France with NATO might win support in the White House
and 10 Downing Street, but it has done little for his popularity at home. For the country’s disaffected, it
only reinforces views of him as an elitist and a globalist. Where in the United States many of the
disaffected might look to a return to Christian and free-market values, their counterparts in Europe find
comfort in a turn toward nationalism, which includes state protection, and away from the institutions of
globalization. Le Pen is locked into that mind-set.
After my interview with Le Pen, I wandered around Belleville, the Parisian neighborhood long
associated with North African immigrants, and stopped in a Tunisian restaurant for lunch. Not
surprisingly, mentioning the name Marine Le Pen got everyone in the restaurant wound up. Much of
what was said is unprintable, but a customer named Mourad Bouznif gave me his critique of Le Pen’s
immigration ideas. “I’m very lucky,” he said. “My wife is an attorney, and I am a teacher. We are
welcome in Paris. But the unskilled Tunisians, the sort of people who historically built France, Le Pen
wants to leave them behind.” When I asked if he was Tunisian, he corrected me — “I am FrancoTunisian” — a rebuke to the National Front’s oft-voiced suspicions about the Frenchness of immigrants.
Few commentators think Le Pen has much chance of winning the presidency next year: for one thing,
Sarkozy’s party and the socialists have each indicated that, were she to win a spot in the final round of
voting, they would band together to block her, as they have impeded the National Front in the past.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy’s perceived vulnerability has made the race for the French presidency extremely
fluid. There are several other high-profile potential candidates, including Jean-Louis Borloo, Sarkozy’s
former environmental minister, who threatens to fracture the center-right vote, and Nicolas Hulot, a TV
naturalist who is one of the most popular personalities in France.
Le Pen may not become president, but some would argue that she has already succeeded. “Even if she
never wins an election, when you release this kind of thinking into society, modernizing the packaging of
racism, the consequences go on and on,” Patrick Lozès says.
The advances made by the National Front and other parties in Europe today — the Swiss People’s Party,
the Northern League in Italy, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands — are all based on the
combination of anti-immigrant stances plus economic populism and national patriotism. Mainstream
parties across Europe have not found answers to this movement, for which the term “far right” seems
increasingly inadequate. “We could be looking at a great realignment of the political positions in
Europe,” Laurent Bouvet says. “It’s a new populism. Marine Le Pen could lead it.” Le Pen insists,
however, that her interest is not Europe-wide but limited to her own country.
Le Pen told me she sees a new French revolution building against the mainline parties, and she intends
that she and her party will be on the front lines of the battle. Then she hastened to add, “But of course, I
mean a peaceful and democratic revolution.”
Russell Shorto (rs@russellshorto.com) is a contributing writer, and the director of the John Adams
Institute in Amsterdam. Editor: Vera Titunik (v.titunik-MagGroup@nytimes.com).
Online
Article
Sweden
May 2, 2011
Respektfulla chefer nyckeln i talangjakten
“Bete er inte som dinosaurier i djungeln av varumärken”
I den djungel av företag och varumärken som finns, gäller det att sticka ut för
att locka rätt tjejer och killar som ska bidra till organisationens välgång. Men
det sker inte gratis bara för att varumärket är känt. Både ledning och
medarbetare måste leva varumärket.
Förstå den nya generationens behov av mer frihet,
större utrymme och balans mellan jobb och familj.
Genomför aktiviteter som är roliga och som inte får
dig att uppfattas som en gammal dinosaurie. Var
kreativ i vad du erbjuder dina medarbetare, men
framför allt – se till att era chefer beter sig
respektfullt mot medarbetarna. Det är nycklarna till
att bygga ett attraktivt varumärke som arbetsgivare,
menar Dominique Turpin, marknadsföringsprofessor
vid affärsskolan IMD.
Dominque Turpin, marknadsföringsprofessor
vid affärsskolan IMD, anser att ledningen måste
leva varumärket om de anställda ska förväntas
göra det. Vill man sticka ut som arbetsgivare i
talangjakten måste man också sluta bete sig som
en dinosaurie. Framtidens medarbetare har nya
förväntningar på sitt arbetsliv.
I tuffa tider ryker ofta kompetensutvecklingsbudget och marknads-föringsinsatser.
Men Dominique Turpin varnar för att kompromissa
med de interna aktiviteterna som smörjer
varumärket.
– Unga medarbetare behöver bevis för att de
kommer få löpande utvecklingsmöjligheter så att de
kan få växa med ansvaret. Det behövs också tydliga
karriärvägar, även om organisationen är liten. Om
ledningen slutar att leva som den lär när tiderna är
tuffa, tappar den medarbetarnas förtroende, säger
han.
Många arbetsgivare staplar värdeord på varandra, men det tycker Dominique
Turpin är onödigt.
– Du måste omdefiniera dina kärnvärden, men inte i en tjock bok. Ta fram några få
nyckelprinciper och se till att de efterlevs av högsta ledningen, annars kommer
medarbetarna att se igenom dem. Det måste komma uppifrån.
JENNIE JENSEN
http://www.hrsociety.se/pages/content.php?id=5432
Online
Article
USA
May 3, 2011
How Deeply Engaging Stakeholders
Changes Everything
By Nadine B. Hack, Executive-in-Residence,
IMD Business School
An airline company sues an online ticket provider.
Fishermen from the Gulf pay a visit to an oil firm in
London. An investment brokerage is accused of
misleading government. Today’s headlines could be quite
different if more companies embraced efforts to engage
stakeholders.
Why should your company care about engagement?
More companies understand that a broader spectrum of internal and external stakeholders
has a direct impact on their core business. Those that have engendered deep levels of
engagement – what I call highly relational engagement (HRE) – are far more successful in
shaping that impact to their advantage.
Neuroscience research supports experience that profound relationships with stakeholders are
vital to business success. Other studies show how employee and customer engagement are
intimately connected and, taken together, have an outsized effect on financial performance.
So, for your company to sustain its competitive advantage, HRE – multi-directional,
emotionally deep, profoundly trusting relationships that unleash people’s greatest potential –
is no longer an option but an imperative. Welcome to the interconnected world of business!
How can your company learn how to foster engagement?
HRE is meaningful engagement among stakeholders on boards, within line units, over
country divisions and across entire organizations. Individuals become more engaged in their
work and, even more, individuals become more engaged with each other through work, all of
which is good for business.
