Weblog

How Denmark is losing its competitive advantage on knowledge & innovation

2012-01-14T08:55:28Z

Politiken - one of Denmark's largest newspaper - published an interesting article about how in my eyes Denmark is losing its competitive edge on knowledge. The article is about a new decision that is made by the Danish tax office. This decision is about that it becomes only more expensive - thus more difficult - to buy magazines that are being published from outside the EU (such as The New Yorker and Foreign Policy).

The authors of the article argue that magazines from outside the EU will only become more expensive due to an extra tax. While reading the title that magazines become extremely expensive ('blade bliver ekstremt dyre') I was triggered, because non-EU magazines in Denmark are already expensive.

Six times a year I enjoy reading the magazine 'Foreign Policy'. When I should be buying a hard-copy version of the magazine, I should pay around €10 in the Netherlands and €15 in Denmark. This is already a bit more expensive than its original price of around €5, but that's something you take for granted if you think about shipping & admin costs. The reason why it is already more expensive in Denmark than in the Netherlands is because of the higher VAT rate of 25%. So, 'foreign' magazines are already expensive, but what makes it now extremely expensive?

If you for example buy a magazine for €5 you need to pay €1,25 extra for VAT. This is a relatively small extra amount that let's you absorb new information and knowledge from sources which are relatively non-Danish and non-European. However, it will look like that you need to pay €20 more for sending and receiving the magazine. The extra €20 is due to the fact that these magazines should be send through the post office who then can charge you for import rights.

So who is going to import a magazine that normally costs €5 but in Denmark around € 26,25? That's crazy! It is not only because it is so expensive, but also because this new decision will stop the flow of knowledge from outside Denmark.

Denmark sees itself as a knowledge economy. It is a small country with only 5,5 million people and without a very big asset of natural resources. Denmark earns money by selling knowledge. But looking at the future of each European country, it seems like that there will be only be fewer who carry knowledge - the people - due to for example an ageing workforce. This means that Denmark is in need of the latest knowledge that is necessarily not being produced in Denmark self. It therefore becomes crucial for countries such as Denmark to create a system through which it can easily absorb new knowledge.

I am sure that the rising of the costs on foreign magazines is not improving the process of absorbing new 'foreign' knowledge. It's a decision to try to earn money on the short term (which I don't believe will work, but perhaps the Danish tax does) but - on the other hand - will result in losing a competitive advantage in the long run!

Luckily I have an iPad through which I can subscribe to digital issues of Foreign Policy for only €4 per issue.

Blogging as one of my New Year's resolutions

2012-01-10T08:54:16Z

The New Year has started! All the good New Year's resolutions are flying around. From losing weight to visiting family members. Everything that we already did in 2011, but then just a little bit better.

My New Year's resolution is to blog more!

In the last couple of years I blogged a lot on my website and for one of my clients. In these small articles I have often emphasised on the importance of blogging. I still believe in this, even though it took me 2.5 months to write a new article. This also happened with the blog of one of mt clients. I did not write something for a long time and as a result of that my special spot with all my articles on their frontpage was gone. This is a normal development when you put this in to the perspective of networked working.

While working in networks, it is not recommended to be passive. The one who is not active in a network will lose his or her position within a network. In my case the frontpage of my client's website. This also counts for social networks like Twitter. When you only absorb information via Twitter instead of share yours with other, you will hardly become the centre of a network. You will probably be suited on the edges of networks. As a result, new information and knowledge will probably reach you not as fast as others who are more an integrated part of a network.

Is this my reason to have this good resolution about blogging? Yes! However, it is just one of the reasons. An other reason why I would like to write more was being written down by Euan Semple in his latest book 'Organizations don't tweet, People do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web'. Among other things he writes about the following:

“Much has been made of the business benefits of “knowledge retention”. Organizations have instigated various practices to achieve this lofty aspiration, from exit interviews to “knowledge capture” exercises ... In contrast to all of these conventional methods, what if you were creating your legacy as you worked? If you run your project in a wiki, discuss what is working, or not, on a forum, or write your interpretation of what you are doing on a blog, then all of that contextual richness is captured. Not captured in the usual knowledge management sense as dry business stuff stored in a knowledge coffin, but lively first person narrative, revealed as it is being thought through and worked out. Blogging is very powerful in this context.”

