Noma is once again the World's best restaurant. Through their concept which is at the same time historic and using the terroir of the Nordic region and yet innovative, they are able of creating a unique experience and 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 evry 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).

"Inspiring and sympathetic management book with analysis and cases of international quality and scope." This is how the danish newspaper Politiken starts its review of Nikolaj Stagis' book The Authentic Company. Politiken uses hearts as a rating system, and the book recieves five out of six hearts from the reviewer, Kresten Schultz Jørgensen.

Here is a short extract of the review in Danish:

”Inspirerende og sympatisk lærebog, hvis analyse og cases har internationalt vingefang. Man fatter jo ladestokken og strammer kuglen helt nede i løbet ved mødet med endnu en bog om ”autentisk” kommunikation. Som Henrik Marstal så rigtigt analyserede begrebet i Politikens kronik 17.2 er ”autenticitet” pr. definition en relativ størrelse, en kamelæon, der kan bruges til at betegne næsten hvad som helst afhængigt af sammenhæng. Så hvad i alverden, kan man spørge, vil en tænksom kommunikationsmand som Nikolaj Stagis med en bog udgivelse om den autentiske virksomhed? Grave et spadestik dybere med en øvelse, der faktisk lykkes med en gennemarbejdet og klog bog om et begreb, man sagtens kan grine af, men som ikke rigtig kan undværes (…)
Bogens kommunikationsprojekt er en linedans: Forfatteren redegør for, at vi lever i postmoderne tider, hvor beskueren insisterer på at have ret, og hvor spin og overflade dominerer. Svaret er ifølge Stagis, at virksomhederne – hvis de har noget at byde på – i stigende grad søger indad efter identitet og de vandbærende lag. Dér ligger, i en verden af mediestøj og markedsanalyser, muligheden for at fremstå autentisk”.

Yesterday we launched my book "Den autentiske virksomhed" (The Authentic Company) at a great conference in one of Copenhagens most beautiful and historic settings, the Old Stock Exchange. The speakers at the conference were Federico Minoli, former CEO and president at Ducati, Dr. Andreas Braun, BMW Museum, Dr. Majken Schultz, professor at Copenhagen Business School, Casper Vorting, owner of Bøgedal Brewery and finally Peter Kreiner, CEO of Noma restaurant.

I've worked on the book for about four years – a great journey into the authentic and less authentic including visits with some of the greatest companies and their leaders and owners. A lifetime experience that led to 360 pages and climaxed at the conference and reception yesterday. Great crowd, wonderful talks, good food from Aamanns and about 300 people coming to visit either the conference or the reception. Thank you all for your kind support, questions and interest. It's been a long journey sofar - and it's only just begun. i'm looking forward to get around Denmark and visit different companies, organizations and cities to talk about the authentic companies over the months to come...!

During the next few weeks I will launch a new website focusing on the book and I'm looking forward to sharing more pictures and videos from the event!

Over the past six months I've had the privilege of spending time with the management and employees at HP in Denmark. After several tough years during the financial crisis and a shifting environment for the IT industry, the Country Management Team wanted to rediscover and focus on the strengths of the Danish HP organization in order to increase engagement, motivation and pride within the organization. Stagis was invited to work with the management team to rediscover the authentic strengths of HP and to help the organization remember and reclaim what they are good at – what HP in Denmark is passionate about.

During the spring I met most of the managers in the Danish organization and during May and June I’ve personally been meeting and interviewing a lot of managers and employees at Hewlett-Packard in Allerød. When I started out I mostly thought of HP as the hardware company that most people think about – a company that produce servers, laptops and printers. But then, as I met with people and joined workshops and meetings, I remembered some of the things I had heard and read about HP over the years. When Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded their small company in a garage in Palo Alto in California in 1938, they were not only founding a small tech shop, they founded what is now known as Silicon Valley, the cradle of an entire industry. And they led the HP company from being good to great through a number of leadership principles that have been praised in well recognized management litterature. Like “Management by Walking Around”, “Open Door Policy” and “The HP Way”. Here’s one of the ads that ran during HPs “reinvent” campaign reconnecting to the historic garage and the principles of Bill and Dave:



