The city of Kolding is about to undertake a great journey towards a new vision, in order to put the city on the map and make the city more attractive to future newcomers. We are proud to say that we will help Kolding reach their goal.

Recently we hosted a seminar in Kolding for one hundred of the city's politicians, business leaders and leaders of important institutions in Kolding, in order to define the authentic strengths that Kolding should be known for now and in the years to come.

The participants at the seminar discussed scenarios based upon an anthropological study conducted earlier in the year. The study had found a number of strengths particular to Kolding. These were articulated into the following scenarios then discussed at the seminar:

1) The enterprising design city

2) The knowledgeable design city

3) The voluntary design city

4) The cultural design city

From our previous mapping of Kolding, we found that design was a well-rooted strength, and that it would be impossible to make a new vision for Kolding without it. Therefore the term ‘design city’ is repeated in all scenarios.

The participants were divided into 15 groups where they eagerly discussed each of the different scenarios in groups, and if one of these scenarios were to become the new vision of Kolding. The groups were then asked to appoint a spokesperson that were given the task to imagine themself as mayor of Kolding and speak of the effects a possible new vision would have for Kolding in the year of 2022. Every speech was remarkable in its own way, and highlighted the results of the group work. As a special feature, everyone who gave a speech carried the Mayor of Kolding’s chain.

At the end of the day the participants commented on the seminar. Everyone had had an inspiring day filled with laughter and interesting discussions. The politicians and the Mayor of Kolding took with them many new exciting ideas and inspiration, promising that this seminar would lead to real action soon.

The next step in the process will be the civic forum held in Kolding on the 21st of November with 900 citizens partaking. 

Friday night it was officially announced that Copenhagen is awarded the title of European Green Capital 2014. The title is awarded by the European Commision in Bruxelles and given once a year to the city in Europe that shows the most initiative and innovation in creating green, sustainable solutions for cleaner and healthier city life.

Copenhagen competed with 19 other cities in Europe for the award. Three cities were selected to present their bid in front of a jury in Bruxelles. Frankfurt Am Main, Bristol and Copenhagen were the final three candidates.

Stagis’ role in Copenhagen’s bid for the award was to help the Municipality of Copenhagen to put into words and images the many great green initiatives and innovative solutions that Copenhagen offers its citizens. The end result was a great presentation; although deciding on which green activities and initiatives to include in the hour-long presentation was a difficult task – Copenhagen really has so much to offer in this regard. For instance, Copenhagen has a unique central heat distribution, we are becoming the no. 1 city in the World in terms of using the bicycle to get around the city, and the city is developing new recreational areas to make life in Copenhagen greener and easier.

Through a workshop and several meetings with the Technical and Environmental Adminstration of Copenhagen, Stagis helped to concentrate the many green initiatives and solutions into a concept which provided a red thread through the presentation. The concept, which we named ”Sharing Copenhagen”, describes not only the green solutions and the benefits to all Copenhageners, but more so the actual way the City of Copenhagen works in creating a better, cleaner, healthier and greener city. The Municipality of Copenhagen has a unique approach to making the green growth happen: Whenever there is a problem to be solved, they try to find a solution that will work in several ways. For instance, there is a growing problem with traffic congestion (just like so many other big cities) and the solution doesn't only solve congestion - it also aims to create long term health improvement, more green areas, less air pollution and lower cost. That's why the streets close to my house at Dronning Louises Bro has wider bicycle lanes than car lanes. It helps more people bicycle and less people to choose the car. So, the way we solve problems in Copenhagen is by thinking "smart" solutions across several boundaries. The other strength that is important in Copenhagen is our ability to share. We share ideas, we get people to participate, and the city is open to share solutions with the rest of Europe. We thought "sharing" was a key concept in the way Copenhagen works. And certainly an important part of the role Copenhagen takes on in 2014.

I am really proud and happy that my team has helped Copenhagen (and all you copenhageners!) claim the title as European Green Capital 2014. I think there are so many things that we can share and teach to other cities in Europe, and around the World. Although I might be a little biased, I believe that it is well deserved. First of all it is well deserved by the team that did an extraordinary effort during May, developing the concept and preparing the copy and design for the presentation for Bruxelles (well done, Marc, Søren and Michael!). Secondly, I think it's well done by the City counsil and everyone in Copenhagen. We look forward to 2014 when Copenhagen will have many great activities celebrating the city’s year as the greenest, most livable city in Europe. We might not be the biggest city or the biggest country, bu we should still participate in being a role model that others can follow.

Here is a selection of the 66 slides of the one hour-long presentation that was delivered by the director of, and his colleagues from, the Technical and Environmental Adminstration of Copenhagen in Bruxelles:

There is an article on the award on Danish newspaper Politiken.

