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Jonas Ridderstrale    

Management Thought Leader; Author of Funky Business, Influential Business Speaker

Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle is one of the world’s most influential and respected business thinkers and speakers. Since bursting onto the international scene with the bestselling book Funky Business in 2000, Jonas has remained at the forefront of the new generation of management thinkers. In 2014, the Global Top 30 Management Gurus ranking put him at number 23 worldwide and among the top 5 in Europe. ​ Dr. Ridderstråle is a presenter with a difference who makes a difference. He has spent the last 15 years giving people the competence, confidence and courage to think, feel and do things differently. In keynotes and workshops, Jonas conveys his message with passion and energy, adding not only improved skill but also inspiring the will and thrill necessary for change. His forceful blend of academic rigor, imagination, humor and highly dynamic presentation style has inspired audiences from Moscow to Mumbai and San Francisco to Shanghai. Jonas’ diverse client list includes Fortune 500 companies, major government bodies, sports teams as well as trade unions. ​ Jonas has an MBA and a PhD in international business and was recognized as Sweden’s outstanding young academic of the year. In 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Italian Nobels Colloquia award for “Leadership in Business and Economic Thinking”. Jonas is currently a visiting professor at the internationally acclaimed business school Ashridge in the UK. His research has been published in leading academic journals. ​ Jonas’ original claim to fame Funky Business: Talent makes capital dance quickly became an international success, 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. The sequels, Karaoke Capitalism: Management for mankind and Funky Business Forever: How to enjoy capitalism, also became globally celebrated manifestos for how to make it in the new world of commerce. (All three books were co-authored with Kjell A. Nordström.) ​ Jonas’ latest bestseller Re-energizing the Corporation: How leaders make change happen (co-written with Mark Wilcox) explains how to combine the why and how of leading change. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and published in more than 50 countries worldwide. Jonas is currently working on a new book to be published in 2016. ​ Dr. Ridderstråle’s ideas and work have attracted huge media coverage throughout the world. He has appeared on CNN’s “Global Office” in an extended interview exploring the ideas behind his books. Elsewhere, he has been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Time Magazine, Financial Times, The Times, Stern, Newsweek, Paris Match, and many other publications worldwide. ​ When he is not on the road, Jonas is based in Stockholm, Sweden, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Speech Topics

The Holy Grail of Business: Compete on Fitness & Sex Appeal

We remember the likes of Dell and Dylan for their ability to innovate and then continuously reinvent themselves. Successful corporations and individuals perfect the art of creating imperfections - the Holy Grail of commerce. In a deregulated world, the new business reality is a "double economy" with increasing differences between the best and the rest.

Instead of appealing to what's average, you must explore what's extreme. Those who stay in the middle of the road will be run over by modern monopolists.

Using examples from some of the most successful contemporary business organizations, speaker Jonas Ridderstrale describes two ways in which to build sustainable competitive advantages:

  • Adapt to the new business environment by developing business models that are incredibly fit by exploiting the imperfection of markets
  • Compete on sex appeal by understanding people's moods

The Future Firm: The Shape of Things to Come

The successful 21st-century corporation is fundamentally different from the one that dominated the industrial era. Gone are the days of the local and bureaucratic conglomerate.

Today, wealth is made with wisdom and customers are more demanding than ever. In a world with a surplus of products and services of similar prices and quality, the future firm must thrive on its ability to be different and add value in new ways.

Speaker Jonas Ridderstrale outlines where we should expect to find the firm of the future, what it will look like, and how it will operate. Learn more about how the company of tomorrow profits from changing circumstances and unpredictability. Find out why winners must be focused, innovative, heterarchical, and adept at leveraging themselves.

Life in the Funky Village: Business Megatrends

Today, most people live, work, and do business in a deregulated global economy. More and more individuals enjoy the freedom of choice. In this presentation, speaker Jonas Ridderstrale discusses how we can capitalize on these new freedoms of movement by understanding shifts towards democratization, personalization, feminization, polarization, and many others.

Forces of Funk: What Drives Change?

The only way your business can respond to new challenges in a constructive way is by truly understanding why the socioeconomic landscape is changing so rapidly. The best leaders have always been business sociologists. They know that you find opportunity by analyzing context.

Speaker Jonas Ridderstrale has written and thought extensively about the seismic impact of changes in technology, institutions, and values. In this presentation, he talks about how we can benefit from advances in information technology and telecommunications as individuals and as leaders of corporations. He also discusses the implications of institutional deregulation on capitalism, nation states, political parties, companies, families, and others, and explains how the world's shift from a geographically structured entity to one dominated by global tribes will influence life inside and outside our organizations.

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