Plenary Sessions
Conference Chairman
Wim Kok
Economic, social and demographic time-bombs looming for Europe: a time for action! |
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C.K. Prahalad
Our new age of innovation: driving co-created value through global networks |
Vijay Govindarajan
Strategy as changing the rules of the global game: creating the future |
Rod Beckström
The starfish and the spider: the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations |
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Climate change and human development: no time to lose! |
Fons Trompenaars
Creating more out of less: servant leadership across cultures |
Anne Ruddy
Economic uncertainty and the impact on total rewards and talent management |
Lynda Gratton
Creating lasting value: what it takes for you to be energized and innovative |
Economic, social and demographic time-bombs looming
for Europe: a time for action!
Europe has had a great past. Can it have a great
future? Is Europe loosing out competitively to
the faster growing economies of the Asia and
South America, and to the more innovative
Americans? Can Europe preserve its “social
model” and still be an economic force in the
future? How can we become more agile and use
innovation to stimulate growth? Has the Lisbon
Strategy - aimed at making Europe the world’s
most dynamic and competitive economy by
2010 – helped or failed?
In Europe we have an ageing population and
our birth rates are too low to sustain either our
businesses or our social benefits and pensions
structures. Retirement ages need to rise to
fund pensions. Social pressures are building up
against inward migration in many countries; but
is the only way our economies and social systems
can survive will be if Europe actively embraces
in-bound labour migration – as America has?
The “war for talent” is taking on new dimensions:
does our very economic survival depend on it?
Income inequality has risen, driven by the forces
of globalisation and competitiveness. Incomes
for many are being pushed down and those for
afew are being pushed even higher. There are
calls for curbs to top executive remuneration in
the interests of social cohesion. But what is the
right balance, if any?
Wim Kok is uniquely qualified to address
these issues. Wim Kok was Prime Minister of
the Netherlands from 1994 – 2002. Wim Kok
has been a pivotal member of the European
Employment Taskforce and a lead member of the
high level group recommending a revitalisation
of the Lisbon Strategy. He is a Member of the
Supervisory Boards of Shell, ING, TNT and KLM.
Our new age of innovation:
driving co-created value through global networks
CK Prahalad is rated as the most influential
living management thinker. He helped reshape
corporate attitudes to the developing world in
his ground breaking book: The fortune at the
bottom of the pyramid.
His latest research focuses on the Future of
Competition and The New Age of Innovation.
In Valencia he will argue that we need to re-think
how we create value. Cost cutting can only go so
far in creating value.
The key to creating value and future growth is
through accessing a global network of resources
to ‘co-create’ – or create collaboratively – unique
experiences with customers, one at a time.
According to CK, no firm is big enough in scope
or size to satisfy the experiences of customers;
what is required is a shift in mindset from one
of resource ownership to one of accessing
resources. Companies must obtain the resources
they need by sourcing globally; and flexible
systems are a prerequisite.
Organizations have to think about how they
access and use talent globally and they must
make more strategic use of IT.
In a nutshell: they must treat all customers
individually, but source globally.
While web based companies have an advantage
here, CK argues, all companies must focus on
these challenges or lose their customer base.
For ‘traditional’ companies this poses enormous
challenges – but also opportunities. IT and HR
in particular need to act far more strategically.
Companies must embrace the challenges of
building genuinely diverse, international teams.
What’s more, countries have to view migration
of talent as a strategic opportunity rather than
a cultural threat. It provides access to vital, and
often scarce, skills. Indeed, openness to diversity
and migration may be a national competitive
advantage.
CK Prahalad is professor of business
administration at Michigan Business School.
He is co author or author of many books and
articles, including Competing for the Future
and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,
The Future of Competition and the New Age
of innovation.
Strategy as changing the rules of the global game:
creating the future
We now live in an era of almost constant change.
New technologies continue to emerge at a rapid
pace. Globalization brings with it new markets,
new customers, new competitors and new
challenges and the internet has created greater
transparency to any company’s strategy, actions
and performance.
As a result of these forces, companies find
that their strategies require almost constant
redefinition. Either the old assumptions are
no longer valid, or the previous strategy has
been imitated and neutralized by competitors.
Often too, technological developments and
globalization offer unanticipated opportunities.
Against this backdrop, the strategic challenges
for organizations center around market
discontinuities such as fundamental shifts in
technology, customers, competitors, lifestyle/
demographics, globalization, regulations. These
have the power to transform our industries.
The trick is to analyze the opportunities and risks
that result from identifying and understanding
of market discontinuities. How can we create
new growth platforms with a view to exploiting
them? What are our core competencies and how
can we use them? How do we allocate resources
to support growth?
In this session you will have the opportunity to
explore your potential role in the future of your
company. What kind of organizational DNA is
required to anticipate and respond to change?
How do you execute breakthrough strategies?
At the end of this session, participants will be
able to develop a framework to answer the
following questions:
- Why do companies need to be constantly
innovative with regard to strategy?
- How can firms identify the market
discontinuities that shape the future
of the industry?
- How can firms exploit the global opportunities
that result from these shifts in the marketplace?
- How can firms build the requisite
organizational DNA to create the future
while managing the present?
- How do you execute breakthrough strategies?
Vijay Govindarajan is professor of international
business at the Tuck School; he is the professor
in residence and chief innovation consultant to
GE. He is the author of many books and articles
which include, ‘Building breakthrough businesses
within established organizations,’ a collaboration
with Chris Trimble which has been published by
Harvard Business Review.
The starfish and the spider:
the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations
Rod Beckström, former Director of the US National
Cyber Security Center; successful CEO, business
catalyst and author of ‘The starfish and the spider’.
Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a
seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its
head and you have a dead arachnid. Yet remove
the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new
one. What’s more, its severed arm can grow an
entirely new body.
Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike
spiders, they are decentralized; every major
organ is replicated across each arm.
Starfish don’t just exist in the animal kingdom.
Rod Beckström will provide powerful current
day examples of how starfish organizations are
taking society and the business world by storm,
changing the rules of strategy and competition.
How has Toyota leveraged starfish principles
to crush their spider-like rivals, GM and Ford?
How did the upstart Napster cripple the global
music industry? Why is free, community based
Wikipedia crushing Encyclopedia Britannica
overnight? Why is the tiny ‘Craig’s List’ crippling
the global newspaper industry? Why is Al Qaeda
flourishing and even growing stronger?
Rod will clearly identify the traits and business
practices of starfish versus spider organizations.
Spider organizations are centralized and are built
around organization charts; starfish ones tend to
organize around a shared ideology or a simple
platform for communication and the internet has
helped them flourish.
Moreover, starfish organizations are built on
very different principles. Such principles, as Rod
will demonstrate, are radical and vital to any
business, organization or individual that wants to
thrive in the new marketplace.
Climate change and human development:
no time to lose!
Climate change, population growth, mass
migration, pandemic diseases, and the plight of
women – particularly in developing countries:
the policy issues confronting the world’s leaders
are only increasing.
What kind of world do we want our children
and their children to inherit? What’s it like
being a woman at the top of the world’s major
public bodies?
Theses are the issues that Gro Harlem Brundtland
will address in her speech and she argues we
have no time to lose!
Gro is rated by the Financial Times as the fourth
most influential European in the last 25 years.
She was prime minister of Norway for
10 years during the period 1981 to 1996,
where she is known as ’landsmoderen‘
or ’mother of the nation‘.
Between 1983 and 1987 she chaired the
United Nation’s initiated World Commission on
Environment and Development, which initiated
our focus on sustainable development. From
1998 to 2003 she was director general of the
World Health Organization, and has been widely
recognised for leading efforts that stemmed
the outbreak of SARS. She is currently
a UN special envoy for climate change.
A medical doctor by training, Gro’s career
has combined her passions for public health,
human development, women’s rights and the
environment. In her speech she will challenge
participants to wake up to the issues facing
the planet, and will reflect upon some of the
challenges she has faced as a woman at the top.
Creating more out of less:
servant leadership across cultures
In an increasingly global world, more and
more businesses are expanding internationally
and engaging in cross-national mergers and
acquisitions. Globalization not only provides a
platform for unanticipated opportunities, but
also provides extraordinary challenges.
As the workforce becomes more diverse, people
are operating from, and interacting through,
different values across countries and companies.
The consequence of such a diverse workforce will
be a ‘clash of cultures’. Will dilemmas that arise
remain unsolvable? Not for servant leaders.
Experience has shown that servant leadership
is the most effective approach when dealing
with the dilemmas that result from cultural
diversity and integration. Using examples, Fons
Trompenaars will demonstrate a path that leads
to a better, higher value – dispensing with need
for compromise. It is an effective process used
to break the pattern of cultural stereotyping
and counterproductive behaviors. At the same
time it reconciles opposing viewpoints and
thereby ensures that processes for globalization
and M&As are successful – in effect: ‘getting more
out of less’.
Fons Trompenaars will cover the essence of his
books ‘Servant leadership across cultures’
and ‘Creating more out of Less: Cross-cultural
due diligence.’
Fons is the author of more than 10 books
including ‘Riding the waves of culture,’
‘Riding the whirlwind – connecting people
and organizations in a culture of innovation,’
and ‘Understanding cultural diversity in business’.
Fons Trompenaars is founder of Trompenaars
Hampden-Turner.
Economic uncertainty and the impact on total rewards and talent management
Businesses throughout the world are facing the
twin challenges of economic downturn plus
rising inflation. Only a few fortunate sectors and
locations are escaping them. These pressures
pose great challenges for businesses worldwide
in how to manage total rewards, performance
and talent management.
Employees are seeing their incomes eroded and
want larger increases in pay, companies have less
ability to pay.
How are businesses around the world reacting?
In this session Anne Ruddy outlines joint
WorldatWork and Hay Group research on what
businesses are doing, and planning to do. How
are they managing the dilemma of motivating
and retaining the talent they need when their
ability to reward is less?
How will the economic downturn affect
pressures for greater work-life balance? Will this
become just a boom-time dream as the pressures
grow to do more with less? Will companies freeze
pay and focus on incentives? What are they
doing with often expensive benefits?
Anne Ruddy is President of WorldatWork.
Creating lasting value: what it takes for you to be energized and innovative
When companies are under economic pressure,
it is easy to focus on short term costs and ignore
the future. However Professor Gratton will argue
that in economic downturns it becomes even
more important to create lasting value –
by bringing speedy and targeted product
and service innovation.
Over the last ten years Professor Gratton’s award
winning research with companies such as ARM,
the BBC, Orange, Reuters, RBS and Unilever have
pinpointed what is takes to drive innovation
and the crucial role high performing teams
play in innovation. In her book ‘Hot spots – why
some teams and places buzz with energy and
innovation – and others don’t’ Lynda showed
what this meant for companies – whilst her
newly released book ‘Glow: what it takes for
you to be energized and innovative’ creates a
blueprint for individual action.
In this session Lynda brings together these
two strands to identify the 10 actions
organizations and individuals can take right
now to beat the recession and ensure they
flourish through product and service innovation.
Lynda Gratton is professor of management
practice at the London Business School.
Her other books include: ‘The democratic
enterprise’ and ‘Living strategy: putting people
at the heart of corporate purpose.’
www.hotspotsmovement.com