Noma is once again the World's best restaurant. Through their concept which is at the same time historic and uses the terroir of the Nordic region innovatively, they are able of creating a unique experience - what I call an authentic identity. When I released my book Den autentiske virksomhed ("The Authentic Company") in March, Nomas CEO Peter Kreiner gave an excellent talk on the authentic identity of the restaurant. He talked about the concept and how Noma has continually been striving to focus and narrow the identity and the concept of the restaurant in order to be more and more clear on the identity and the story of the organization.

You can view a segment of his talk on my vimeo-channel here:

Nomas fornemmelse for tid og sted med Peter Kreiner

I was ever so pleased to participate in a live interview on Danish TV2 News this evening during the event in London where the 50 best restaurants 2012 were named. You can also read about Noma and the importance of their identity in the article Det gør Noma rigtigt ("What Noma is doing right") on Berlingske www.b.dk today (Danish article).

At the art museum ARoS in Aarhus managers from two of Denmark’s most successful companies share their stories on the development of their business’ authentic identity.

“LEGO Idea House is a sanctuary, that shows where we come from. The first casting machine, carpenter's bench, our first motto cut out in tree in that carpenter workshop, in that building, where it took place. It is full of sounds and smells and old products and archives”. In the book “The Authentic Company” written by Nikolaj Stagis, this is how Jette Orduna describes the significance of the LEGO museum.

But the LEGO Idea House is much more than a dusty museum. Both the developers and the management in LEGO utilise the house to generate ideas, for sales meetings, management meetings and the like. The company’s history is used actively in the daily work and that is a completely calculated strategy. Come and take part in the conference where Jette Orduna will talk about the significance that the museum has for LEGO, a company that in only 6 years turned crisis into success and today turn out one record-profit after another.

While LEGO is an excellent example of a large authentic company, Bøgedal Brewery is an excellent example of a small company that has positioned itself on the basis of its history, its dissociation with the market and the high level of personal presence. Bøgedal is a two-man business, with only an outcome of 700 bottles of each brew. The bottles reaches the consumer through the best restaurants in Denmark and internationally, and through exclusive wine merchants. Casper Vorting, one half of the two-man business, will at ARoS share the secret behind the success.

Nikolaj Stagis will not only facilitate and host the conference but will also talk about the methods to define organisational authentic identities with the aim to create companies with transparent purposes, uses their history actively and differentiate itself in the market. He will use several of the case-companies from the book, among others Ducati, BMW Museum, Alessi and Hästens.

The conference will take place in the auditorium at ARoS the 25th of May:
15.00-16.00 Book signing
16.00-19.00 Conference
19.00-20.00 Networking

Participants have the opportunity to visit the museum exhibitions both before and after the conference. The price for the conference including a copy of the book “Den autentiske virksomhed" (in Danish) is 590 kr. The price for the conference alone is 300 kr. Buy your ticket here. Stagis is hosting the conference in corporation with the Danish Chamber of Commerce and Erhverv Aarhus.

On February 23rd I launched the Danish book "Den autentiske virksomhed" (The Authentic Company) in the Old Stock Exchange in Copenhagen. During the conference and the reception in the evening some 300 guests joined the event. I was especially grateful to Federico Minoli, former CEO of Ducati and Dr. Andreas Braun from BMW in Munich for travelling to Copenhagen to join the conference and deliver two very interesting talks about the turnover of Ducati and the ideas and qualities of the BMW Museum.

We've just created a video channel where we'll present videos regarding authenticity and the book "Den autentiske virksomhed". The first eight videos are available now - all from the event in the Old Stock Exchange. Most of them are in Danish but Minoli and Dr. Braun and the last video with the panel discussion are in English.

The presenters on stage were:
Peter Kreiner, Noma
Andreas Braun, BMW
Majken Schultz, CBS
Astrid Gade Nielsen, Arla
Casper Vorting, Bøgedal
Nikolaj Stagis, author

If you didn't have a chance to join us at the event you'll have a chance to discover some of the ideas - if you were there you can rediscover the talks. I'm working on a new Danish website that will accompany the book - it's soon to be launched... You can watch the first video with Federico Minoli here:

Hvordan jeg lærte fra Ducatis fans med Federico Minoli from Nikolaj Stagis.

On April 18th Stagis is hosting DDA Bar in cooperation with Danish Design Association (DDA) in Stagis’ office in Kompagnistræde, Copenhagen. The event is themed around architecture and design, and the speakers professor Kristian Kreiner, Copenhagen Busines School and Nikolaj Stagis, CEO Stagis will each provide insights on the idea of authenticity as a way of developing the design agency and it's ability to compete - even under a strict set of rules.

Professor Kristian Kreiner is on the verge of publishing his book “Dialog og konkurrence” (Dialogue and competition) on architectual competitions. At the event, he will discuss the need for designers with an approach based on autheticity in today’s design competitions. His argument is, that is has become more and more common that competitions today are so organized, that the creative aspect of design is suffering.

The event will be concluded with networking and refreshments from Bøgedal Bryghus (Boegedal Brewery). Sign up for the event on DDA’s website.

For the past three years I've been working on 'Den autentiske virksomhed' (or, The Authentic Company, as it may be in English). Now I'm finally coming to an end. There is a full 360-page manuscript which I'm now editing to about 300 pages. I'm planning to deliver the final document to the publishing house Gyldendal Business sometime in May and hopefully see a real book looking a bit like the picture above during the summer. Besides my theory on business strategy development based on the authentic strengths of the organization, there is a string of case studies in the book. Some of them are Noma, LEGO, Ducati, Alessi, Hästens, Novozymes, BMW and Absolut. I've been really lucky to visit them and talk to their CEOs, owners and leaders.

