Mrs. McKinstry shared how Wolters Kluwer, as a global, market-leading information services company is implementing innovation in its portfolio of products and services. We were honored to listen to Mrs. McKinstry, who has continuously been ranked among the most important woman in business, and her view on innovation at Wolters Kluwer as well as on innovative leadership.

A remarkable point of her speech, which definitely marks a highlight in our 2010 theme, was that an important aspect of innovation was to share it. Thanks to all of you for joining our event and for sharing your thoughts, experiences, and questions on innovative leadership. You can find the presentation under http://www.wolterskluwer.com/wk/Press/Presentations/2010

Our fellow member Cristina Stoian (www.crisspix.com) did an amazing job at capturing the evening on film. Please take two minutes (and 28 seconds) to enjoy the video presentation below.

Join us again next time!

Entrepreneurs Community Corner, a key initiative

One of the key initiatives for the EuropeanPWN (EPWN) Federation in 2010 is the Entrepreneurs  Community Corner (ECC), which is intended to grow into a great support community for our entrepreneurial members across City Networks, to facilitate their sharing, connecting and leveraging one another’s knowledge, contacts and talents as they build their business.

There are good ideas coming from all of our City Networks on resources, links, experts and tools to add to the ECC.

To support this ECC initiative, the EuropeanPWN-Amsterdam Board invited our entrepreneurial spirits to a brainstorming session on the 28th of April, that was generously facilitated by Ursula Brinkmann (see the information below).

The objective of the session was to gather and collate all ideas, needs, interests, concerns our self-employed EPWN members, and to communicate the outcome of the session to the Federation Board.

‘What support do the entrepreneurial women of our network need?’ was the question that was posed by facilitator Ursula Brinkmann, following an efficient and eye-opening session of introductions. The “silent brainstorm” session proved to be a very effective manner to get ideas on the table in a surprisingly short period of time. Within 10 minutes, an extensive list of areas that need focus had been proposed and the participants began the process of categorising, sorting and voting. We thank Ursula Brinkmann for leading this productive session.

These are the results of the session

Within EPWN we have a wealth of knowledge and professional experience that we know can be of benefit for all of our entrepreneurs. The following image highlights the key areas of interest that our participating entrepreneurs put forward that evening (the percentage reflects the number of votes from our participants – a high percentage therefore means that the topic is high on the list of their needs).

The participants further discussed ways to make these results possible. One of the ideas was to organize a series of workshops for and by our entrepreneurial spirits, as a means to connect and offer relevant training.

Thank you too!

Our thanks also go out to Petra Rona, a guest of the evening (who has since become a member), who captured all ideas in a power point presentation (the above image is one of the slides). The Amsterdam Board looks forward to sharing this PPT with the other City Networks when we discuss ways to engage and facilitate exchange among entrepreneurs across the networks.

You can contribute too. How?

If you are passionate about what you do and wish to profile yourself and share your expertise with your fellow entrepreneurial members in Amsterdam and throughout Europe, please contact any of the Amsterdam Board Members. Include in your email what you would like to contribute, whether in terms of workshop topics, mentoring skills, business connections and otherwise.

Background information on Ursula Brinkmann

Ursula Brinkmann is co-founder and director of Intercultural Business Improvement Ltd, a consultancy and training firm specialized in intercultural management development.

Ursula has been delivering courses and presentations for a number of public and private organizations. One of her recent assignments consisted of workshops on Managing Dutch-German cultural differences for the integration teams involved in a major cross-border acquisition. In 2007/2008 she was responsible for an integration program for a European corporation; the program combined training, individual assessment, coaching as well as networking events for 180 managers.

Together with Oscar van Weerdenburg, Ursula developed the Intercultural Readiness Check (IRC), a questionnaire assessing four key intercultural competences. The IRC has been widely recognized in the academic and business communities, and its database by now is one of the largest sources of information on intercultural competences world-wide.

Innovation also means “do your core business right”

One of the most striking statements of Shannon Jones, Director Marketing and Category for Starbucks Coffee Company EMEA, was that most of the time innovation means to “do your core business right”.
Listening to the captivating presentation of our guest speaker who brought 70 members and guests of EPWN Amsterdam together on Monday evening this statement seems to have been one of the conclusions of the re-examination of the company’s strategy in the beginning of 2008.

Starbucks has been one of the greatest success stories in the US. The company started in 1971 with one coffee shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Today, Starbucks serves millions of customers every day, in close to 17.000 locations in over 50 countries. The EMEA headquarter is located, together with the roasting plant, in Amsterdam where around 130 Starbucks partners – this is how employees are called – of the regional support center are working closely with the countries in several areas.

In 2008, Starbucks reported slower profit growth mainly due to the business in the US. The start of a new era was set when Howard Schultz, founder of the company in 1971, decided to return as CEO in order to lead the company again – which at that time seemed to have become quite bureaucratic – to focus on its core business: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. So, innovation in the beginning of 2008 was to return to the core business.

Shannon shared with us how innovation at Starbucks is about large and also small things. Every aspect of the daily business at Starbucks is being reconsidered, like how to steam the milk properly for the perfect latte. When – during the recession – Starbucks was facing the reflection of a “luxury brand” rather than the “third place” that the company aimed to be, they also reviewed store design and developed new concepts like “heritage”, “artisan” or “regional modern” which are currently being piloted around the world, including flag ship stores in Europe to better respond to the local flavor of different places.

How to leverage with cultural differences was a big part of the Q&A session: Each country has its own habits and traditions when it comes to drinking coffee. The challenge is to implement the Starbucks concept in different parts of the world while staying true to the brand and taking local characteristic into account.

So what is the path to the future for Starbucks? New product lines are currently being introduced like VIA (portable instant coffee sachets), Starbucks Shared Planet comprises various areas of their long established corporate social responsibility program, and Starbucks extends its presence in social media like twitter and facebook to keep a very close contact to their consumers and partners.

All participants fully agreed that it was a sheer pleasure to follow the attention-grabbing presentation of a true passionate Starbucks partner Shannon Jones. Shannon truly lives the Starbucks spirit and was not intimidated by the large amount of questions she received. We all loved the straight forward answers and cannot wait to finally choose our “third place”, our very own Starbucks in The Netherlands… hopefully coming soon.

(Edited for publication)