*By Anders Drejer & Christer Windeloew-Lidzélius, professors invited by Saint Paul Business School to teach leadership programs amidst the chaos in Brazil
Nobel Prize-winning singer and songwriter Bob Dylan once wrote, “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.” In the business world, this phrase holds true. So we ask you: is your organization busy being born or busy dying?
It’s safe to say that the mantra of the new decade, both among leaders and institutions, is that organizations need to be more innovative and think proactively about their strategic management. As a result, we’ve seen well-known works in innovation management and technology management being rediscovered—or perhaps rediscovered—in a respectable way, which has begun to influence the way we think about management as a discipline.
Is there something rotten in Denmark?
Looking at our home country of Denmark, we see a colombia whatsapp data small, open, and international economy that certainly has its advantages for a country with scarce natural resources. However, Denmark fared better as a trading nation than as an agricultural society (albeit one based on exporting first and second sector products). In what was then called the “Industrial Society,” Denmark managed to establish a profitable niche based on selling and exporting a relatively small number of products and services that were global leaders despite (or perhaps even because of) Denmark’s small size, while importing other important products and services.
One of the main reasons for this success has been the collaboration between industry and science, such as the export of Danish pork, which is based on a highly unique genetics programme developed collaboratively between organisations representing primary pig producers, the Danish government and universities. Medical giants such as Novo Nordisk (based on insulin for diabetes patients), Novozymes or Coloplast (based on ostomy products) and also Carlsberg (with its classic slogan: probably the best beer in the world) have all benefited tremendously from the links created between universities and the state.
Other examples in this context are the predecessors of today's smartphone: the GSM-based mobile phone, and the wind turbine. In the first case, we saw the software that enabled the creation of the global mobile phone industry being programmed and invented in Denmark, which generated a huge interest in the cluster of companies around Aalborg University dedicated to the emerging mobile phone industry. Eventually the skills for mass production eluded Denmark, developing in Finland, Germany and the Far East, where the high numbers were produced as the industry matured. Note that in these places, as the industry lost its "innovative character" it was disrupted by smartphones, a "new industry".
In the second case, wind turbines, the current hype surrounding the wind energy industry makes us forget the journey it took to get to this point, with a massive amount of state-sponsored research and development. In the early 1990s, a R&D tug-of-war was fought between the US and tiny Denmark over wind turbine development. By the late 1990s, seven of the top ten wind turbine producers were Danish, while the other three were American. And this despite the fact that the US funded 500,000 man-years of wind turbine research, while Denmark funded “only” 100,000 man-years. However, in terms of mass production capacity, Denmark has won, and so the big numbers are still located in and around Denmark — at least for now, as China and others are trying to catch up — while the US, in terms of wind turbines, is a barren wasteland.
And how did Denmark win, despite having so much less R&D funding? The answer, sadly, is not that the researchers were smarter. On the contrary, Professor Peter Karnoe of CBS has shown that the initial success was the result of better collaboration between universities and industry, resulting in a succession of small improvements and a proven turbine design, which eventually outperformed the Americans’ “Big Science” approach. The rest, as they say, is far from trivial.