Imagine for a moment that you have everyone's attention. For one precious moment, the whole room, crowd or maybe even the entire country is gathered to hear your words of wisdom, hushing each other, pushing to get a good seat in front of the television sets, eagerly awaiting your words of wisdom, holding their breath. What would be your key message to put out there?

Say what you will about Seth Godin, marketing-guru, blogger, best-selling author and self-proclaimed agent of change. But the man got a brilliant idea. Seth organized for seventy successful leaders, writers, thinkers and entrepreneurs to consider what matters most to them right now - and to express their valuable observations and life lessons in a short e-book, adequately titled "What matters now".

The book is available for free online via Seths blog, and I think it is extremely interesting to see what these seventy smart and extremely successful people choose to do when provided with only one page to express their main concerns, thoughts and messages for all of us.

Download the book as a free PDF here: 

I was invited to join a vision summit as a specialist on branding. The Municipality of Odense is suggesting the vision "Playing is living" which a number of politicians and business profiles were discussing last saturday. I had a fun day with good debate. It seemed that the folks in Odense were quite happy about the idea of working with the vision - they had lots of examples of how they were already playing and how they wanted to play more. I was accompanied by a large panel, Jørn Tolstrup from Leasy and Mayor Jan Boye among others. Will the city be able of positioning itself through the conception of a vision? I'm not sure. As I said, it would take radical action in order to make any impression on the city culture as well as the world around Odense.

At one point I made a comment on the way the meeting was conducted. It followed the layout and rituals that this sort of meeting always does. Citizens placed along long tables and the panel on a stage, sitting on high chairs at café-style tables. And Morten Stig Christensen was running back and forth (he's still quite capable) ensuring participation (you did well, Morten!). The style was noticeable as we were discussing the role of play as a platform for change, brandbuilding and a better future. The vision hasn't been decided on, yet, but I hope they make another meeting next year and that the space and meeting culture will be turned into play. Not child's play. Odense play. They just need to define what that is.

You can read an article about the summit from Fyens Stiftstidende. The city has a website about the vision called VisionOdense.dk.

I met up with Joe Pine of Pine & Gilmore, the authors of Experience Economy and lately Authenticity which is about the rendering of authenticity in economic offerings like products, services and experiences. And as Joe was in Roskilde to talk at Backstage 2008 I joined him there and spent most of the day discussing our common interest and our different views on authenticity in business. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal was doing a talk in the morning which I missed out on but I know it was great! If you missed it this year put it in your schedule for 2009. It is set up in Roskilde as part of the new experience center that is being developed there and the wonderful people behind the famous (and certainly authentic in any respect!) Roskilde Festival are the ones doing it.

Joe and I had a great talk and taped some of it for a later v-log (blog-post on video) so you'll be able to take part in our discussion. Will get it online and let you know soon!

Recently a trial version of Photosynth from giant Microsoft’s Live Lab came out. This is more than new way of sharing your holiday pics! It is also a way to visit places online in 3D  - places that you love, that you can’t remember, didn’t get a full perspective of or even never had a chance to see!

And it looks to be quite groundbreaking 2.0 software able to change the world of 3D panoramic imaging and mapping, something expected to become big, by using our collective pictorial memory of online photos. So professional use of Photosynth will probably also be quite interesting. Maybe someone among our blog readers additionally can fill in on that?

Through just one of your holiday pictures Photosynth creates a world, that connects all other worlds by hyper linking, grouping and navigating between online pics, eg. entirely of images from Flickr, then creating a 3D map or universe out of the total semantic information from the digitally available photos on www.

Tags and metadata support the emerging of a model for spatial navigation and full-scale online experience of that photographed place, from combining images. So, that one shot of yours or your own photo collection becomes a 3D entry point into the rest of the world. That’s a perspective that really illustrates the idea of ‘The long tail’. The benefits here just become enriched through more use and cross using; like it’s the case with most social tech and software. And software like Photosynth somehow also illustrates how www will evolve.

I'm quite curious and impressed by the possible perspectives of Photosynth and the like! To get your own impression, you can take a look at the Photosynth Live Lab presentation here:

Websites are still representations and brochures on the web - now with animation. But they lack the social dimension, the idea of dialogue between customers and employees.

Examples of good social dimensions on corporate websites?

About bandwith:
http://www.computerworld.dk/art/40222?a=newsletter&i=1147
Check Gartner
Japan

I just received this email from Nilam at Leeds University Business School the other day as I attended a talk she did at the Reputation Institute Conference two weeks ago:

Dear Nikolaj,

It was good to meet you at the Reputation Institute conference recently and chat briefly about the diary studies that I am conducting with communication practitioners. I enjoyed giving the presentation, though it would be useful to know your thoughts about the methodology and initial themes that were identified.

You mentioned that you had some useful references in organisational identity and narrative analysis. Would you be able to forward these references to me at all? The diary studies and interviews will continue until the end of September, when I can begin to analyse the themes in more depth, so let me know if you want to
be kept informed as to how the research is progressing, and I look forward to hearing from you soon with your thoughts on the research.