Are you interested in reading more about why and how you should the social web? Buy the book and use it is a reference while experiencing the ins-and-outs of the social web.

Getting Danish politics into the open

2011-10-17T08:38:28Z

Increasingly, businesses move to new business models in order to adapt to the needs and requirements of the 21st century. One of the these needs is to be ‘open’. Some businesses have already proven to be very successful in showing the power of open standards, open content and open data as a business model. Just think about Google and TED. This article will look into how Denmark prepares businesses to embrace open standards, open content and open data

One of the topics when talking about ‘open’ is open standards. A good example of an initiative that embraces open standards is the Internet. In the 1960s the Internet started off as an initiative between universities. These universities collaborated on standards in order to connect all the different university networks. Due to the increase of, among other things, computer power in 1980s, it became possible to use this Internet globally in order to connect a large collection of documents and applications. One of the applications that helped sharing these documents and application was the World Wide Web (WWW). From the beginning of the WWW in the 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the WWW, simultaneously started with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). W3C’s objective is to guarantee the access to all the information on the WWW by developing international standards for the WWW.

Even though the WWW functions on open standards until today, it does not automatically suggest that the WWW is a place where access and content is open. While the WWW runs on open-standards there is increasingly a development that content on WWW - the actual information - is being closed down (as discussed in the article ‘a virtual counter-revolution’ published on 2 September 2010 in the Economist).

As a result, when talking about open standards, it is equal relevant to talk about open content and open access. This is also the reason why concepts like open standards, open content and open access are being used interchangeable. That’s why there is still a need to discuss the similarities and differences of open content, open access and open standards. Such a discussion will hopefully result in a broader acceptance of open content, open access and open standards.

Martin von Haller Grønbæk, IT-lawyer in Denmark

So, what is the current state of open content, open access and open standards in Denmark. With this question I met with Martin von Haller Grønbæk. Martin is a Danish IT lawyer who is considered the Scandinavian expert on legal and business strategic issues related to, among other things, open content, open data and open standards. He is also the co-founder of Creative Commons in Denmark, the Danish Open Source Business Association and the Danish Chapter of Internet Society.

Open standards in Denmark

On the question what the current state is of open standards in Denmark, Martin answered: “today there is no doubt that there is an increase of business models which embrace various concepts of the open movement. In general, open source is well accepted in Denmark. PHP (ed. script to create dynamic content on web servers) is a open source initiative developed by the Dane Rasmus Lerdorf. Nevertheless, within the public sector the recognition and adaptation of open concepts is far behind”.

Martin states that the public sector in Denmark has a difficult time in understanding the benefits of the open movement and that this impedes the acceptation and adaptation of open standards. “Although Denmark has compared the closed document type which is made available by Microsoft Office and the open document type from Open Office in the last ten years, this has not resulted in embracing open standards within the public sector”. According to Martin this certainly has to do with the fact that Denmark has a long history in using Microsoft. “Both the public sector and the private sector are heavy users of Microsoft Office and because politicians and experts cannot agree on which document type is most preferable, the public sector just continues with the standard they already use: the closed document type from Microsoft Office”. Martin argues that “this has created a situation in which Denmark has not moved forward within the domain of open standards”.

Open content and open access in Denmark

In the domain of open content and open access Denmark should also advance more. “The public sector talks about freeing public content under open licenses, because there is a general consensus that the tax payer paid for this content”. However, this discussion is not advancing into concrete agreements, because there are still too many industries who earn their money on content. “There is no single business that can make the decision to undermine the market by offering content for free”. Let’s take Danish Radio (DR) as an example. DR aims at opening access to all content related to Danish radio and television. If DR makes this decision, they would embrace the principles of open access and open content. However, the trade unions are the biggest problem in moving forward the principles. Martin says that “the Danish trade unions do not approve open access and open content. The trade unions believe that for example a journalist, producer or other artist creates a product with one objective. If the same product is being used in a different context, DR should give more money for the content of the product”.