In four decades of helping enterprises from all global sectors to better engage stakeholders, I
have yet to encounter a situation where HRE didn’t lead to increased efficiency, stronger
financials and greater fulfilment. And companies employing HRE often simultaneously
deliver benefits for society, a truly mainstreamed corporate social responsibility linked to
bottom line ROI.
But many companies don’t know how to effectively create or sustain HRE. By applying key
elements that support HRE, business leaders can solidify the long-term success of their
operations. Let’s look at how this plays out in real cases within the framework of four main
themes. In doing so, I hope to inspire your imagination about HRE possibilities.
I. Creating value through HRE
To create HRE, companies must know the capabilities, conditions and processes they need.
In the mid-1970s the major logging companies, environmental activists and the California
government were archenemies. But their eventual collaboration led to the creation of
“Investing for Tomorrow’s Prosperity.”As a cross-sector team, they moved from reforestation
to fisheries and then to all renewable resources, which ultimately became the blueprint for
Global Green Plans. How did they do it?
They found individuals within each stakeholder constituency who had the capability to see
beyond their own perspective.They jointly created conditions for safe dialogue by identifying
inviolable principals and areas where the stakeholders were willing to compromise. They
developed processes for “see-the-light-early” catalysts to lead others from their respective
constituencies.
Tactics that distinguish this case’s effective use of HRE included strong bonding experiences
like neighborhood tree planting parties with cookouts and dancing that allowed all
stakeholders to discover the humanity of “the other.”
Companies must find at least one stakeholder who can create a trusting environment where
people truly listen, hear and try to put themselves in the others’ shoes. Ultimately, all
stakeholders must develop a clear grasp of the shared goals and determine how their
respective goals will align. Business leaders who are able to do this will succeed.
II. Overcoming obstacles to HRE
To be effective companies must define their obstacles, identify the drivers that can overcome
them and mobilize those drivers.
In 2009 when a global corporation made dramatic cuts, dealing honestly with the obstacle of
extremely low morale became critical. Senior leadership found that a key driver for boosting
morale revolved around initiatives showing the company’s genuine care for remaining
employees. Through transparent meetings that revealed their financial reality, team members
then could understand the full picture as well as openly share their personal concerns.
This broader understanding fostered a more stable environment but the company still had to
mobilize catalytic leaders – those with the best skills for leveraging informal persuasion
networks – to recreate trusting engagement, which they did to tremendous effect using HRE.
As this experience shows, it is vital to identify at least one person who can prevail despite a
general unwillingness to find common ground. It should be someone who can forge bonds
among initially unwilling parties: someone who has the skills to move among stakeholder
constituencies and reward cross-boundary behavior. Business leaders who look for or
cultivate those people in their companies will reap the benefits.
III. Making HRE last
To keep HRE going for the long-run companies must learn how to sustain it by determining
how it might breakdown and what they can do to mend any breaches.
In 2007, after an international holding company acquired a number of related companies with
the aim of benefiting from the synergies, it lost sight of the aim and each business was
operating in its own silo. To sustain HRE and address the breakdown, they had to recreate an
awareness of the benefits sought in the original synergy mission.
Convening the heads of all its units, the company analyzed these critical points of synergy and
devised formal mechanisms to mend engagement among the businesses. Each unit in each
country began to share with each other regularly and one benchmark by which they were
measured was how systematically they continued these communications.
As silos are a threat to many companies, it is essential that they foster systems that strengthen
ongoing connections among different cohorts, encourage open dialogue about fissures and
their causes and promote ongoing transparency to regain/maintain a sense of
interconnection. Those that do will have a competitive advantage.
IV. Bridging leaders as über-catalysts
Companies that leverage bridging leaders, as über-catalysts, create strong catalytic teams
that drive HRE through empowering others and forming chains of trust with stakeholders.
In 2000 global activists were protesting at AIDS conferences with signs, “Coke kills workers in
Africa.” Though Coca-Cola had the best policies in Africa for AIDS prevention, protection,
testing and treatment of its own workers, protesters demanded that the company should
provide the same services to its bottling affiliates, which were completely separate entities.
Coke, however, felt it could not justify extra expenditure for its affiliates.
How could they overcome this impasse? Über-catalyst bridging leaders from all sides
encouraged developing HRE through dialogue, successfully allowing antagonists to see each
other as human beings who actually cared deeply about the same outcomes.
Through HRE Coke realized that serving its bottling affiliates’ employees was in its best
interest; if they became infected, it would affect Coke’s entire supply chain.
They also saw that the public didn’t distinguish Coke from its affiliates, as activists were
negatively impacting Coke’s brand.
And AIDS activists acknowledged that while they got media coverage for blasting Coke, their
attack strategy was never going to change Coke’s policies. If they really wanted workers in
Africa to stop dying Coke would have to agree to transform, which required HRE.
Ultimately, Coca-Cola provided AIDS services for bottling affiliates’ employees throughout
Africa with each stakeholder group – including the affiliates and employees – paying some
costs.
The über-catalyst bridging leaders in this and in the other cases saw the value in HRE and
were willing to come together long before others would. They then systematically brought
along other catalysts to work on expanding HRE in their companies.
To compete in today’s increasingly interconnected world driven by globalization where
traditional boundaries are shifting by the hour, information – accurate or not – is readily
available and a 24/7 news cycle, companies must cultivate leaders who can nurture HRE for
ongoing success.
And leaders must understand that HRE takes place over an arc of time with many vital steps
along and often rocky path. Yet nothing beats it for long-term value creation or
competitiveness. Experience and research shows that your company will thrive with HRE: it’s
just a matter of when and how will you tap into it.
Nadine B. Hack, President and CEO of beCause Global Consulting and currently Executivein-Residence at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, has advised The Coca-Cola Company,
Omnicom Group, Unilever and other Fortune 500 companies on rethinking stakeholder
engagement.
http://blogs.forbes.com/85broads/2011/05/03/how-deeply-engaging-stakeholders-changeseverything/
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Echt innovatieve bedrijven vertrouwen niet louter op het 'eurekamoment'
9 mei 2011, 12:08 uur | FD.nl
Door: Cyril Bouquet en Jean-Louis Barsoux
Innovatie is niet meer wat het geweest is. Het was
ooit het domein van één afdeling met een duidelijke
opdracht: de ontwikkeling van nieuwe producten.
Vandaag is innovatie overal. Het heeft niet alleen
betrekking op producten en diensten, maar ook op
processen, technologieën, bedrijfsmodellen,
prijsstellingen en marketingideeën, en zelfs op
prestatiebeheer - in feite op de hele waardeketen.
