1. Enabling Employee Driven Innovation
EDI-Europe Conference, Bruxelles
Peer Hull Kristensen

2. Content of speech Why is EDI becoming an important issue?
What are the signs of and where do we find EDIs?
Why are EDIs emerging in Nordic Countries? Towards Enabling Welfare States?

3. Why is EDI becoming important?
Tendencies in the New Economy:
From functionally integrated hierarchies to networked firms and open innovation systems
Globalized networks
Combining innovation and cost-reduction: Constantly redefinition of roles and rules among firms in global value chains
Developing High Performance Work Organizations: Integrating planning and execution in teams; decentralizing external relations (can-ban-systems)
New Managerial techniques: Continuous improvement, root-cause analysis, appreciative enquiry, simultaneous engineering, heuristic design.
The big challenge: The “Projective City” and the “Networked economy” for the few or the many?

4. Percentage of U.S. Industrial R&D by Size of Enterprise Source Chesbrough 2003
Company Size
1981
1989
1999
<1.000 Empl.
4.4
9.2
22.5
6.1
7.6
13.6
5.8
5.5
9.0
13.1
10.0
>25.000
70.7
67.7
41.3

5. Table 1.1 : Foreign Direct Investments (stock) in percentage of GNP 1990 and 2002
source: Eriksson et al. 2006: 9.
Country
To/from
1990
2002
Denmark To
From
6.9
5.5
41.7
43.4
Sweden
5.3
21.3
46.0
60.5
Finland
3.8
8.2
27.0
52.8
USA
7.5
12.9
14.4
England
20.6
23.2
40.8
66.1
Germany
7.1
8.8
22.7
29.0
France
9.1
28.2
45.8
Ireland
72.3
24.5
129.1
29.9
China
7.0
0.7
36.2
2.9

6. What signs of and where to find EDIs?
The Lisbon Scorecards:
2002: Only Finland contest the US: The Finish Innovation System (NOKIA)
2004: Finland, Denmark and Sweden outperform the US: Two Innovation Systems and Danish Flexicurity
2006: Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany and UK outperforms the US
WHY?

7. Translearn: What happens in Firms in the Nordic Countries?
Living with and being highly responsive to the changes in ownership, in benchmarks, scorecards, etc. from owners, financial markets, customers and regulatory institutions.
Yet A New Strategic pattern of firms:
Combining products with services,
Doing continuous improvement and innovation for customers’/owners’ organization
Searching for increasingly sophisticated and demanding customers or owners

8. Transitional forms of organization
Firms are able to change their role towards customers, owners and suppliers continuously
A capability that is rooted in integrating planning and execution and constantly experimenting with High Performance Work Organization and Learning organizations
Which are a mess in constant flux, but often consist of a dual structure of operational teams and ad hoc teams – mutually reconstituting each other (most extreme case Unimerco)
The legacy of Industrial Relations for creating negotiating restructuring.

11. Signs of Change among Danish Employees
Do you apply your own ideas at work?
”Often” ”Now and then”
1985: % %
2000: % %
Grundfos: From approx (2004) to (2006) written proposals for improvements

15. Why are EDI emerging in Nordic Welfare States?
Employee autonomy dependent on universalistic WFS and freedom to mobility.
Work in the Projective City: Unpredictable in terms of content, team, place and timing
Access to the “Projective City” and mobility dependent on
Education
The liberated family: access to personalized services for kids, the elderly, unemployed, etc
Lifelong learning, distant projects, unpredictable life-courses
The Big Wheel of Enabling Welfare States: EDI in the interface between the public and private sector

16. Figur 2. Lønspredning og kompetencespredning
Figur 2. Lønspredning og kompetencespredning. Kompetencespredning målt som de 95 procent bedste i forhold til de 5 procent dårligste. Kilde: OECD

17. Table : Public spending as percentage of GDP on families and on elderly 1998 (1):
Public spending on families
of which Services
Public Spending on elderly
of which services
Denmark
Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
3.77
3.36
3.31
2.22
0.51
2.23
1.44
1.68
0.49
0.29
9.77
8.53
11.17
10.58
5.20
2.95
1.54
3.71
0.81
0.05
(1): Cash amount for a two-earner family with two children as a percentage of GDP.
Source: OECD, 2007 B, p 66.