ReputationInstitute

Summer 2008 >     Fall 2007 >     Summer 2007 >

ANOTHER GREAT YEAR:

REPUTATION INSTITUTE'S 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

 

Goodbye, Oslo!

Our 11th International Conference on Reputation, Brand, Identity, and Competitiveness was held last month at BI (the Norwegian School of Management) in Oslo—and went off like a charm. Some 200 old and new friends from companies and business schools as far from Norway as Australia, Brazil, and 20 other countries joined us to share ideas about "Innovation as a Reputation Platform."

Across 8 plenary sessions and 20 breakouts, we got to hear fascinating presentations about ongoing research and practice from around the world. And the conversations they provoked could be overheard in the hallways of BI's beautiful new building, around the hotel bar, and on the decks of the Johanna during our rainy but fun (so I'm told since I was sick in bed!) Friday night cruise around Oslo Harbor.

During the conference, I also had the pleasure of presenting Reputation Institute's 2006 Award for "Most Respected Company" to Barilla's CEO, Gianluca Bolla. I was also privileged to welcome University of Michigan professor and author C.K. Prahalad and his wife. C.K. was there to receive Reputation Institute's 2007 "Best Scholar Award."

Our deepest thanks go to Peggy Simcic Brønn and Brunjulf Tellefsen at BI for hosting the conference, to our lead conference sponsor, Telenor, and to our associate sponsors Apeland, Conecto, Gilde, MBT, and Tine. To the tireless RI admin team led by Adam, I say thank you for your dedication to detail! And to all those who participated in the conference, thanks for the intelligent contributions to our continuing dialogue.

I look forward to saying hello to you all on May 26, 2008 in Beijing, site of our 12th International Conference!

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BAD WEATHER JUST BAD CLOTHING

There's an old saying in Norway that goes something like: "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing". The reason for this folklore is that Norway is notorious for its unpredictable weather. It is not rare to experience the four seasons in one day in some parts of the country. If you want to enjoy yourself, you must just forget about the weather, dress for the occasion and make the most of the conditions.

And that is what the participants of the RI conference did for the gala dinner Friday night. In true Viking spirit, more than 125 conference participants trooped up to our great wooden boat in pouring down rain and temperatures in the 50's. The absence of the midnight sun meant the attendees had to huddle together and pay attention to each other as they enjoyed wine and shrimp and a tour of the islands in the Oslo fjord.

There was a great feeling of camaraderie that seemed to permeate the conference. It was evident already the first evening at the late night dinner in the school's rooftop dining facilities featuring reindeer medallions. Food was perhaps the center point of most of the socializing, and it was often difficult to get participants back to the reason they were in Oslo.
Saturday lunch was the last meal that everyone shared together. Served on the rooftop terrace of the school, it was gloriously accompanied by sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70's. In Norway you learn to enjoy every second of sunshine, and even the editorial board of Corporate Reputation Review refused to meet indoors for their lunch seminar.

That there was something special about this conference was evident also in the closing ceremony. Participants were doubtless surprised that they could be moved to tears by a corporate presentation. Esther Trujillo's talk about Spain's Foro de Reputacion Corporativa's UN Millenium Development Goals project did just that. The name of the project is Joana, a little girl who, for the next eight years when she turns 18, will help others understand how to make the world a better place. For Esther it was just fate that our great wooden boat should be named Johanna.

VALUABLE FOR PRACTITIONERS:

HOW TO ALIGN YOUR COMPANY VALUES WITH YOUR STAKEHOLDERS VALUES WAS AMONG THE KEY TOPICS WHEN SOME 200 PRACTITIONERS GATHERED FOR A PRE-CONFERENCE SEMINAR IN OSLO.

It was the fourth time that RI and its Norwegian partner, Apeland Informasjon, invited Norwegian practitioners for a full day conference on Reputation Management. Judging from the turnout and feedback, the participants benefi ted from spending the day at Latter, downtown Oslo.

"We are extremely concerned about our reputation and are here to learn more and get inspitation," said Jarle Jodnes of TINE, the Norwegian market leader in dairy products.

Presentations from three prominent international speakers— Charles Fombrun, John Foley and Jeneanne Rae—were very well received and case studies from Absolut and Telenor illustrated how some large companies and respected brands work behind the scenes.

IKEA received Reputation Institute's award for best reputation in Norway for the fi rst time, together with Skandiabanken. Both companies explained how they work and how they constantly strive to become better. IKEA's Colin Renwick told about the internal program H.E.R.O which is made to motivate employees to help fulfi ll IKEA's customer promises. 100 service heroes are named, and money prizes awarded to employees and teams.

"IKEA impresses everyone with their humbleness, their attention to detail and their systematic but yet simple methods to always strive to be better," said Nils M. Apeland, adviser in Apeland Informasjon and responsible for the event.

INNOVATION FROM WITHIN

PRESIDENT, IMD & NESTLE PROFESSOR OF STRATEGY, PETER LORANCE

Professor Lorange was introduced as a professional and a personality who has managed to innovate from within throughout his impressive international career that has taken him from Norway through several leading schools to the US and from 1993 to Switzerland as president of IMD. More so, he has demonstrated his ability to innovate IMD as a leading institution in the global marketplace for executive education based in the ideas of cross-disciplinary learning and partnerships between business and academia.

In his talk, Peter Lorange characterized academic institutions that have managed continuously to innovate themselves. They all give a strong priority to research, but it has to be relevant and include speedy transformations from knowledge to application. According to Lorange, too much research is trapped in disciplinary silo-thinking, while innovation emerges at the boundaries. Furthermore, innovative institutions engage in strong interfaces with leading practitioners from all over the world. He stresses the need to bring cross-cultural diversity of business into the classroom and research projects and emphasized that the role of academia is to pinpoint the dilemmas of business instead of giving right or wrong answers. The combination of these two strategic pillars is summarized in the IMD tagline "Real World, Real Learning". Lorange stressed the necessity to create such global meeting places, where the creative tensions between being a leader and being led can be unfolded. The main obstacles are the academic tendencies to hide away in ivory towers and the arrogance in business that prevents dialogue. The challenge for management is to keep the fl ow of learning going and ensure minimalist organizational structures that prevent silos. So, Peter Lorange recommended abandoning departments, titles and tenure! He formulated six principles that can be helpful to organizations that seek to build strong reputations from internal innovation:

1. Create networks and avoid hierarchies. Silos and bureaucracy are deadly to innovation.
2. Be action-oriented. Do-try-learn and engage people in collective learning processes.
3. We need more action-oriented human resource processes. Nurture a culture of creative tension and never forget that the prima-donna and the team are one.
4. More action-oriented control processes. Few innovations emerge from budgeting procedures. Instead, performance orientation and milestone control moves organizations forward.
5. Support internal entrepreneurs. They are the people who see business opportunities before anybody else and sometimes people may think of them as "weirdos". It is essential to marry strong individual creativity with teamwork.
6. Keep it simple. Here Lorange cited Ghosn from Nissan Renault: "Simplicity equals hard work—complexity equals no work at all!"

Peter Lorange concluded by saying that innovation in organizations has no age, which was encouraging to the audience.