Maar het is niet eenvoudig een innovatiecapaciteit te
ontwikkelen. Het kan gebeuren dat de verwachte
voordelen geen werkelijkheid worden - of erger nog, ze
kunnen het bedrijf afleiden van zijn operationele focus.
Belangrijke inzichten
Om innovatie te bevorderen, hebben ondernemingen allerlei programma's bedacht en opgezet. Maar bij
diverse concerns is gebleken dat het moeilijk blijft wijdverbreide deelname aan innovatieprocessen te
bewerkstelligen.
Om beter zicht te krijgen op bestaande praktijken hebben we drie jaar lang de innovatie-inspanningen van
dertien mondiale ondernemingen onderzocht. Die ondernemingen waren afkomstig uit diverse bedrijfstakken,
waaronder de farmaceutische industrie, de detailhandel, de banken-, energie- en IT-sector. Ons onderzoek
leverde een aantal belangrijke inzichten op, die we hebben samengevat in vijf 'lessen'.
Pas op voor val van de beloningen
De kernvraag voor bedrijven die hun innovatiecapaciteit willen uitbreiden is welk beloningssysteem ze daarbij
moeten hanteren. Toch is beloning geen kritische factor gebleken. Het belangrijkste is plezier. Waar
werknemers het meest om geven, is de kans om invloed uit te oefenen en daar erkenning voor te krijgen.
De door ons onderzochte bedrijven waren het erover eens dat beloningen op z'n best een secundaire rol
speelden en op z'n slechtst feitelijk contraproductief waren, omdat ze degenen ontmoedigden wier ideeën
uiteindelijk niet werden gehonoreerd. Goed-geïnformeerde bedrijven besteden meer aandacht aan de sociale
en persoonlijke dan aan de materiële motivatie voor innovatieve inspanningen.
Vergeet de plotselinge invallen
Het 'eureka-moment' blijft tot de verbeelding spreken, maar bestendigt een vertekend beeld van innovatie. Het
suggereert dat de belangrijkste uitdaging het genereren van ideeën is. Dit verklaart waarom veel bedrijven hun
heil zoeken in grote brainstormbijeenkomsten.
Nieuwe ideeën zijn belangrijk, maar vormen slechts de eerste stap. De echte problemen doen zich vaak pas
voor in latere fases, als mensen moeten bedenken hoe ze hun ideeën werkelijkheid willen laten worden.
Paradoxaal genoeg kunnen innovatie-evenementen zelfs schadelijk blijken als het bedrijf geen systeem heeft
voor het erkennen, op waarde schatten en tot wasdom brengen van de slimme ideeën die eruit voortvloeien.
Voordat ze aan zoiets beginnen, moeten bedrijven er zeker van zijn dat ze lijden aan een tekort aan goede
ideeën. Als dat het geval is, mogen ze niet onderschatten hoeveel werk moet worden verzet als de workshop
voorbij is.
Geen wondermiddelen
De onderzochte bedrijven hebben allemaal het potentieelvan Web 2.0-instrumenten begrepen. De meesten
hadden onlinesystemen ontwikkeld voor het vastleggen, ontwikkelen en evalueren van ideeën.
Sommige onlineforums zijn zeer effectief geweest in het aantrekken van bijdragen en het bevorderen van de
innovatie-inspanning. IBM heeft zijn intranet gebruikt om een 'innovatie jam' van 72 uur te lanceren, die 57.000
bezoekers trok en 30.000 bijdragen opleverde.
Maar online-innovatieforums vergen de nodige moeite om van de grond te komen. Het is misleidend te
denken dat bedrijven slechts de infrastructuur hoeven te bieden om mensen de juiste richting te wijzen. In
werkelijkheid moet een breed gedragen innovatieproces zorgvuldig worden gevoed en actief worden beheerd.
De sleutel tot succes is begrip hebben voor het soort interactie dat er plaatsvindt. Online-forums zijn zeer
geschikt voor het genereren van een breed scala aan meningen of voor het beantwoorden van een specifieke
vraag. Als het doel daarentegen het aanboren van nieuwe ideeën is, of het stimuleren van mensen om op
elkaars ideeën verder te bouwen, is een face-to-face workshop een veel beter alternatief.
'Open' innovatieprocessen
'Open' innovatie is een populair onderwerp. Veel bedrijven richten de blik buiten de grenzen van de eigen
organisatie en vragen hun leveranciers of zelfs hun klanten om nieuwe ideeën. De Deense speelgoedfabrikant
Lego maakt al jarenlang gebruik van de ideeën van klanten als innovatiebron - op sommige nieuwe producten
staat zelfs vermeld 'bedacht door Lego-fans.'
Maar 'open' innovatie leidt ook tot praktische uitdagingen als vragen rond het intellectueel eigendom. Roche
Diagnostics heeft via Innocentive, een bekende marktplaats voor technologie, zes prijsvragen uitgeschreven
voor de externe technologiegemeenschap. Volgens de leidinggevende manager 'hebben we één nieuwe
oplossing binnengekregen, die het hele experiment de moeite waard maakte'.
Maar ten tijde van het schrijven van dit stuk heeft het bedrijf nog steeds geen licentie-overeenkomst kunnen
afsluiten met de persoon die he t technologische probleem heeft opgelost. De transactie- en licentiekosten zijn
geenszins triviaal.
Een andere factor betreft de operationele kosten van het bouwen van een open innovatie-omgeving. De
successen van bedrijven als Lego en Procter & Gamble zijn het gevolg van duurzame investeringen in externe
netwerken. De rendementen lieten echter lang op zich wachten.
Het heeft zin een beroep te doen op een externe gemeenschap als je wilt proberen een duidelijk omschreven
technologisch probleem op te lossen. Maar externe respondenten zouden veel meer moeite hebben
'ingebedde' problemen aan te pakken, die heel specifiek zijn voor een bedrijf of een situatie.
Top-down innovatie
De dominante boodschap in veel bespiegelingen over innovatie is dat bottom-up innovatie het beste werkt. De
redenering is dat topmanagers te ver verwijderd zijn van de werkelijkheid om klanten te begrijpen of om met
ideeën te komen die echt bij hen binnenkomen. Het is een aannemelijk verhaal, maar we hebben er in ons
onderzoek weinig steun voor gevonden.
De bottom-up initiatieven waarmee we te maken kregen - zoals Idea Exchange van UBS en het Sparkprogramma van GSK - hebben niet echt aan de verwachtingen voldaan.
