Towards agglomerating tacit knowledge and regional expertise: Ted Österlin, Noble House Sushi, Passion för Mat 2014

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Ted Joakim Österlin, Noble House, Gothenburg

Ted Österlin, CEO / Owner of Noble House AB.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Introduction: knowledge intensive economies
Whilst manufacturing production in many OECD countries has declined in recent decades, services however, are on the rise. On average services now account for about 70 percent of OECD GDP. The culinary and gastronomy industry lies within the grey area in the definition of OECD-WTO Trade in Value Added (TiVA) derived from services embodied in the exports of manufactured goods. In the case of Sweden, the country’s services sector has continued to grow from the early 2000s, when its share of the workforce employed within services increased from 67 to 75.2 percent just between the years of 1989 and 2003. Today, Sweden has about 42 percent of its workforce in services-related occupations in manufacturing [1].

In the past decade, the debate on creativity as a driving force for regional economic development in the context of the third wave of globalisation within the academic realm of international business studies has been increasing [2,3,4,5].

Empirical findings seem to point towards that knowledge and service oriented economies have three characteristics in common that encourage innovation:

  • First, is the need for firms over time, to reduce technical and economic uncertainty.
  • Second, interactions with outside parties are necessary.
  • Finally, immediate presence and face-to-face contact remains important because of trust building and tacit knowledge transfer [6].

These three points converge in constellations of individuals who share similar values and world views, firms in industrial clusters or other agglomerations of various kinds. The continuous interlocution between people, place and firm, is what drives a region and gives it its brand. In the past few years, the city of Gothenburg has focused its efforts on being the centre of gastronomic activities. It is currently recognised as Sweden’s Culinary Capital, and September 21-24 will see the city host the World Food Travel Summit with the theme, New Wave in Food Tourism.

It is in this context of Sweden’s growing services industry, and the exchange of knowledge between Sweden and Asia / South-east Asia, that I met with CEO and Owner of Noble House AB, Ted Österlin, at this year’s Passion för Mat.
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Reflections on a visit to Shanghai 2013

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After Shanghai.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

It was in November 2013 when we paid a study visit to Shanghai, China. But it was only on the eve of the Lunar New Year 2014 that all colleagues had a chance to gather in an early spring kick-off session to share and compare some reflections, insights and lessons learnt from that visit.

The afternoon was spent in a lecture hall, numbering altogether about thirty persons, somewhat amused that this might be the first time ever that we met as a group. Located in the same administrative building, at most a few floors apart from each other and some even sharing the same corridor, it took a joint visit to Shanghai in order for us all to get together face to face.

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As a point in case, it was interesting to note that this group in itself demonstrated the workings of a self-organizing system, forming project-based teams of which this almost non-elected leader would smoothly arrange the important meetings, and the events would seamlessly evolve into optimal activities.

While it could be argued that the workings of an academic specialist group cannot be all too comparable to how private corporations are managed, still this method of self-organization differed from the vertical hierarchy system often prevalent in Asia.

This difference in how we organized ourselves had some concrete repercussions when meeting with other research teams in China on several counts, some of which were based on formalities such as rank and hierarchy – who would the Chinese look at as ‘leader’ of the Swedish team? What practical resources and expertise could we provide if we were to begin collaborative work? And lastly, what immediate ideas and data could we share, and if so, when – preferably in the next month – could we begin?

The responsive views on the Chinese side were positive, though it brought home another poignant difference, that what is often called the ‘Swedish management style’ works with a long process of contemplation and maturing of ideas until some consensus is reached. Of the Chinese, it could be said that they would work towards a longterm relationship building and then be ready to act in a different style of (academic) management.

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Schrödinger’s Cat.

One of the lasting impressions from the day’s reflections was the way in which we could observe our various individual-in-group behaviour and our preferred management styles in practice, while discussing a variety of issues of mutual interest.

China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre – the platform to cars couture

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Quayside, Lindholmen Science Park, Gothenburg.
Lindholmen Science Park is a part of the Norra Älvstranden region, located between the two bridges, Älvsborgsbron (Älvborgs Bridge) in the west and Götaälvbron (Göta River Bridge) in the east. The area has been important since the Viking Age and before, where the Göta river outlet acted as a trade center, uniting the prosperous inland regions and the sea.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Situated in the collaborative environment for knowledge intensive companies at the Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg, the China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre was established on 20 February 2013 as a joint Volvo Cars and Geely platform for advancing the partnership in product development and strategy between the two companies, owned by Geely Holding. Today it has about 200 resident engineers that will be increased according to plans, to 400. They are to focus on the innovations of the basic modular architecture platform for the next generation of leading C-segment cars, that includes hatchback, sedan and estate models.

