Jonas Ridderstråle

Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He cuts through the madness and hyperbole surrounding the global economy with a truly global appeal. His uncompromising, imaginative and decidedly fresh take on contemporary business life makes him one of the world's most sought after and appreciated speakers. In 2007, Thinkers 50, the world's first ranking of management thinkers, ranked Ridderstråle and his partner Dr. Kjell A. Nordström at number thirteen in the world.

Forget dry theories, Ridderstråle's ideas work. He makes things happen. Ridderstråle acts as an advisor and consultant to a number of multinational corporations and runs his own Business Improvement Group.

Dr. Ridderstråle holds an MBA and a PhD in international business and has been recognized as Sweden's outstanding young academic of the year. Formerly, he was an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics where he was responsible for the school's Advanced Management Program - a five-week top-management program that attracts the elite of Scandinavian executives. Ridderstråle is currently a visiting professor at Ashridge Business School in the UK. His research focuses on new organizational models and leadership styles in the information age and has been published in leading academic journals, including Business Strategy Review, Organization Science and CritcalEYE Magazine. Ridderstråle contributed to the best-selling Financial Times Handbook of Management and Business: The Ultimate Resource. He is on the editorial board of The Capstone Business Encyclopaedia.

Ridderstråle is the author of three business books together with Kjell A. Nordström. His latest book, Funky Business Forever, is the long awaited update to the international bestseller Karaoke Capitalism. Funky Business Forever takes a look back on the later half of the millenniums first decade and provides evolved thinking and commentary in a way that is truly funky and down to business.

The previous book, Karaoke Capitalism: Management for Mankind is a globally celebrated manifesto on how to make it in the new world of commerce. Their first book, Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance, quickly became an international bestseller, selling more than 300,000 copies. The book was recently ranked at number 16 in a Bloomsbury survey of the best business books of all time.

Jonas Ridderstråle has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. In March 2004, he appeared on CNN's program Global Office for a long interview on the ideas behind the books. Dr. Ridderstråle has also been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, Financial Times, Stern, Paris Match, and many other publications worldwide.

• Karaoke Capitalism: Management for Mankind

  Karaoke Capitalism is a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxies of commerce. It is about people – management for mankind – the individuals prepared to grasp the microphone and express themselves. You have the rights. Now, you must learn to live them.
  
  The karaoke reality is a cosmopolitan club with endless individual choice but also a paltry place for institutionalized imitation. The dirty little secret of management theory and practice is that business schools, benchmarking and best practice have transformed the entire world of commerce into a super-group of karaoke copying companies. And imitating someone else will never get you to the top – merely to the middle.
  
  Our societies are shaped by the glorious trio of technologies, institutions and values. Changes have now made abnormal the new normal. The bubble economy has given way to the double economy. Forget about appealing to the average. Success is a question of exploring the extremes. Corporations are no longer in control. Modern companies are facing the prospects of a two-front war: held hostage by talent and under siege by consumers.
  
  The winners know that wealth is created with wisdom, but to remain competitive they are forced to create knowledge networks that pose new and fundamentally different demands on the organization.
  In a world of economic Darwinism, survival is a question of being fit or sexy – competing on models and moods. Fitness boils down to using market imperfections to your advantage. Masters of mood exploit the imperfections of man by seducing or sedating consumer. Excellent companies re-invent innovation and re-energize the corporation.

• Funky Business

  Funky Business tells us that the new world is different. Forget the old world order. Forget what you knew yesterday. The revolutionary reality is that 1.3 kilograms of brain holds the key to all our futures. Competitive advantage comes from being different. Increasingly, difference comes form the way people think rather than what organizations make. Today, the only thing that makes capital dance is talent. In such times we cannot have business as usual--we need funky business.
  
  Technology, institutions and values are being subverted and overturned. They are the triad, the inter--linked drivers of change, transforming each other and creating a global village of turbulance, tribes and fusion. We are deregulating life for ourselves and our children. Whether you like it or not, we are all condemned to freedom-- the freedom to choose.

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  May 2008

  Re-energizing The Corporation

  Re-energizing The Corporation is built on the groundbreaking 3e leadership model which makes sense of the three Es of Envisioning, Engaging and Executing. By understanding and following the model, you will be able to create compelling pictures of the future of your organization; build a following of individuals committed to getting the vision into reality; and maximize team performance to deliver on your dream.

  
  
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  January 2008

  Funky Business Forever

  Funky Business: no business book is more stylish, or more funky. Now it’s back and it’s more funky than ever. Funky Business Forever casts a penetrating glance back over its shoulder to see how many of its predictions came true and turns a piercing gaze on the future to see where funky business is headed next. How will we be living, working, thinking tomorrow? Dip into this inimitable and exuberant gallop through the big issues of today and see what the original funksters, Nordström and Ridderstråle, have to say about capitalism, the economy, politics, technology, the environment, talent. Always provocative, always controversial, their ideas may make you laugh, shout, grind your teeth, nod your head, pull your hair out, but one thing’s for sure, they’ll make you think.

  
  
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  October 2007

  Funky Business

  With its fresh thinking approach and updated with the latest business messages and new examples, Funky Business will ensure you are always on the right side of change.  Only talent will allow you to be unique. Forget what has come before. The new edition of Funky Business will rewrite the future for organizations and leaders.

  
  
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  April 2005

  Karaoke Capitalism: Daring to be Different in a Copycat World

  "Karaoke" capitalism refers to the philosophy of imitiation, engrained into the corporate mindset by such popular concepts as benchmarking and best practice. For Ridderstrale and Nordstrom, the only way to survive is to chuck convention, to embrace your company''s individual personality and promote it through everything you do, constantly honing what works and abandoning what doesn''t. Ultimately, the authors argue that armed with imagination it is possible to sustain profitable businesses while contributing to the well-being of customers, communities, and the society at large.