The Leading Speakers Bureau

We have the pleasure to present to you Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale – International Business Consultant, Author & Lecturer. And we are going to discuss with him he new generation of European-based business Success .

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 and his appeal is truly global. Jonas has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. The 2005 Thinkers 50, the bi-annual global ranking of management thinkers, ranked him (and his colleague Nordström) at number nine internationally and as the leading European business guru.

1. You are ranked as number 9 among management thinkers of the world and number 1 in Europe together with your co-author Kjell A. Nordström. As you are the number ones in Europe the question is quite obvious: are there only a few real thinkers in this continent or are you that good at management to be ranked on the first place?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are many great European management thinkers – from Charles Handy to Fons Trompenhaars. I think I’ve been successful, because the ideas that I present are solid enough to stand the test of time, but also because my books and gigs provide people not only with intellectual content. In all probability, that stuff is necessary but not sufficient if you want to make it in my industry. I also give people hope, confidence and optimism. Boosting the psychological capital of people is at least as important as adding to their intellectual capital.

2. What do you think what is the problem with the European management thinkers?

I don’t have a problem with them – at least not all of them.

3. In world’s economy Europe as a producer does not have a big role nowadays everything is moving to Asia. Based on your experiences how could Europe compete and stay alive? Is there a problem with the management skills here, in Europe or it is just a new era when China, India are getting bigger roles?

In our deregulated world, there are two basic options. Either you design a strategy that’s as fit as the great white shark – well adapted to a world of markets, or you focus on being sexy like the peacock with his amazing tail – attractive to people with more or less endless choice. Most people are familiar with Charles Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest. As an effect of the deregulated business life and our journey into an info jungle where markets rule and reign also organizations must adapt. Right now, they are outsourcing and off-shoring to become the fittest business on the block.

Just farming out stuff won’t do the trick, however. Being fit requires that you find and exploit a market imperfection. For economists (and politicians) perfect markets are those where marginal cost equals marginal revenue and companies make just enough money to stay in business. In a perfect market, profits don’t exist. It’s therefore the duty of executives to pursue imperfections.

Dell created a transactional advantage with its direct to the customer business model, eliminating several parts of the traditional value chain. eBay has designed its Internet platform, where you can sell and buy just about everything, in such a way that relationships and reputation evolve and result in mutual trust. Finally, there are those companies, mainly professional service firms such as Ernst & Young or Accenture, which focus their attention on creating and defending a talent monopoly.

But also Darwin later came to realize there’s another way. The trick lies in shifting perspective from a survival-oriented to a courtship-based view of success. Consider the peacock’s tail? From a fitness perspective, this “psychedelic feather duster” actually provides a competitive disadvantage. He can’t run. He can’t fly. So, why did the peacock end up with such a ridiculous costume?

In order to understand his look, we must consider the peahen, because in nature as in life and in business it’s always the “customer” who takes the ultimate decision; go – no go. With the tail, the peacock is actually telling the female that he is so incredibly fit that he can afford to carry around this awkward adornment and still be alive and have a good life. He has a credible handicap. This is survival of the sexiest. The guy is attractive as hell.

Since we’ve deregulated life and moved into a split society in which at least some people now have more or less endless choice, being good is often no longer enough. Today, in the business world we find an abundance of firms that supply a surplus of products and services with similar quality, price and performance. For Generation Choice – sameness sucks. So, corporations must attract the attention of people by appealing to their feelings.

In business, credible handicaps largely fall into two separate categories: ethics and aesthetics. If you refuse to bribe and cheat, you’ll be handicapped. Corporate social responsibility costs = handicap. Also corporations that spend a lot of money on being environmentally friendly develop a handicap – a cost disadvantage. Is this handicap credible? Increasingly so, I believe, after the UN report on our climate and Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. No wonder that the percentage of global venture capital that’s invested in so called clean technology is up from 1 per cent in 2000 to 14 per cent in 2006. But ethics isn’t for everyone, everywhere. All handicaps are subjective, and their exchange rates vary over time and space. As a supplier you also need to be authentic. Transparency works both ways.

As for aesthetical handicaps, consider BMW. We’ve been told that the company employs close to 30 highly trained engineers who work only on the sound of the door, and almost half as many who focus on the smell of the car. Look at the cost structure of that company. BMW shouldn’t exist – not in one of the most competitive industries in the world; not when it spends an enormous amount of time and money on completely “meaningless” things such as design and branding. Yet, it does. In a perfectly normal and rational world we would all be driving Toyota Corollas. We don’t. BMW is hugely successful – not despite the handicap but thanks to it. The company knows how to profit from the peacock principle.

4. Asian companies are just on the rise and not entered fully in the global market yet. Are there huge differences between the management techniques they use and the ones you offer to be successful?

There is no Asian management style. We find great differences even between Japanese companies. I think it is fair to say that as individualism and freedom of choice conquer also this part of the world, leaders will have to become less of traditional bosses – power with rather than power over. As the companies mature and move further up the value chain, many of them will also have to become global not only in output terms, but also when it come to input and throughput. This will require a somewhat different organizational and managerial approach.

5. You have updated Funky Business and remastered it for the new business reality. What are the main things that have been changed since the book was published?

We have given the book a 60 degree wash to make it more independent of space and time. We also include an entirely new chapter with some of the most important developments over the last 8-10 years.

6. Based on the fact that Funky Business has been updated can a manager still use and learn from the old book or from Karaoke Capitalism or can we say that time has been changed?

Some truths are eternal. I still believe strongly in 99.9% of the stuff that we have written about in the books. If anything, we probably underestimated the power of the forces of change. Our books provide people with questions and a way of looking at the world – structuring mechanisms and principles – that makes them less likely to become irrelevant than books that try to sell you answers in the form of 10 bankable propositions.

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