Consequently, there is a big challenge in Denmark when looking at the discussion in favour of open access and open content. Martin argues that Denmark should look “for a political-cultural solution so that people become more aware that it is a opportunity rather than a threat when there is a better access to content”. Martin believes that the discussion has not moved forward into the 21st century because traditional institutions, like the Danish trade unions, obstruct these discussions. There is the desire among individuals, but it lacks the decisive power which currently is in the hands of the Danish trade unions.

How to move forward?

Denmark should suit the action to the word! Discussion about the benefits of open standards, open access and open content should be changed into decisions. According to Martin politicians should make these decision, but unfortunately each Danish political party lacks this decisive power.

“Denmark has a Ministry for Innovation and Science. This Ministry should have a leading role in the discussion but experiences have shown that the Ministry has hardly power. As a result, the government does not make a decision and thus does not direct Denmark into the 21st century in which the principles of open standards, open access and open content are being implemented”.

At the level of a political party we can see that there is no single party that has included the issues related to open standards, open access and open content on their political agenda. “Sometimes they talk about it, but there is not the desire to open up the topic”.

“The people who sympathise with open standards are just like in many other European countries often supporters from liberal parties - like Venstre in Denmark. However, the good things that are being done in relation to open standards are oddly enough done by curious collaborations. It is a person from the right wing populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) and a person from the Danish Social Liberal Party (Radikale) who receive support from the socialists from Socialist People Part (SF) and the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten). These are the stakeholders in some limited discussions about open standards, open content and open access. One of the reasons why the Danish People’s Party and the Danish Social Liberal Party talk about the issues related to open is that these are the only ones who have limited knowledge of IT”.

The paradox of Danish politics regarding open standard, open content and open access is that it should be the key issues of liberal parties, because the ideas behind open stimulate a common infrastructure and therefore a common playing field where people can compete.

This is not being understood in Denmark! It is even so bad that the liberal party Venste labels open standard and open content as an activity done by socialists. But according to Martin “open is hard-core capitalism”. The Danish decision makers should therefore prioritise ‘open’ more in their economic agendas. Perhaps then Denmark can move forward by designing the framework for businesses to work in the 21st century.

The state of 'open' in Danish innovation strategy: an opportunity

2011-09-07T08:34:29Z

I am currently working out the interview I had with Martin von Haller yesterday. Martin is a Danish IT-lawyer with Bender · Von Haller · Dragsted - a leading Scandinavian IT law firm.

One of the objectives of this interview was to get a current state of how Denmark adapt to open-access, open-content, open-data and open-standards. I asked him:

in light of the current Danish election, which political party did mention something about 'open' in their manifest?"

His answer was none

And still the current Prime Minister - Lars Løkke Rasmussen - makes it to today's front page of Politiken by arguing that innovation and the development of ideas should be a high priority for High School students. I know, election time is about just saying what people want to hear in order to get as many votes as possible, but perhaps this could be an important moment to introduce and include 'open' as part of the Danish innovation strategy for the 21st century

Your brain sees more than what your eye sees

2011-07-14T09:17:30Z

As I already mentioned in the previous weblog post, I am reading a book about what gut feelings are and how our sense- & decision making could benefit from it. There are many interesting quotes, but I just want to highlight this one about that computer are not yet intelligent and I cannot see it happening in the near future:

A good perceptual system has to go beyond the information given; it has to “invent” things. Your brain sees more than what your eye sees. Intelligence means making bets, taking risks

Does this make sense to you? If not, I would like to invite you to experiment itself through Matthew B. Thompson research on Flash Face Distortion Effect by watching this video

In this example our brains tell us that these women are ugly, but by focussing on each of these women this gut feeling is not true. So, could we trust our brains or senses?