De meest succesvolle benaderingen waren eerder een combinatie van bottom-up en top-down. Innovatie is
afhankelijk van de wisselwerking tussen sturen en luisteren, zelfs bij een bedrijf als Best Buy dat zich laat
voorstaan op zijn praktijk van bottom-up innovatie. Het Amerikaanse detailhandelsconcern heeft enorm
geprofiteerd van het aanmoedigen van experimenten met diverse niveaus van dienstverlening. Maar wat vaak
over het hoofd wordt gezien is de sleutelrol van het topmanagement bij de gerichtheid op een rol van de klant
bij innovatieve voorstellen, waardoor de risico's van irrelevante innovatie worden geminimaliseerd.
Naast het afkaderen van het innovatieproces speelt het topmanagement eveneens een cruciale rol bij het
nemen van een beslissing over de vraag waar een punt achter moet worden gezet. Bedrijven kunnen immers
niet alles doen.
Het is slechts door 'nee' te zeggen dat bedrijven zich kunnen concentreren op ideeën die er echt toe doen.
Uiteraard komt hierbij de lastige kwestie om de hoek kijken van het behoud van de energie van degenen wier
ideeën worden afgekeurd. Hoe hun bijdragen erkening zullen ondervinden, zal van cruciaal belang zijn voor
het op gang houden van de ideeënstroom.
Innovatie kan top-down of bottom-up zijn, face-to-face of online, naar binnen of juist naar buiten gericht. Al
deze varianten hebben hun sterke punten, maar ook hun beperkingen. Innovatie gaat over het vinden van de
juiste mix van benaderingen, wat betekent dat bedrijven éérst helderheid moeten scheppen over het
innovatieprobleem waarvoor zij staan.
Cyril Bouquet en Jean-Louis Barsoux zijn beiden verbonden aan de businessschool IMD in Lausanne.
Bouquet is hoogleraar strategie bij IMD en directeur van The Strategy Challenge (TSC). Jean-Louis
Barsoux is onderzoeker bij IMD.
Vertaling: Menno Grootveld
http://www.fd.nl/artikel/22117483/echt-innovatieve-bedrijven-vertrouwen-niet-louter-eureka-moment
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Ten Questions - Galina Antova
Galina Antova: “I viewed the MBA as a rite of
passage”
Galina Antova is an MBA student at IMD in Switzerland. She grew up in Bulgaria
before moving to Canada to study for an undergraduate degree in computer science
and psychology at York University in Toronto.
Ms Antova has worked in the high-tech sector for six years. Before starting her MBA,
she was employed by IBM, the software services company, where her
responsibilities included automation and cloud technology consultancy.
In her spare time, she enjoys cycling and reading.
1. What academic achievement are you most proud of to date?
I was awarded the most prestigious scholarship in the IMD MBA programme, the
Future Leaders Scholarship. Needless to say, it helped me in a significant way
financially. But most importantly, it was a huge encouragement. I was extremely
honoured and feel a responsibility to live up to my full potential.
2. When did you know you wanted to study for an MBA?
As my career progressed, I become increasingly more interested in the business
processes, not just the end result, of developing new technology. Since I had no
business education training I wanted to learn more about strategy, business
development and how business sciences are integrated to help us navigate today’s
complex corporate world.
I viewed the MBA as a rite of passage that would give me benefits and opportunities
as well as the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the business community
and assisting with tackling some of the greater challenges we face today. I chose
IMD in particular because its management education philosophy fits exactly with
what I was looking for from an MBA.
3. Who are your business influences?
Two business leaders I respect deeply are Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett because
they have qualities that I value deeply. Steve Jobs is a dreamer and entrepreneur. I
have always admired his approach to business, his passion and his relentless desire
to generate new ideas.
I also respect Warren Buffett for his disciplined approach to investing and brilliant
ability to detect business opportunities. He remains grounded and down-to-earth
even though he is one of the most influential people in the world, which says a lot to
me about his qualities.
4. What is the best piece of advice given to you by a teacher?
To change the game I am playing, rather than try to compete even harder in a game I
don’t necessarily enjoy. This advice came from our leadership professor Jack Wood,
and it resonated with me strongly. Part of what makes IMD unique in my eyes is that
we are expected not only to gain business knowledge and leadership skills, but to
integrate our career aspirations with our overall life plans, increasing our chances of
living fulfilled lives, rather than just having great careers.
5. What is your biggest lesson learnt?
To live fully in the present. Living a provisional life where I tell myself that I will do
what I really want only after achieving A, B and C leads to chasing happiness without
ever reaching it. I prefer to be happy now.
6. What advice would you give to women in business?
Don’t act like men, try to draw on your own strengths instead. Our society has
developed the notion that the leadership qualities we usually associate with men
(drive, fearlessness, determination) are more important than those we associate with
women (empathy, flexibility, consensus-building). In reality, men and women have
both sets of qualities, but due to social norms we have developed one at the expense
of the other. Women need to develop and encourage that other set of leadership
qualities as that will promote balance, instead of trying to be more like men, in order
to be successful.
7. How do you deal with male-dominated environments?
Throughout my university education and my career in technology I have been in
male-dominated environments, so I barely pay attention to this aspect any more. I
approach the environment as a place where bright individuals have come together to
co-operate, regardless of their gender. I try to act as myself, rather than fulfilling
some female stereotype.
Experience has shown me that when I first enter a male-dominated environment,
there are indeed some who see the female in me before they see the person, expert
and professional in me. If you act in stereotypical ways, they might never see any
other side of you. However, if you continue to act as yourself and prove yourself,
eventually people will see you as a person with a role, rather than just your gender.
8. What is the last book you read?
Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This exceptionally brave woman is one of my heroes and
her latest book is a memoir of her life.
9. What is your favourite business book?
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In a
brilliantly witty way he talks about the huge impact of rare events and why we are
poorly equipped to handle them. I found his research very interesting and applicable
not only to financial crisis and business problems, but to a broad spectrum of topics
in life overall.
10. What is your life philosophy?
I have always been inspired by how resilient and adaptable humans are. As a society
we have gone through upheavals and miserable times, but somehow our drive for
survival has proved stronger. I have many examples in mind where humans have
defied limits and boundaries and have persevered because they were fighting for
something good that they believed in. I find this quality extremely inspiring as it
makes me believe in a brighter future.
I try to remind myself daily of what is important and what is not when looking at the
bigger picture. I find myself caught up sometimes in the trivialities of life and
whenever that happens I try to get the larger perspective.
