Enabling Employee Driven
Innovation
EDI-Europe Conference,
Bruxelles 02.03.09
Peer Hull Kristensen
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?
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?
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
1.000-4.999
6.1
7.6
13.6
5.000-9.999
5.8
5.5
9.0
10.000-24.999
13.1
10.0
13.6
>25.000
70.7
67.7
41.3
Table 1.1 : Foreign Direct Investments (stock) in percentage
of GNP 1990 and 2002
source: Eriksson et al. 2006: 9.
Country
Denmark
Sweden
Finland
USA
England
Germany
France
Ireland
China
To/from
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
To
From
1990
6.9
5.5
5.3
21.3
3.8
8.2
6.9
7.5
20.6
23.2
7.1
8.8
7.1
9.1
72.3
24.5
7.0
0.7
2002
41.7
43.4
46.0
60.5
27.0
52.8
12.9
14.4
40.8
66.1
22.7
29.0
28.2
45.8
129.1
29.9
36.2
2.9
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?
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:
1. Combining products with services,
2. Doing continuous improvement and innovation for
customers’/owners’ organization
3. Searching for increasingly sophisticated and
demanding customers or owners
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.
Signs of Change among Danish
Employees
Do you apply your own ideas at work?
”Often”
1985:
34%
2000:
69%
”Now and then”
21%
20%
Grundfos: From approx 15.000 (2004) to 29.000
(2006) written proposals for improvements
Nordic countries, Slovenia, EU27, UK
and Germany:
Generally, does your main paid job involve
learning new things ..
You are able to apply your own ideas at work
Fourth European Working Conditions Survey

90,00
Finla nd


Norw ay
De nmark

learning
85,00

80,00
Slove nia
75,00
70,00



EU27
UK
Ge rmany
50,00
55,00
60,00
65,00
own ideas
70,00
Sw e den
Nordic countries, Slovenia, EU27, UK
and Germany:
Pace of work depends on
direct demands from customers..
monitoring of boss
Fourth European Working Conditions Survey


Norwa y
Sw e den
76,00

Finla nd
customers

De nmark
72,00


Ge rmany

68,00

64,00
20,00
30,00
boss
EU27
Slove nia
40,00
UK
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 lifecourses
• The Big Wheel of Enabling Welfare States: EDI
in the interface between the public and private
sector
Figur 2. Lønspredning og kompetencespredning. Kompetencespredning målt som
de 95 procent bedste i forhold til de 5 procent dårligste. Kilde: OECD
36
USA
34
Ire
32
R2 = 0,6856
UK
Aus
Lønspredning
30
Can
Tyskland
28
Bel
26
Svejts
Nor
Hol
24
Sve Fin
22
DK
20
1,5
1,7
1,9
2,1
2,3
Kompetencespedning
2,5
2,7
2,9
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
3.77
3.36
3.31
2.23
1.44
1.68
9.77
8.53
11.17
2.95
1.54
3.71
United Kingdom
United States
2.22
0.51
0.49
0.29
10.58
5.20
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.