By the way, your website is great - I really like the flow and colour.

Best wishes,

Nilam Ashra
Doctoral Researcher in Corporate Communication

...and I'm thinking maybe others than Nilam would be inspired by the discussion. Nilam is conducting research trying to understand how communication practitioners make decisions. What are the real reasons for their actions? And as you might expect the reasons behind the decisions are not always what the communication practitioners (technicians as well as advisors) actually think is right. Navigating in corporate politics, upholding self esteem, pleasing the manager and lots of other reasons tend to be just as much the reason for communication practises as is understanding of the market, the company, the strategy or own ideas about what would be "right".

At STAGIS we have done quite a few projects where we try to understand what's going on in the organizational culture, what the beliefs, processes and lived strategies are, rather than just looking at market opportunities. And our method has often been Analytical Narrative Research, meaning interviewing employees and managers in the company and co-creating what really makes sense in the company.

Here is some of the theoretical input you could start with if you're interested:

Hi Nilam!

Great to hear from you!

I was thinking of you this weekend but didn’t get very far with finding stuff for you. The main source that I’ve used and that I know many others doing qualitative studies are also referring to is Barbara Czarniawska who’s done lots of this stuff. Basically she works with narratives in organizations and in my perspective it does’nt really matter if its spoken or written language. There are several books she’s written and lots of litterature on research where shes represented. Here is one of them:

A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies (Qualitative Research Methods) (Paperback) by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges (Author)

There are also some german consultants (and academics) that I stumbled on a few years ago at AoM: Schindl Rughase Partners. I am a big fan of their ideas on driving strategy processes and the link to identity-work. They base user-studies on narratives from interviews with users and have proven great success. As I was asking during your talk in Oslo the challenge for Rughase as well as myself is to create an understanding in the company (mostly top-management) which is easier if you can show the text/interview to the managers that need to understand your findings. That is different in your case, of course.

Identity and Strategy: How Individual Visions Enable the Design of a Market Strategy That Works (Hardcover) by Olaf G. Rughase (Author)

Besides these things we work a lot with blogs as a way of creating a higher degree of cross-organizational internal understanding as well as a more authentic and dialogue-based communication with the stakeholders. And in that sense your project has some similarities (even though yours supports more openness as nobody except you will read it and that has obvious effects on the writers/informants).

Let me know how I can help you further – and yes, I would love to hear more.

Would you mind if I posted your email and my reply on our blog – this might be interesting to others....? In any event, please dont hesitate to share your thoughts there also!

Thanks for your comment on our website – actually it’s not even quite done but we’ve been so bussy over the past year or so that we didn’t find time to get on with it....

Best, Nikolaj

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...not just for pure pleasure, but to lead your business further. Years ago, in 2002, I wrote an article in Ledelse i Dag with Christian Madsbjerg (ReD Associates) about this; 'Lær af avantgarden' (published in Ledelse i Dag, nr. 48, april 2002) - what business can learn from the avantgarde (log-in for full text). At the beginning of the new millennium, the arts-in-business alliance was definitely put on the agenda, in public, in research and in the arts and business development.

Today, the message that business can grow from understanding and converting movements within contemporary art into business, is still relevant. This advice is not just about business investing in up-coming artists, to gain profit on their art works and having them decorate the office space – but about business learning from the processes and conceptual ideas of the avantgarde. And about business leaders staying updated on the contemporary art scene.

What business can learn from the avantgarde
Companies or leaders that understand to develop their competencies, products and services through dialogues with contemporary art movements or in co-operation with artists often stands strong and get a leap ahead in the competition. Why? Because contemporary art – especially the avantgarde – points towards our future. The avantgarde movements shine a light on what the established, mainstream society still isn’t ready to see or face. That’s a potential for leaders to translate and convert into business.

For the article in Ledelse i Dag I had the pleasure of discussing this subject with such interesting people as artist Bjørn Nørgaard, architect Merete Ahnfeldt-Mollerup, Svend Lundh, CEO at Collection Källemo AB, Superflex artist Jakob Fenger, Michael Rasmussen, VELUX communication and brand manager and Johnny Quist Mortensen, managing director of VELUX. All of them explain how they succesfully have worked with the arts or artists in business.