Interview by Charlotte Clarke
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. Print a single copy of this article for
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May 16, 2011
MBA Journal: Becoming a Leader
“IMD believes that leaders must first be self-aware before attempting to understand
others"
by Howie Chan
With the first part of Business Fundamentals over, the IMD (IMD Full-Time
MBA Profile Class of 2011 is gaining momentum in this one-year marathon.
The first three months were intense, but we never failed to play hard outside
the classroom. I will always remember heading to the local bar on Feb. 11 and celebrating
with our Egyptian classmates when President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, raising our
glasses to others turning another year wiser, and walking with candles to Lake Geneva in
memory of the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. These events remind us that even
though we sometimes feel isolated as we are focused on school, the world continues to turn,
and we need to fight to stay connected to it. That's not to say that the academics haven't left
an impression.
Early in the program, we were presented with 15 startup companies in Switzerland that were
interested in partnering with students. We submitted our choices and were matched with the
companies in groups of six. Each company was in a different stage of business and faced
unique challenges. When we started to work with them, we quickly got a sense of the startup
environment. Although we were eager to jump in and help the entrepreneur succeed, this
project was tricky to handle because we had to set aside time that we didn't have for it. We
were working on this project in the midst of reading, preparing for cases, and working on other
group projects. Nevertheless, what better way to learn about entrepreneurship than to work
for a startup?
We also started our personal development elective (PDE) as part of the Leadership Stream.
In this elective, we will spend 20 one-on-one sessions with a psychoanalyst to learn more
about ourselves and get in touch with our feelings. Knowing thyself is truly something we are
pushed to achieve, and this is impressively coordinated with analysis assignments, coaching
sessions, and the PDE, which uses the intense work environment in our groups as a
background for discussion. The leadership module continues to be one of the most
transforming aspects of the program, and I continue to have "aha" moments when the dots
connect.
During the first three months, we took core subjects, such as entrepreneurship, marketing,
economy, operations, accounting, and finance, interspersed with classes on communication
and critical thinking. The core classes are the foundation of an MBA, and although they are
extremely important, these other courses outside the core stand out to me. The
communication classes covered topics such as managerial writing, story boarding for slide
presentations, and public speaking.
Capturing the Audience's Attention
An unforgettable class was public speaking, where an experienced actor from the U.K.
engaged the class in a one-day workshop on how to "be ourselves but better with skill." Just
like acting, giving presentations in the business world is a high-pressure performance. Being
your genuine self is of the utmost importance. We spent the day role-playing and
understanding how to capture the audience's attention with a stage actor's toolkit. In the end,
we were convinced that his methods were credible, because he was able to capture the
attention of 90 sleep-deprived students for an entire day.
Despite being taught about high-pressure performances, that was actually one of the lightest
days. At the opposite pole was the integrative exercise. Not only are the classes in the
program integrated, which means I sometimes find it hard to distinguish an accounting class
from an organizational behavior class; also, specific main events test our understanding of
business from a holistic point of view. These are the integrative exercises that are spread out
throughout the year. In this particular exercise, we were given a case study at 1:30 p.m. and
had to be ready to present a full business plan the next day at 9 a.m. to a panel of judges that
consisted of faculty members. We were then given another 24 hours to revise the
presentation according to the comments we were given. My group spent 20 hours straight
working on the presentation, took a two-hour nap, and worked for another 20 hours to present
the final version to the judges. We used everything we had learned in the first couple months
to tackle the case, and we were so tired at the end, we were just happy it was over. I cannot
wait until the next one arrives.
The next half of the module will include our trip to Paris to participate in the annual MBA
Tournament organized by HEC Paris and another round of exams in June. We will also be
preparing for our trip to South Africa to work with local enterprises at the end of July. There
are many things to look forward to.
Howie Chan is a former scientist who was drawn to the business side of operations at
his employer Medtronic (MDT). He worked his way up to product marketing
manager, a post he has held since 2008, according to his résumé. Now, he's pursuing
his MBA in Lausanne, Switzerland at IMD (IMD Full-Time MBA Profile), the only
business school to which he applied. Chan, who has lived in Singapore and the United
States, would like to spend time in Europe and said in an interview that he aims for a
global career.
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2011/bs20110512_552102.htm?campaig
n_id=rss_topDiscussed
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Who is winning the present?
May 18th 2011, 15:57 by S.C. | HONG KONG
Some economists think the notion of national competitiveness is a " dangerous
obsession". When it's not being used to justifyprotectionism or industrial
favouritism, the term is just a "poetic way of saying productivity", or a looser way
of describing fluctuations in the real exchange rate. Other economists are more
sympathetic to the idea, but rather rude about the way countries are currently
rated, reviewed and ranked.
But those economists don't live in places that have just topped a global league
table for the first time! According to the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook
from IMD, a Swiss business school, Hong Kong has tied with the United States as
the most competitive economy in the world. We're winning! I'm not sure what
we're winning, exactly. But I'm glad we're winning it.
I must say Hong Kong felt pretty competitive today as I contemplated my first tax
return (15%). "This is Hong Kong; the worst thing you can be is inefficient," my
wife was told by one of her colleagues. And she works in academia. The transport
is famously cheap and speedy. If you have to fly to one of those less competitive
places, like Singapore (ranked third) or Britain (20th), you can check in your bags
before you even leave town, leaving you unencumbered for the 24-minute train
ride to the airport. The city boasts the world's longest system of outdoor
escalators, the 'travelator', which carries people up from the central business
district to the posh hillside residences--except in the mornings, when it ferries
people downhill to work, where they can get on with all that competing.
On the other hand, people do walk painfully slowly. And I arrive 15 minutes late
for most meetings, because I get lost in the labyrinthine shopping malls that clog
up the lower floors of every office tower.
The IMD rankings are based on no fewer than 248 criteria. (Pedestrian traffic
speed is not one of them.) They include things like infrastructure and education,
as well as personal income taxes, as you might expect. But some of their
measures seem to confuse cause and consequence: GDP per head, for example.
Is that the sort of thing that determines competitiveness, as the IMD
methodology says, or is it the sort of thing that competitiveness determines?
Something to ponder the next time I'm on the travelator.
Online
Article
Australia
May 19, 2011
Becoming a more effective idea-worker
Bill Fischer
Ideas move the world.