Metaphor on the problem of over-constraining

2011-07-14T07:37:28Z

I just read a useful metaphor in the book Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making by Gerd Gigerenzer. This metaphor illustrates that simplifying complex situations or filtering complex situations into simplistic decisions is not very helpful:

To date I have met only one man, an economist, who reponded that he followed the Benjamin Franklin method to choose a partner. He sat down with a pencil and listed all the possible partners he could think of and all possible consequences he could image (such as whether she would still listen to him after being married). Next he put a number on the utilities of each consequence and then estimated the probabilities that each might come true. Finally, he multiplied the utilities with the probabilities and added them up. The woman he proposed to and married was the one with the highest expected utility, though he didn't tell her about his strategy. By the way, he is now divorced.

This metaphor is quite similar to Dave Snowden's Children's Party. Overconstraining a situation will not necessarily result in the outcome you expected. I also highlighted this issue in the column published for the Dutch KM journal 'Intellectueel Kapitaal'. In this column I agrued that businesses should be better in sharing and creating knowledge in order to plan scenarios and avoid profit warnings (something that happened quite a lot in the Netherlands over the last couple of weeks).

Danmark som videnøkonomi ifølge en naiv hollænder

2011-06-20T09:30:17Z

This article (in Danish) was written for the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende. Even though a professor in Management, Politics & Philosophy with the Copenhagen Business School found it an interesting column, Berlingske Tidende rejected it for publication. That's why I use my own means of publishing.

I Holland og andre europæiske lande har vi ligesom i Danmark også finansielle problemer. Siden parlamentsvalget sidste år, har Holland indledt en ny strategi i forhold til, hvordan de finansielle problemer skal overkommes. Indenfor de kommende fem måneder stilles danskerne også overfor valget om en sådan ny strategi.

Partierne i Danmark har hver deres strategi. Et parti vil gerne fjerne førtidspension, og et andet parti ønsker at lukke de danske grænser for at stoppe ‘misbrugere’ af det danske velfærdssamfund. Selvfølgelig udspringer alle løsningsforslag fra hver sin ideologi.

I dette indlæg vil jeg gerne fortælle mere om ideologierne fra det danske socialdemokrati, og hvordan socialdemokratiet i Danmark mener, at de kan løse de finansielle problemer. Socialdemokratiet er overbevist om, at Danmark kan komme ud den finansielle krise, hvis alle arbejder 12 minutter længere om dagen.

Ifølge socialdemokratiet bør danskerne arbejde længere. I sig selv er der ikke noget galt med dette. For eksempel har jeg snakket med mange mødre, der har omkring 10 måneder barsel efter de har født et barn. Ja! Du læste det korrekt. Sunde og unge mennesker er væk fra arbejdsmarkedet i omkring 10 måneder. Den største del af udgifterne bliver betalt af samfundet. Måske forstår jeg ikke den danske samfundsmodel fuldt ud, idet jeg kun har været i Danmark siden januar 2009, men jeg tror, at barselslængden kunne være et godt værktøj til at komme ud krisen. Lad danskerne arbejde mere, ved at skære i barselsperioden.

Nej! Jeg har aldrig hørt, at noget parti i Danmark har sat spørgsmålstegn ved denne hårdt tilkæmpede ret. Tværtimod er der to partier (S og SF), der synes, at vi burde arbejde en time mere - i et samfund der kalder sig selv en videnøkonomi. Derfor vil jeg gerne spørge: hvad betyder det for Danmark - en videnøkonomi - hvis man skal arbejde én ekstra time hver uge?

Jeg kan forestille mig, at det kunne have en effekt, hvis Danmark var fyldt med fabrikker. I fabrikken er der nemlig en produktion af varer. Hver minut kører tusindvis af varer af samlebåndene, som kan blive solgt og penge blive tjent. Men i Danmark er der næsten ingen fabrikker. Næsten hele produktionen er blevet flyttet til Østeuropa og Sydøstasien. Danmark bør fokusere på viden, og viden giver ikke afkast i samme grad som varer. Vil det derfor hjælpe Danmark at arbejde en time længere?