I think the ad captures some of the greatness of HP. Since the time in the garage HP has come to be the largest IT company in the world with more than 320.000 employees around the globe. But during the past few years things have been tough in the tech industry due to the financial crisis. The former CEO Mark Hurd introduced new forms of reporting and cut costs in order to help HP stay afloat. Just a few months ago the former CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, took over the role of CEO. The shifting external environment had an impact on the tech industry and on HP. Customers are reluctant to invest in IT, the strategy of HPs PC division is subject to media commentary and naturally, life in the tech business is not what it used to be, five or ten years ago. As you can imagine, the financial crisis naturally leads into identity questions like “who are we?” and “who do we want to become?”.




When I first entered HP one of the things that struck me was the lack of visual identity. The building is new, cool and looks great, but if someone had removed the HP Invent graphics from the building I wouldn’t be able of seeing, which company was working here. The same goes for the reception area and the meeting rooms. Where is the physical, visual or tactile expression of identity and the passion for the products, the employees and the customers? Every organization needs to express and show who they are in order to build a strong authentic identity.

Here’s the good news. Last week I was visiting HP in Allerød again. Newly appointed Managing Director in Denmark, Jakob Schou Meding, was on his tenth workday at HP, talking about community, knowing each other, working together and how to build trust in front of about 200 employees. People were cheering and seemed to have high hopes for the future. I joined to give a brief presentation of the authentic strengths of HP Denmark that I discovered over the past months. When I walked out of there I was proud to be part of the process and I felt quite sure that I was witnessing a local organization becoming a new, more focused version of itself. In the very near future the organization will be working with a series of initiatives to increase the sense of community, appreciation, engagement and leadership – and to help the potentials of the Danish organization grow.

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.

'The crisis makes the trade union look inside'. An article on the website of Danish trade union FTF is concerned with the organizational crisis of their market: the members of the trade and labour unions are fleeing. They interviewed me to get a perspective of possible solutions in regard to maintain existing members and attracting new ones. It seems that the unions are not as attractive as they used to be. There is a sense of a lack of purpose. The financial and economic crisis may have helped a bit as people felt insecure about jobs, economy and day-to-day life. But when things get better financially what will the unions bring about that really inspires people to join and participate? What is the movement about?

The unions - like all organizations facing a crisis - will have to look inward to find their authentic strengths and they will have to make a strategic selection as to which beliefs and competencies they will pursue and which will have to be left behind.

Article in Danish - read it on the FTF website.

Yesterday afternoon and evening, Stagis hosted the 21st DDA Bar, an event for the members of Danish Design Association. Peter Kreiner, CEO of Noma gave a brief talk on the success of Noma. He also added an important comment on the window of opportunity that not only Noma and Danish restaurants have due to Nomas status as the Worlds leading restaurant. Other Danish companies, especially the creative ones, could use the possibility to travel out in the World and export more of our social and creative skills. At the end of the two talks we decided to create a new platform in Danish Design Association focusing on internationalization in the Danish design industry.

Nikolaj gave a talk on authentic organizational identity, demonstrating our concept of authenticity and explaining how we come about understanding the authentic strengths of the company in order to help them grow into authentic market positions. He used Noma, Bøgedal, Absolut and Ducati as casestudies – all part of the book that Nikolaj is working on (he says there are only the last 80 pages left to go).

After the talks our guests looked around the Stagis Museum which has been updated and we served local, nordic snacks from Manfreds (former Noma chef) and DinBaghave (“YourBackyard”), all organically grown, primarily delivered from Kiselgården, a small farm who also delivers to Noma.

Thank you to everyone who joined us - both new and known faces! We had a lovely evening.

If you want a tour in the Stagis Museum, let us know – just call or drop a line to email@stagis.dk. You can read more on the Danish Design Association website and see more pictures on our Facebook Page.