They certainly move markets. Whether it’s the tablet computers that are such
a rage, smart phones and/or their “apps”, social networking, compression
software (such as the mp3) replacing CD players, e-books nudging paper
books aside, extreme skiing, rap music, boutique hotels, reality television, our
interest in nutrition (organic/bio becoming increasingly preferred in food
selection) – you name it, they’re all about ideas. And these new ideas are
displacing old ideas. Someone gets a new idea, it catches on and the world is
changed. Not as easy, of course, as it sounds; but, in truth, that’s the way it
works.
For many societies, the search for good ideas has taken on a sense of
urgency as their standards of living have become so grand that they can no
longer compete in making things because the cost of their labour is too high.
As a result, once making things is out, “knowing things” becomes the next
possible advantage to pursue, and that means finding and harvesting new
ideas. In these places, money is spent on R&D; new universities are
established; celebrated thinkers get appointed to government panels; but, in
truth, it’s all very improvised; and if ideas result, so much the better, but often
the results are meagre, and maybe never actually measured or appraised. In
the end, resources are committed but our understanding of how to best
generate new ideas is not improved.
What do we really know about where good ideas are? How do we find them?
What are we to do with them once we get them? In answer to the latter, not
much it turns out! In fact, one of the most amazing things that I’ve learned
over a career in executive education is that for the most part, individuals and
organisations know very little about where the last good idea came from, or
where the next one is likely to be found. It’s just something that we don’t
spend a lot of time thinking about.
The truth is that idea work is very important, but not well understood. While
some of us follow the exercise regimes of sports heroes in the hopes that we
might build better physical states if we mimic them, very few of us inquire
about our own idea exercises. Have we gotten “better”, “stronger” and
“quicker”, when it comes to “lifting” ideas in the past few months? Would we
even know? Sadly, I fear, the answer is incomprehension: we’ve never
thought of it this way! In fact, we’ve never even thought about it at all!
Maybe now is the time to begin?
I’ve always been fascinated with how some individuals are just so much more
adept at finding and working with new ideas, while others haven’t a clue. For a
long while, I’ve believed that if only we could study the behaviours of ideaadept individuals we could all become a bit more effective as idea workers.
With this in mind, I’ve been part of a team (with Andy Boynton, Dean of the
Carroll School of Business at Boston College) that has been exploring
whether it’s possible, in fact, to learn from successful idea workers. We think
that it is, and have outlined some of their secrets in a new book entitled, The
Idea Hunter. Let’s begin with a few thoughts on the nature of the ideas that we
are hunting.
The world is not flat when ideas are involved
There is no equality in the likelihood of finding a good idea between one
location and another. Despite a very popular book by Thomas Friedman that
argues that The World is Flat, when it comes to ideas, there are
“neighbourhoods” that are much more attractive than others. Interested in
Web 2.0? Go to Silicon Valley! If you go anywhere else, you are reducing the
likelihood of finding a good new idea! Why? Because people with Web 2.0
ideas congregate around Silicon Valley; so, there is a higher probability that
you will discover a good new idea there, than, for example, Paris, or Milano,
or even Shanghai. Can’t leave China, and still interested in Web 2.0? My
suggestion is to go to Beijing’s Zhongguancun district. There, you will be more
likely to “bump into” someone from Beida, Tsinghua or the Chinese Academy
of Sciences, or even alumni of Founder, Stone or Lenovo who will be
interested in your ideas and might have ideas of their own, or know somebody
who does. You are less likely to find that sort of information in Shanghai or
Guangzhou, and certainly not in smaller cities. Good idea hunters know this
and they, like any “big-game” hunter, go where the action is in order to enjoy
the best chance “hitting their targets”.
Ideas don’t travel alone
Similarly, idea hunters know that one good idea typically leads to several
more, and that, as a result, good ideas are typically accompanied by other
good ideas. This makes for better hunting. Though any one idea might not be
usable, the likelihood of one coming from a larger number is almost always
much more promising. As two-time Nobel Laureate scientist Linus Pauling
once said: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
Bill Fischer is Professor of Technology Management at IMD and the Program
Director for Driving Strategic Innovation. His new book, “The Idea Hunter”
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass) was released in the US in April.
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Rijke landen staan weer iets sterker in concurrentiestrijd
19 mei 2011, 1:00 uur | Het Financieele Dagblad
Van onze redacteur, Amsterdam
Nieuwe groeilanden als China, India en Brazilië hebben hun concurrentiepositie dit jaar zien
verslechteren, zo blijkt uit de jaarlijkse ranglijst van de Zwitserse businessschool IMD. 'Er
ontstaat meer evenwicht tussen de opkomende landen en ontwikkelde landen', aldus
onderzoeksleider Suzanne Rosselet.
Hongkong en de Verenigde Staten staan op een gedeelde eerste plaats, die vorig jaar nog
door Singapore werd ingenomen. Singapore staat nu derde. Nederland zakte twee plaatsen
naar 14, en moet West-Europese landen als Zweden (4), Zwitserland (5), Denemarken (12)
en Noorwegen (13) voor zich dulden.
'Nederland presteert nog steeds goed', nuanceert Rosselet. 'Maar een concurrentiepositie is
een relatief gegeven. Andere landen doen het iets beter.' Volgens Rosselet moeten rijke
landen als Frankrijk en Japan zich eerder zorgen maken, omdat zij zich niet aan de
middenmoot weten te ontworstelen.
Indrukwekkend is de inhaalslag van exportkampioen Duitsland: vorig jaar nog op de
zestiende plek, nu nummer 10. Een andere opvallende stijger is Turkije, dat bijna 10 plaatsen
opklom naar 39. Griekenland duikelde juist 10 plekken naar 56. Van de 59 onderzochte
landen doen alleen Oekraïne, Kroatië en Venezuela het slechter.
Brazilië zakt ondanks stevige groeiprestaties zes plaatsen terug naar 44. Dat is vooral een
gevolg van de slecht functionerende overheid. Ook in Japan, België, Ierland, de Verenigde
Staten en China is de kloof tussen de prestaties van bedrijfsleven en overheid groot.
IMD bepaalt de concurrentiekracht op basis van 331 factoren. Twee derde daarvan zijn harde
statistische gegevens, een derde bestaat uit meer kwalitatieve enquêteresultaten. Opvallend
is dat de top 20 slechts vier grote landen telt. 'Kleinere landen zijn toch beter te managen',
stelt Rosselet.
Ranglijst IMD
Hoe rolt het geld?59 landen, langs de meetlat 11 landen
hebben overheidsuitgaven die meer dan 50% van het bbp bedragen, alle elf EU-lid
15,3%
overheidsuitgave als percentage van het bbp in Singapore
Copyright (c) 2011 Het Financieele Dagblad
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Interview available at http://www.dubaimedia.ae/Media/view/108406 beginning at the
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English Means Business
The international language—the lingua franca for doing
business—should continue to be English. Pro or con?