During the fall I'll tour Denmark to talk about The Authentic Company and discuss how companies of all sorts can explore and develop their strengths from within. Some of the talks are already being arranged as I receive calls almost every week from people who want to discuss authenticity and what it means. Here are some of the talks that I'm doing soon:

14. April 2011, Hewlett-Packard Denmark (workshop)
3. May 2011, Vanebryderdagen 2011, 'Bremen' in Copenhagen (conference)
5. May 2011, Dansk Industri (talk)
11. May 2011, Dansk Kommunikationsforening (Day seminar)
13. May 2011, Medieforbundet i DR (workshop)
23. May 2011, Danske Fysioterapeuter (talk)
23. August 2011, FTF (workshop)
10. October 2011, Master of Management Development, CBS (education)
1. November 2011, Efterskoleforeningens lederkonference (talk)

During May we'll put more video clips from some of my talks on the website and once we get closer to the release date of the Danish book we'll start publishing parts of the content here on the blog, on Facebook and elsewhere. We'll make sure you get notice!

If you want to know more or want to book me for a talk, take a look at stagis.dk (Danish) or stagis.com (English). Lots of students want to know more - don't hesitate to write!

A few weeks ago I spent two days with an inspiring group of people discussing thoughts on branding, identitity, the use of social media in the Middle East, city planning and branding challenges in China. I was invited by Nicholas Ind to meet the group in Paris and give a brief talk on organizational authenticity. I really enjoyed the diverse group consisting of branding experts from the US, Europe (UK, Sweden, Holland, France and Spain), Russia and UAE. Everyone joined in a series of small lectures and discussions with a plethora of views and opinions. How do you meet the challenges of working with the Chinese? What role did Facebook and social media play in the revolution for democracy in the Middle East? How will new typologies for fast and efficient architecture that meet the new demand for housing in Dubai and Africa develop?



I was later invited to join The Medinge Group as a permanent member, which I was pleased to accept. I'm already looking forward to our next convention in August.

The Medinge Group has such distinguished members as consultant and writer Nicholas Ind, who wrote numerous books on branding, the latest of which is called Meaning at Work (check out earlier post), consultant and cofounder Ian Ryder of BCS, CEO Stanley Moss who has been a succesful designer and brand consultant for decades and now travels the World, dean Pierre d'Huy of La Sorbonne/CELSA and Management Institute Paris, consultant Simon Paterson, Ava Maria Hakim, executive at IBM and CEO Erika Uffindell of UffindellWest. The group was founded in Sweden by Thomas Gad, brand consultant and author of 4D Branding which has been published in 12 languages. During the past decade the members have met biannually in Paris, France, and Medinge in Sweden to share and develop thoughts on branding.

The philosophy of The Medinge Group is: "We believe that change can happen at a business and societal level simply by pursuing the principles of compassionate branding. Each of our members has particular expertise which enables them to make a unique contribution to the Group and to clients throughout the world." Every year the group awards brands for their humanistic, compassionate, sustainable and socially responsible behaviour. This year the Brands with a Conscience award was given to Aquamarine Power (UK), BBC World News - Newsweek for World Challenge (UK), Caja Navarra (ES) and Masdar City (UAE).

Besides being a think-tank, The Medinge Group is complemented by for-profit activities called the Medinge Consulting Group, which puts together brand development teams to help international clients.

Update: A few more images on our moblog.

I was fortunate enough to participate at "Kom-dag", the annual event created by the Danish Communication Association. The theme this year was Authenticity and Credibility. Apart from a 30-minute talk in the morning, I gave a brief interview that you can watch on YouTube and an article about the talk has been published.

In janurary we will launch a video with clips from the talk.

Radioavisen (the danish national newscast) woke me up this morning to talk about Specialekontoret. The idea is to create the best physical and mental environment for students. I just grabbed it with my Mac. You can hear it here:

Specialekontoret DR P1
or find it on DR Radioavisen - it was on at 8.00 this morning.

If you're working in a business consider if you could support the project. It's a great way of getting involved in the development of Denmark as an innovative nation, it's a great way of getting young managers training in coaching, it's a great way of getting the next generation of talents into business. There's lots more to know about the project. Read about it on www.specialekontoret.dk.

Last week I was lecturing on how organizations can map their authenticity. The lecture was part of Roy Langers course at RUC where I've been so fortunate to participate twice this winter. We recorded the last lecture and you can hear it here as a podcast. It's rather long (maybe too long for anyone to download and hear?), just about one and a half hour. The first hour is about authenticity in companies and my talk is based on my master-thesis which I am writing into a book this year. If all goes as planned it will be published in the first quarter of 2008. The last half hour of the talk is about blogging in organizations and how that can be connected to authenticity.

The lecture was a great experience because the students seemed to be really thrilled and everyone participated in trying to describe different organizations and authenticity-profiles as I tried to draw them out on the blackboard.

Hear The Talk: STAGISTALKS authenticity lecture [1:29:25 min, 37,8 mb]

Friday I spoke with Jonas Kjær, who is writing his master-thesis on the effect of corporate blogging. He is researching to what extend the relations created through corporate blogging are connected to the company or to the individual writing the blog-posts. So he's interviewing me and discussing stagisblog.com as well as the corporate blogging-issue in more general terms.

Our talk was more than an hour - here's the first 22 minutes. I'll go over the remains and upload them during the week. And by the way: This one is in danish!

Hear The Talk: STAGISTALKS Jonas og Nikolaj [22:27 min, 15,8 mb]