The 22nd of January is just a few months short of ten years, when on 3 September 2004, the naming ceremony of the Swedish East Indiaman Götheborg was performed by Her Majesty Queen Silvia, at the Opera House at Lilla Bommen, just on the opposite side of the Göta river. The purpose of the Gotheborg III project was very long term, aimed at building upon old good relations bringing the two countries of Sweden and China once again closer to each other. It was an idea that took hold and to some extent might have contributed to the events leading up to this centre being located here and now.

What is currently in process between Volvo Cars and the Geely organization is groundbreaking in many ways. It is industrial and knowledge management history in the making. This has naturally attracted the attention of the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS), headed by Professor Alvstam at the School of Business, Economics and and Law at the University of Gothenburg, where I am affiliate, that has followed China’s entry into the global automobile industry with great interest.

It was thus an evolutionary progression of things that we today found ourselves visiting the CEVT R&D centre at Lindholmen. Continue reading “China-Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) R&D centre – the platform to cars couture” →

Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery

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Gotheborg III

The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III Ship.
The city of Gothenburg has been home of the Swedish East India Company since the 1700s till today.
Photo: Ulrik Hasemann for SOIC.
Text © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

Abstracts from a presentation for Carthage College, Kenosha Wisconsin, USA. 20 Jan. 2014.
Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS)
School of Business, Economics and Law
University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

1. Introduction

This presentation is entitled “Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery”, where I will share some insights into Sweden and Swedish management characteristics. Here, you will need to take the word “Nordic” as a broadly defined term because even within the Nordic countries grouping, Sweden pretty much has a niche of its own.

Inglehart Welzel Values Map

World Values Survey, Inglehart-Welzel map.
Ref: Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005: page 63.

2. Sweden – the most secular country on the globe

Sweden for example, ranks as the world’s most secular country with a Gallup poll of 88% indicating they are non-religious. At the same time, it is also a country that seems to allow greatest self-expression and individual autonomy.

The reason for the country’s high secularism could be explained by its history. Continue reading “Swedish management and Gothenburg: a Nordic journey of discovery” →

Complexity theory and autopoesis, contemplations on the eve of 2014

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Outlining my New Year’s resolutions of sorts.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Through the year, I’ve looked to study and understand the complexity of social organizations and the concept of culture from a systems evolutionary perspective, which is something other than the dichotomous, dimensional construct that had been grounded in academic literature since the early 1960s. The basic assumption comes from the context of nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory, where as noted by Engels (1982), that the more complex generic type includes but cannot be reduced to an aggregation of the simpler types. Continue reading “Complexity theory and autopoesis, contemplations on the eve of 2014” →

The strategy of ‘Twin Faces’ in state governance and positioning

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Raffles Place, Singapore.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

A number of years ago, I decided to focus my doctoral thesis on cross-cultural leadership in Swedish led organizations in Singapore. The idea was to identify elements of the Swedish management style and how this in that case would work out in Asian organizations. The study led to numerous interesting observations of which a selection of ideas were developed into my thesis.

For some time now I have come to look into Sweden’s positioning within the European Union (EU), and in a comparative study, Singapore’s positioning within the Association of Southeast-Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The issue of Sweden’s overall positioning towards European integration has been much considered and debated in the Swedish political arena and by interested members in academia.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro by JE Nilsson, Raffles Place, Singapore

Studying modern business architecture in Singapore’s Central Business District, in 2013.

“Sweden: the Twin Faces of a Euro-Outsider”

In an article that appeared in the peer reviewed Journal of European Integration entitled “Sweden: the Twin Faces of a Euro-Outsider” in 2005, authors Rutger Lindahl and Daniel Naurin, postulated that Sweden, about ten years after full accession and a few years after the public rejection of Swedish proposed membership of the Euro currency in a referendum in 2003, had developed ‘twin faces’ as regards to their participation in European integration (Miles 2011).

Duo-levelled positioning

The authors explicitly outlined Sweden’s duo-levelled positioning towards issues of European integration, that was (i) the internal / domestic establishing of a firm national position towards the EU in general, which proved a challenge for the Swedish government, due to a general skeptical Swedish public who were wary of the implications of further European integration, and (ii) the external / regional (thus international) politics of positioning Sweden’s ‘euro-outsider’ status within the EU, where Sweden would want to be perceived as a country pursuing a ‘mixed’ policy portfolio.