Pro: Yes, Warts and All
by Maury Peiperl, IMD
International companies and international commerce generally imply a
fundamental need for people to communicate across the globe, at least at a basic verbal and
written level. Translation and multilingual communication are important, but unless there is
one common language that everyone doing global business can speak, the complexity makes
it unwieldy for cross-border businesses to function. Multilingual companies, as well those that
use something other than the de facto global language, will always find it difficult to compete
with—and will incur higher transactions costs than—those that use a single cross-border
language.
We can argue about the merits of the situation, but English already is the language of
international commerce. This is not likely to change any time soon. The situation may not be
optimal, especially if English is not your strongest language. I admit to having been
astonishingly lucky in my choice of birthplace, but using English makes sense.
It was an accident of timing that English happened to be the language of the dominant
economic world power when globalization reached a critical growth point. It’s done and it’s
working. Even if there exists a better solution (Esperanto didn’t get far), it could never be put
in place at this stage in a practical way without a world war or a new dominant power. For its
part, China shows far more interest in teaching hundreds of millions of people to speak
English than in advancing Mandarin or Cantonese as a global language.
I am no fan of international business English. It may be dominant in North America, but it is
hardly a language reflective of Europe, let alone Asia. It doesn’t really represent a bridging of
cultures (unless you go back to the Saxons and Gauls). Still, it is relatively simple, having few
cases and bearing a pronunciation scheme that pretty much follows the letters as you read
them. This makes it appropriate, if not ideal, for what it has become. Although it may be as
painful at times to native speakers as it is challenging to nonspeakers, the simple international
version of English (usually) works. It has no apostrophes, limited punctuation,
interchangeable homophone spellings, an extremely limited vocabulary that’s often misused
(see www.engrish.com for an extensive collection of examples), little color, and less feeling.
It’s serviceable and essential.
Even as a kind of lowest common denominator, the English of international business marks a
further step forward in a global cultural evolution that has been picking up pace along with
cross-border flows of goods, money, and information over the last few decades. For nearly all
global enterprises, wherever they are based—and even for tourists, wherever they go—
English is the language of international contact. It may be a crude way to bring the business
world together, but it’s a start.
Con: Non, Nee, Nej, Nein!
by Karsten Jonsen, IMD
Non-native English speakers and companies should not be language-submissive. Linguistic
diversity is worth fighting for.
English as a common business language makes for an easy choice. Much like most doctrines
that celebrate homogeneity, the one-company-one-people-one-language-fits-all cultural
mentality seems easy. The economy-minded reasoning of today suggests that this will
happen increasingly in multinational companies. A common language facilitates socialization
processes, communication, and team building. Social identity theory suggests that language
barriers set boundaries with many unwanted consequences. Moreover, the alternatives to a
single common language are costly and cumbersome.
So this is a no-brainer, right? Not quite. Before making sweeping conclusions about English
as a lingua franca, we need to consider some inevitable downsides.
1. The status of English as a de facto lingua of business. This "choice" is historically
determined by the colonial, economic, and technological power of English-speaking countries
in recent centuries. English as the dominant language in IT and the general Internet is
reinforcing this just as English is spreading via film, television, and music. As a consequence,
other languages are disappearing faster than ever, which makes language preservation
important around the globe as a part of maintaining cultural diversity.
2. A common language gives people the illusion of communicating effectively and sharing the
same context and interpretation, even when this may not be the case. The same words can
mean different things in different local settings, and different pronunciations or strong accents
can make communication more difficult than it seems. Depending on who’s speaking to
whom, it isn’t necessarily a common language.
3. Standardization suppresses the national, regional, or ethnic identity supported by nondominant languages. Napoleon did it. Franco did it. The EU may soon do it. Today, people
who speak English as a mother tongue automatically ascend to a position of power, creating
a language-based status hierarchy, with non-native English speakers feeling excluded and
devalued. At some companies, ideas and content are disregarded or ridiculed when not
phrased in Ivy League English.
4. Languages are cues that activate different and important culture-specific frames. This
means that different thinking styles that relate to languages will not surface in a one-fits-all
culture, and organizations will lose out on broader-based ideas and perspectives.
The assumed gains in efficiency from relying on any common language at multinational
companies come at a price. It may make us richer in the short term, but poorer in the long
run. We need to preserve and cherish language diversity and say "no" to always using a
common language.
ARTHOR INFO
Maury Peiperl
Maury Peiperl is Professor of Leadership and Strategic Change at the Swiss
business school IMD, where he teaches in the program Orchestrating Winning
Performance. His areas of interest are organizational development, executive
careers, change management, human resources strategy, and global mobility. Peiperl has
taught, researched, or consulted in these areas in 25 countries. He promotes the role of
business in sustainable global development and in the resolution of cross-national conflict.
Peiperl holds a BS in engineering from Princeton University and an MBA, AM, and PhD from
Harvard University.
Karsten Jonsen
Karsten Jonsen is a research fellow who specializes in organizational behavior
at the Swiss business school IMD. His research interests and publications
cover such cross-cultural business issues as team performance, virtual teams,
stereotyping, globalization, career mobility, cross-cultural communication, gender, and
workforce diversity.
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AP Interview: US trade chief says too
soon to call Doha Round failure, pushes
bilateral deals
PARIS: The top U.S. trade official said Thursday it's too soon to declare the Doha Round of
commerce liberalization talks a failure, even as it nears its ten-year anniversary and
diplomats say a deal this year is impossible.
But while Doha stalls, Washington is prepared to use bilateral and regional agreements to
achieve its aim of boosting American exports and rebalancing the trade deficit, U.S. Trade
Representative Ron Kirk told The Associated Press.
"It's way too soon to begin any talk about giving up or walking away from Doha," Kirk said in
an interview on the sidelines of an OECD meeting in Paris.
His predecessor in the job, Susan Schwab, said recently that the Doha Round was broken
and couldn't be fixed.
"You won't find many voices saying it's over, it's dead, throw in the towel," Kirk insisted.
"There's still a great belief that this is worth the effort, even though it's taken time."
But he expressed disappointment that a hoped-for breakthrough earlier this year hadn't
emerged, and stressed that any successful deal would require sacrifices also from rapidly
emerging economies such as Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa.
