Two years ago, I did a keynote at a major health conference in Denmark under the (slight provoking) title: “Innovation in spite of managagement” making a case for under-the radar-innovations empowering the collective intelligence that knows what do do – and leaders who act rather than talk.
Right after I was challenged by several of the heads of both hospitals and health agencies to come up with a design for this type of innovation.
Now – two year later – we have completed nearly 30 innovation projects in as many municipalities, and some, including Bornholm, has implemented the innovation system tested, on a grand scale.
The results are amazing: The teams of innovation agents are creating micro innovations across sectors, bypassing departmental borders, and engaging local communities by way of example and action.
Based on simple – but strict – rules of engagement (an innovation manifesto so to say), quit small investments are producing big results. Blå Himmel’s manifesto which owe some to U-theory, some to best practice Silicon Vally entrepreneurship research, sets the frame for the interactions and process: Participant municipalities has to follow simple rules, such as always participating with directors across departments, prototyping before analyzing (and not being “allowed” to ask permission back home for their project), and keeping the scale small for quick returns.
The WHO Healthy Cities – Sund By organisation (an intra-municipality health forum under WHO) was coordinating the projects: Please see their website for some background (in Danish), incl slides from the introduction.
Lars Lundbye is a futurist and innovation evangelist with over 20 years of experience working with international companies and municipalities on sustainable strategy and radical innovation within cleantech, architecture, infrastructure and urban development. Lately Lars has been focused on global water issues as Executive Strategist for Grundfos and development of water sensitive and sustainable villages, on new sustainable architecture and for 3XN, and urban planning, and on radical redesign of public services in municipalities for Lejre Kommune among other major clients.
Lars is renowned for his ability to energise and motivate change and organisations, and his out-of-the-box thinking, that has inspired global businesses as well as numerous social services and innovative startups. With solid academic research behind him, miles and miles of walking the talk in live businesses, and decades of active practice in creative arts and mental development, Lars excels in crossing borders between deep research, hard business, the arts, and mental training; bringing unseen synergies and unique insights to clients’ projects.
Lars has founded and chaired several successful companies, and sits on several boards. Both a practitioner and an academic researcher on innovation, Lars is Lead Faculty on innovation at CBS-Executive (Copenhagen Business School), and is a popular keynote speaker on sustainable innovation, co-creation and integral leadership. He holds an executive MBA from SIMI, a cand. phil. in Literature, and as a former dean of the Danish School of Television and co-founder of the Workz agency with the film company Zentropa, Lars has extensive experience working with storytelling and communicating purpose driven business strategies.
Lars lives to create and enable revolutionary projects that empower people to be creative and innovative in creating a more sustainable, equitable and beautiful world. He is a passionate evangelist for holistic and integral thinking, and is a founding partner of Transition World in collaboration with The Club of Budapest and HeartMind Academy, training global top executives in new sustainable paradigms of development and leadership.