Det ser ud til, at socialdemokraterne i Danmark er på stemmejagt hos folk, der arbejder i varerproduktionsbranchen . Men hvem kommer det til at være i fremtiden? Giver det socialdemokraterne mulighed for, at vinde det næste valg og løse de finansielle problemer? Selvom jeg har understreget mange af de ting det socialdemokratiet står for, håber jeg ikke, at socialdemokratiet komme til magten. Jeg synes nemlig, at tankegangen bag 12 minutters ekstra arbejde hver dag er et udtryk for, at der ikke er affinitet med, hvordan et land skal udvikles, når produktionsfaktoren og motoren i samfundet er viden. Viden er ikke en genstand. Traditionel ledelsesstil med et fokus på at diktere og kontrollere kan ikke anvendes i en videnøkonomi. Videnarbejde kan ikke måles ud fra samme vilkår som industrielle produkter - som socialdemokratiet ønsker. Hvis man arbejder én time mere om ugen, vil det nemlig ikke direkte resultere i, at man tjener penge og dermed løse denne finansielle krise. Danmark er nødt til, at investere smart i en infrastruktur, hvorigennem landet kan absorbere og genbruge verdens viden.

Is Europe really losing its competitive advantage on knowledge & innovation?

2011-06-04T07:57:32Z

After a keynote by Don Tapscott (known as the person who coined the term Wikinomics) in Malmø/Sweden, I was triggered by some of his visualisations. Based on documentation from worldmapper.org he argued that countries in Europe should become better in using their competitive advantage of Internet penetration. One of the reasons for this was that Europe will face a smaller labour force than for example in China. Less people means less knowledge available. Therefore, technologies are crucial in order to absorb knowledge that is generated from an other geographical region. Don Tapscott argued that this is Europe's competitive advantage because it currently has a higher Internet penetration than countries such as China. However, technological developments are changing fast and it is being believed this advantage can easily be lost.

Of course, this is a fair point, but what if some of the things he argued at that time are not valid anymore? The visualisations about the amount of old and young people spread over the world and Internet penetration were published in 2001. Reading the Danish newspaper Weekendadvisen I see a very different development.

Even though China has more than 1,3 billion citizens, it shows signs of a deceasing labour force. This decrease was shown in 2004 and is still going on. Ba Shusong - economist at a Research Institute for Development - argues that this development has not been a short term development. According to him it is a signal or a turning point in society. The salaries are increasing and therefore the daily needs (prices on basic consumption) are increasing. Life becomes more expensive which will lead to less babies in China. Why? Because after a research in the province Jiangsu it became clear that people does not have the resources to take care of one baby. Furthermore, one of the conclusions of the latest counting of the Chinese society shows that Chinese women get in average 1,5 baby - which is much lesser than the 2,1 that is needed to keep society in balance.

This will probably not be the last weblog article about demography. My existing knowledge base influenced by Don Tapscott has been altered by the article in Weekendadvisen. It is now about finding more information and knowledge in order to see or understand a pattern. Therefore, knowledge is not just a thing, it is a process of relating different conversations/views.

What is a Knowledge Society according to Joseph Stiglitz

2011-05-24T06:52:48Z

In many interviews and articles Joseph Stiglitz has strongly criticized the European policy regarding the management of the financial crisis. That is also why he was in Denmark: to tell what his vision is of how Denmark and other European countries need to reduce their budget deficit.

According to Stiglitz, the European approach is inaccurate and only focused on a short-term thinking (how to come out of this crisis as quickly as possible). The recipe is simple: put the knife in spending and start saving. In the long term, Stiglitz believes that these operations will turn out negative. Countries should be investing properly in order to ensure future growth.

Stiglitz says that the investments will have to go to three areas: education, infrastructure and technology. Education has a special need, because Stiglitz argues that there are fewer young people who are graduating in countries like Denmark & the Netherlands compared with the global competition.

In addition, he also sees an other development within education. Countries such as India and China have ambitious goals in terms of quality of education. China's aim is to have ten universities of top/world quality in the next ten years. In order to reach this objective China is already investing heavily in the future of education. As a result, Stiglitz believes that the landscape of where knowledge comes from will change. Therefore, if you want to compete, you must invest in education, but also in for example research. Research fosters the development of new technologies.