The refusal of these new economic powers - known collectively as the BRICS countries - to
cede to U.S. demands for greater market access has been one of the main stumbling blocks
in negotiations.
Officials in Germany, one of the world's biggest exporters, are clinging to hopes of reviving
the Doha talks.
"We will discuss this again and I can only say that Germany - along with Great Britain in
particular - will push with all its strength for this Doha round to be concluded," Chancellor
Angela Merkel said in a speech to parliament Thursday before leaving for the G-8 summit.
"Free world trade is the best engine for markets and the best engine for growth that we can
imagine," Merkel said.
Analysts say it would take an external shock to jolt trade diplomats to conclude the round. It
was launched in Qatar's capital in 2001 weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United
States amid a general feeling of global solidarity.
"That spirit didn't last very long," said Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Professor of International
Political Economy at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Developing countries might take heart if the White House pushed Congress for special trade
negotiating powers, something it hasn't done so far, said Lehmann.
"Otherwise Doha will continue on a sort of life support basis and look like a vegetable," he
said. "I think that's the most likely possibility."
Kirk said that while the World Trade Organization's 153 members scramble for a "Plan B" on
Doha, the U.S. will try "any formula" that helps it export more to developing countries.
This means concluding bilateral deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, and
developing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. hopes will eventually become a
Pacific-wide free trade zone.
"But we still believe that any time we have the opportunity to set the terms and conditions in
a global way, that is our preferred alternative," said Kirk, adding that a successful Doha deal
would establish trade rules that could stand for the next 25-30 years. - AP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ap-interview-us-trade-chief-says-too-soon-to-call-doha-roundfailure-pushes-bilateral-deals/2011/05/26/AGwTesBH_story.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/05/26/ap_interview_us_wont_give_up_doha_seeks_deals/
http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2011/05/ap-interview-us-wont-give-doha-seeks-deals
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/05/26/general-eu-wto-doha-round_8486432.html
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THE IDEAS BUSINESS – Bill Fischer
Made in China: Smarter Companies?
Made in China: What does it mean to you? Low
costs? Fast response? Good enough quality?
Would you believe me if I told you that “being the
smarter competitor” was becoming the objective of
a number of aspiring Chinese global players?
Not so long ago, I was speaking with a European
country-head of a major global telecoms network operator who was
enthusiastically endorsing Huawei as a value-chain partner. I,
instinctively, suspected that this was all about pricing and/or speed,
but, in fact, the reality was far more surprising. Instead, my friend
spoke about Huawei as being “the best listeners” that he had ever
worked with. As a customer, he was delighted with not only the
attention that Huawei gave to him, relative to his more familiar
Western suppliers, but also their willingness and ability to respond
quickly and completely to his needs. In his own words: they listen
better!
Or, what about the fabled Chinese white-goods manufacturer Haier,
which is legendary for their ability to get closer to their domestic
Chinese customers? Haier is perhaps best known for the story of how,
in the mid-1990s, they unexpectedly recognized the use of their
washing machines by peasants in Sichuan province to make their
fruits and vegetables more attractive for the newly emerging free
markets, and then developed softer agitators to deliver on that need.
Today, Haier has grown into the world’s largest major consumer
appliance brand, with a 6.1% global market share (compared to 4.9%
for Whirlpool, and 4.8% for LG, in 2010), and it is involved in a major
effort to completely “reengineer” its organizational culture in order to
be completely market-focused. Not willing to accept “customer
listening” as an art-form, Haier is structurally readjusting its
reporting relationships, hierarchy, measurements and even its
resource allocation, to serve customer needs more effectively.
While Huawei, Haier, and Lenovo, are currently the best-known
global Chinese players, there are others who are quickly emerging as
well. One of these is UnionPay, operator of China’s only electronic
retail payment settlement network, and who is beginning to be seen
around the world in a variety of credit and debit card services.
Recently, for example, the Financial Times reported on
the installation of 75 UnionPay machines in London’s Harrods
department store, which have increased by 40% the spending by
affluent Chinese shoppers. What’s particularly interesting about
UnionPay is their attention to learning as a competitive advantage.
I recently had the opportunity to visit UnionPay in Shanghai and
listen to Mr. Chai Hongfeng, Director and Executive Vice President,
speak about the company. He is an urbane, sophisticated,
cosmopolitan executive, who could have stepped off of the cover of
Forbes, and he summarized the company’s managerial needs with
four words (and my own interpretation for each):
•
Study: to increase their ability to learn from the established
global bankcard companies (Visa, MasterCard, and American
Express) and from foreign payment system experiences
(Europe’s migration from magnetic strip cards to intelligent chip
cards, and, in his words: “The American market is a very
attractive market; there is a lot to learn from it.”);
•
Standards: in a very fast-moving business, there is always
the need to establish sufficient standardization to move
quicker. Sina.com has recently reported that UnionPay’s NFC
mobile payment solution (13.56MHz) will most likely be adopted
as the standard solution across China;
•
Cooperation: the ability to find value-chain and geographic
partners to help UnionPay move into new fields (mobile-phone
payments, for example) or new markets. In the last few months,
UnionPay has announced partnerships with a diverse set of
value-chain actors, such as PayPal, PingAn Insurance, and both
China’s major mobile phone network operators and handset
manufacturers [TCL], to ensure that it keeps up with possible
disruptions to its traditional credit/debit card business.
•
Innovation: the desire to be more than a fast-follower:
along with the partnerships noted above, there are rumours that
UnionPay is developing it’s own version of “Square’s” approach
to mobile payments.
“Study, Standards, Cooperation, and Innovation”: this is not about
price. Nor is this the image of the traditional State-Owned Enterprise
dinosaur. What this is, instead, is a recipe for learning more and
faster than their competitors. This is all about building a smarter
organization.
Some 16 years ago, Peter F. Drucker, the management gurus’ guru,
predicted that the next big managerial innovation would come out of
China, and we’re still waiting. Perhaps, somewhat unexpectedly, it
might just be the ability to listen better in an effort to construct
faster-learning organizations? In the spirit of that sentiment, my
good friend William Keller, the former CEO of Roche China, and a
long-time Shanghai resident, has observed that in the competition for
learning about how to do business in this brave new world of
globalization, Western firms travel the world telling others “how to do
it”, while Chinese firms travel the world “listening to the lessons of
others.” Keller asks: “Who do you think will learn faster”? Granted
“listening” is not necessarily the same as “learning”, nor is either a
guarantee for building an effectively “smarter” competitor. But,
listening and learning do strike me as excellent starting points for
competing in the ideas business.
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