The points in the article start from an outlining of how the historical avantgarde confronted a past of more closed, static or finished works of art, and broke with it through working with a focus on process orientation, the conceptual and an involvement of the spectator as part-taker in completing the art work. By analogy with this, the article argues that we in 2002 accordingly saw a development in business where many successful companies focused on designing processes and platforms with room for content development by users and consumers: Flexible products and services with room for individual dreams and needs of consumers, rather than static prefabricated products. Those flexible consumer-scapes aim for high customer involvement and leave room for consumer driven product development and customization. Many of these consumer platforms place the relational and the community at center stage. A new customer character mixed of the roles of the consumer and producer came at play, often named the 'prosumer'. (Quite like the new role of the spectator in historical avantgarde art). Then along came web 2.0, communities as MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Amazon, eBay, Flickr, del.icio.us, mitkbh, blogging, you name it…

A spot where you can be inspired and pick up the latest vibes on the contemporary art scene is at EXIT 07 – the final exhibition of the graduates from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, displayed at Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand – that I just recently saw and where the pics in this blog post are from. It’s worth seing and shows ‘till July 8th.

Not to be compared to any larger movements in the avantgarde arts, but picking up inspiration at EXIT 07 two things struck me:

* The creation of illusions and the use of techniques, optic tricks or change of context to turn the old into something new
As the fine optic illusion of a humming-bird by movement (artist Tove Storch), the now well established but at EXIT 07 also well done photo realistic painting technique with paint on canvas, and the sculpturesquely display of objects from contexts where they had no status as sculptures.
    Like art works often do, these pieces invite us to have another look at the world before our eyes. We think we have seen it all before. Then it turns out to be something different, dressed in the recognizable, but turned up-side down – here by the mixing of genres, by relocating objects from one context to a new, or by the use of intelligent tricks, ideas, techniques or technology – like in times of illusions. Are those these times?

* Controlling the world and nature through cultivation of micro-cosmoses
Either at a small or over dimensioned scale – that draws the spectator close, to leave out the rest of the big world; like controlled micro-worlds as those a child constructs with toys, bricks or stuff from the beach or woods. At EXIT 07 the nostalgic reference of childhood is explicit, in installations, sculptures and micro-sceneries. So is the micro-cosmos management of nature in reserves or sanctuaries, as it is done with pets or reptiles.
    The conflict between nature/culture is an often told story - but never the less still a highly relevant topic during recent climate debates. Wild nature is a somewhat nostalgic idea today. Our planet is cultivated, and most of the remaining wild nature is contained in reserves or under protection of UNESCO and the like. There seems an irony connected to the micro-cosmoses displayed at EXIT 07. An ironic tale of our concepts of nature as a well organized and controllable force, preserved in show cases. But the micro-cosmoses displayed at EXIT 07 also make one wonder if these are times of a need among people to stay detailed with a focus on their own managable micro-worlds, where a part of our future is our growing engagement in context-orientated 'pocket' or sub communities in an otherwise polarized and unmanagable world? Or is the world just getting smaller, being reflected in a single leaf or in the echo-system of one sanctuary, as in the show cases at EXIT 07, that seem to offer small islands of privacy, ‘nerdyness’ or closeness.

A third thing to mention about EXIT 07 is the humor present in many of the art works at display – an element I really like in contemporary works of art. Check out the photo of the bike/ladder! And also Tommy Petersen, in addition part of Akassen (art group) and Troels Sandegård are EXIT 07 artists that I definately think will do work worth watcing in the future!

Visit EXIT 07 to see what it tells you! And what questions it leaves you with about our future, that might inspire you to grow new solutions...

Björk – one of my favorite artists and Possibly Maybe the greatest nation branding and marketing spin Iceland will ever experience, paving the way for so many artistic goodies from the small nation far North in the Atlantic. On May 7th Björk's much-awaited album Volta will hit the shops and fill the air, like the single release of Earth Intruders from the album is already doing, also being 'Ugens Uundgåelige' on P3 (this weeks favorite air play of the radio channel P3, The Danish Broadcasting System). The Volta album includes contributions from guest artists like producer Timbaland and Anthony Hegarty from Anthony & The Johnsons - can't wait to hear more of it! What about you?

'Let’s open up : share!' is the pay-off from the album’s song Innocence about the thrill of fearing the new. Now Björk lives the message of sharing and renewing! Instead of working with superstar director Chris Cunningham once again, she now turns to the public, inviting everyone interested to make her new video for Innocence.

Similar to what Nokia, Tuborg and Cocio among others are doing, when asking consumers to provide creative work in making their next ad, Björk, supported by Madwebcarpenters who provide users with creative production tools, goes bonding and relation-building with her audience and consumers in a brand-involving, platform-sharing and consumer-driven way, by opening up her video production for ideas and creativity of her audience. Nice touch! It’s of course Björks approval that will decide how the video of Innocence will be in the end. But still, can’t wait to see if folks come up with something good and what the result will be! 

Get to now Innocence and more about the video competition here.

By the way, would like to introduce my self; I’m Marta Karolina Olsen, a brand new blogger at STAGIS, where I recently was hired as Project Manager, which is fab! So this is my first opening up and sharing of a post in the blogosphere – sensing a thrill of the new :-), leaving me not so innocent anymore…

Have a nice one this absolutely sunny weekend!