Denmark - and the Netherlands - will not so anymore become the heart of where knowledge is produced. These countries should therefore have first-class technologies in order to absorb knowledge. Denmark and the Netherlands should excel in these technologies and the infrastructure for this in order to get knowledge elsewhere. Such a technology and infrastructure is the Internet: which is a kind knowledge economy. Technology is therefore crucial to invest in as a country so that the country can easily become a part of a knowledge economy.

We must therefore not miss out the opportunity we no have in the world: first-class infrastructure and technologuy. The image below shows the advantage North America and Europe has. This image shows the amount of Internet users in the world. Europe is very well represented here. But for how long? This image represents the scene of 2001 and because we all know that especially the development of technology is growing rapidly, we should not waste time. It took for example Google only ten years ago to become so important for the public as it is now.

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide Internet users who lived there in 2002 via www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=336

Teaching in a paradigm shift

2011-01-24T12:18:31Z

The first weblog message in 2011! Why did it take me so long to add a new message? The reason is that as of January 2011 I am one of the columnists of the Intellectueel Kapitaal - a KM-kind of journal from the Netherlands. Every week I write a short column (in Dutch) about what is keeping me busy in the field of innovation, organisational learning and knowledge sharing. The next column will be about this weblog message in general and Euan Semple's message called 'Can the web be taught?' specifically, because in this message Euan asks a very useful question:

How to pass on what works in terms of using the web to achieve things and make the world a better place? Should we be teaching the ethics of the web, the sociology of the web, the history and politics of the web?

Euan encounters this issue in business. He adds to this that 'most people ... may use Facebook at home and share their documents in a "knowledge repository" at work but have little experience or understanding of the transformative power of the tool that is literally at their finger tips".

I can confirm that I also encounter this. Therefore, social media workshop are both theoretical and practical in nature. However, I also encounter that most people have different expectations of social media workshops. Their attention span is much higher when they are just using it as they prefer. When it is about theory, sociology, cognitive science and so on I loose their attention very fast? Why is this? That's exactly what Euan is referring to: most people have little experience or understanding of the transformative power.

The comments on Euan's weblog post are also interesting because it shows some arguments or experiences which confirm Euan's observation. Mika Latokartano thinks that we should be teaching ethics, sociology, history, politics, anthropology, philosophy. Mika believes that what we learn from those disciplines can be applied to all facets of human interaction, technology enabled or otherwise. They're the sense-making tools for the information age. Mika continues by saying that he thinks that "we're dealing with a much broader issue here than just making people Web and tech-savvy. Western society in general is undergoing a socio-cultural transformation, and we almost seem to be entering a period of second Renaissance, and Enlightenment".

This discussion reminds me of Clay Shirky latest book called 'Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age'. In this book he writes among other things what the motivation is of using the latest communication technologies. He argues, for example, that "we now have tools for comminicating and sharing, new means for indulging ourselves in those motivations ... We also have to account for opportunity, ways of actually taking advantage of pur ability to participate in concert where we previously consumed alone". By focussing on intrinsic motivations (rather than extrinsic motivations), this book focusses on behaverioul economics (derived from the cognitive science) rather than neoclassical economics.

So giving all these highly detailed and sometimes academic findings I can only agree that we should focus on areas like sociology, psychology, philosophy and so on, because we are in the middle of a paradigm shift, or in the words of Mika 'a socio-cultural transformation'.

I will finish this weblog post by referring to one citation from Clay Shirky that refers to this change:

We memorized phone numbers when we had to. but we never liked memorizing those numbers and we were never very good at it. We did it because it was a requirement for other things we did like, such as talking with our friends. The minute phones provided us with speed dials and address lists, that accidentally unfroze and melted away. Many of our behaviors are like memorizing phone numbers, held in place not by desire but by inconvenience, and they're quick to disappear when the inconvenience does. Getting news from a piece of a paper, having to be physically near a television at a certain time to see a certain show, keeping our vacation pictures to ourselves as if they were some big secret - not one of these behaviors made a lick of sense. We did those things for decades or even centuries, but they were only stable as the accidents that caused them. And when the accidents went away, so did the behaviors.