The general skepticism towards deeper European integration from the Swedish public distinctly constrained the movements of the Swedish government. Further intra- and inter-political party division, also meant that a consensus across the Swedish party system regarding participation in the euro remained elusive.

But in brief, the ‘twin-faces’ of Sweden, its duo-levelled strategy of state governance and maneuvering of its internal, largely euro-skeptical political arena, was not to be confused with its primarily pro-EU yet anti-euro, external positioning towards the EU (Lindahl and Naurin 2005:66).

Two broad strategies

In reconciling and managing Sweden’s anti-euro, but pro-EU position, the Swedish government apparently followed two broad strategies.

The first was to adopt the politics of low visibility, where Swedish officials engaged in quiet networking with a ‘best in class’ behavior in Brussels combined with a low degree of Europeanization of the domestic political debate.

The second was to advocate conscious outsidership as regards to the euro, combined with a determined effort to be an ‘insider’ in EU decision-making. These strategies were managed in large by putting as priority, the country’s EU membership status in both elite/public discourse whilst backgrounding (playing down), to a limited extent, the question of Swedish euro-adoption, so that it would give time for the majority of the Swedes to come to terms with the country’s pro-EU position.
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Geely Headquarters and Cixi Plant, Hangzhou

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In China’s First Automobile Health and Development Summit held in Beijing in 2012, Geely’s Emgrand EC8 was nominated one of the Top 10 environmental friendly cars for 2012. (Globaltimes.cn April 2013).
From left to right Swati Ravi, Emily Xu, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro and Joyce Wu, PR Manager of Geely.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Geely HQ and Cixi Assembly plant
Friday the 15th of November was the fifth day of our visit to Shanghai in 2013. We had focused quite some on the Chinese automobile industry and today it was time to meet with Geely. Both the Geely Cixi Assembly plant and the Geely Headquarters are located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, a few hours drive inland, from Shanghai.
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Visiting Volvo Group R&D, Shanghai

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Visiting Volvo Group, Trucks Technology, Advanced Technology and Research, Shanghai, China.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

On the second day of our visit in Shanghai, we had the pleasure of meeting with the Director of Advanced Technology & Research at the Volvo Group Headquarter in Shanghai. If it is confusing for a Swede to keep track of the difference between Volvo Cars (owned by the Chinese Geely Holding Group) and Volvo AB, very much still a Swedish company, it is even worse for the Chinese, where a representative from Volvo Group Shanghai told that she often got questions from relatives if she could help them buy a Volvo car on staff discount.

Today’s meeting was with the Volvo Group.
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The Nordic Centre at Fudan University, Shanghai

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The combined delegation of Management and Organisation,
and the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS) of the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, at the Nordic Centre, Fudan University, Shanghai.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

It was a brief early morning walk from the Crowne Plaza Hotel to the Nordic Centre, located in the Handan campus of Fudan University, one of China’s top ranked universities.
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North of the Bund, Shanghai

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Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

When looking at the facade of the Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel it is difficult to not read into the facets of its facade some influences from the constructivist art movement that grew out of Russian Futurism in the early years of the 20th century.

Constructivist architecture flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its ideas were revolutionary at the time and combined advanced technology and engineering with social purposes.

This era was also a formative one for Shanghai, as it acted as an eastern melting pot between East and West in the Warlord epoque of China in the 1910s, around the years of the Russian revolution and the financial boom of WWI. As such one would not be too surprised to find traces of these ideas right here in the Yangpu district of Shanghai where much of China’s academia flourishes today.

It is even difficult not to draw references to Russian industrialism and earlier, the cubism of Picasso and Braque, in the facets of the facade looking like human beings standing on top of, lifting, carrying and supporting each other. Architecture depicting the human strive to higher and higher achievements.

The Russian bicyclist painting by Natalia Goncharova (Cyclist, 1913) comes to mind as another reference to the Russian futurism of the 1910’s. This can be seen in contrast to the slightly older painting by Ramon Casas, of himself and Pere Romeu on a Tandem, 1897. The two works of art illustrate a dramatic change in ideologies and thus realities, that had come by in a mere few decades. The latter was painted specifically for the interior of the Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, a restaurant and bar that was pretty much the center of the early Modernisme art movement in Barcelona at the turn of the century, and also the very place where Picasso had his first exhibition.
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