10 Things you might not know about Jonas Ridderstrale

Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle, the author behind the bestseller Funky Business in 2000, is one of the worlds most significant and respected business thinkers and speakers.  He is at the forefront of the new generation of management gurus and has been ranked among the top for 11 consecutive years in Thinkers50, the biennial ranking of management thinkers.  As late as 2011 he was ranked number five in Europe, and among the top in the rest of the world.

More things you might not know about him:

1. Jonas has an MBA and a PhD in international business and was recognized as Sweden’s outstanding young academic of the year. In 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Italian Nobels Colloquia award for “Leadership in Business and Economic Thinking”. Jonas is currently a visiting professor at the internationally acclaimed business school Ashridge in the UK. His research has been published in leading academic journals.

2. His forceful blend of academic rigor, imagination, humor and highly dynamic presentation style has inspired audiences from Moscow to Mumbai and San Francisco to Shanghai. Jonas’ diverse client list includes Fortune 500 companies, major government bodies, sports teams as well as trade unions.

3. Dr. Ridderstråle’s ideas and work have attracted huge media coverage throughout the world. He has appeared on CNN’s “Global Office” in an extended interview exploring the ideas behind his books. Elsewhere, he has been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, Financial Times, The Times, Stern, Newsweek, Paris Match, and many other publications worldwide.

4. Jonas asks questions that trigger new thoughts and discussions. In our deregulated world, more and more responsibilities rest with the single individual. So, we must all arm ourselves with the knowledge needed to take smart decisions.

5. His intention is that his thoughts should help you give birth to your own unique ideas. That is what will have an impact on the competitiveness of your business and your own career.

6. The title for his second book, Karaoke Capitalism, came out of the frustration that the companies didn’t companies use the golden opportunities of new technologies. “I saw too little innovation from a management and leadership point of view. The criticism we received for these books [both co-written with Kjell Nordström] was, “yes, it’s fun and interesting and written in an appealing way – but how do you actually do it?”, he once declared.

7. Since psychological and social capital are so important, he believes we have to rethink a lot of the basics in management. Most traditional management presumes you can move from envisioning straight to execution, forgetting engagement. It equates great leaders with those who have Eureka moments. But to deliver real change you have to be able to tap into people’s emotional capital too.

8. He believes that him and Kjell Nordström are different on the market, in terms of the examples they use. Instead of examples that would make sense to a traditional CEO, or someone who has spent twenty to twenty-five years in the economics library at a university, they use examples that make sense to people in general.

9. He and his partner have taken more of a horizontal analysis approach where they look at societal changes – such as in art, culture and music – and explore how it interacts with business. “We paint a picture of the broad societal trends, which is not unusual, but then we link those trends to what’s happening within corporations, the field of leadership and management, and the field of strategy,” Jonas said for ideaconnection.com.

10.  He thinks that talent is a little bit more complex as a concept than knowledge, because talent includes more than the intellectual capital that used to make and still makes some organizations competitive. 

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8 Things you might not know about Kjell Nordstrom

Kjell Anders Nordström is a Swedish economist, writer and public speaker. Amid the madness and hyperbole surrounding the new economy, Dr. Kjell A. Nordström is a guru of the new world of business. In 2009, Thinkers 50, the global ranking of management gurus, placed him and his partner Jonas Ridderstrale among the list of most influential thinkers. His research and consulting focus is on the areas of corporate strategy, multinational corporations and globalization.

More things about him that you might not know:

1.He was first educated as an engineer and thereafter commenced studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1991. Until 2004 he was an Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Business (IIB) at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research and consulting focus is in the areas of strategic management, multinational corporations and globalization. He has served as an advisor/consultant to several large multinationals and to the government of the United Kingdom.

 

2. He believes that in order to get rid of that human shadow called poverty, we have to make up our minds as to what a good life is. “Technology without ideology and values, does not produce much value. As noted by Charles Handy, the market is not a substitute for responsibility – merely a mechanism for sorting the efficient from the inefficient,” he declared for http://thinkers50.com.

3. Nordstrom also thinks that never before in the history of mankind have we had so many potent tools that potentially enable us to build a better world and companies that are actually fun to work for, but it is up to us to create this future.

4. In his opinion, the role of the leader is to strike a balance between when there should be control and when you should let go. Leadership is very much an art form. 

5.  His book  “Funky Business – Talent Makes Capital Dance” became an international best-seller and has to date been translated into 33 languages. In 2000, both Amazon.co.uk and the webzine Management General rated it as one of the five best business books of the year. Another survey ranked it as the 16th best business book of all time.

6. He has been described as the “enfant terrible of the new world of business”.

7.  He is a founder of the Stockholm School of Economics’ most prestigious management program, which attracts the elite of Scandinavian executives.

8. Amusing, Educational, Enthusiastic, Informal, Interactive, Passionate, Story-telling and Thought-provoking. Kjell Nordstrom is one of a new generation of rock star speakers. His dynamic, agile and compelling style is matched by the scale and pace of his ideas.