What we can learn from Denmark. That is the headline of a blog post by Gina O´Connor on the Grabbing Lightning blog. Gina praises Denmark for having a unrelenting focus on innovation and for the programs and networks developing the organizational innovation capabilities of Danish companies.

Her experiences as a teacher in Denmark also prompts her to ask the question: “Is the US keeping pace? While Danish companies appear to embrace the latest management practices and learning for developing an innovation competency, what are US companies doing?”

As a Dane and as the founder of INTRAP, which is a network for people working on the intersection of leadership and innovation, I agree that we do pretty well on innovation networks and programs in Denmark.

Compared to American companies, I also find Danish companies to be very good at developing organizational innovation capabilities where as American companies could teach us a lot on go-to-market strategies.

I travel frequently to Silicon Valley and I experience a growing interest in peer-to-peer networks for innovation leaders and in programs such as the Corporate Entrepreneurship Leadership program that Gina teaches at. I have also heard that the CEL program might be exported to Stanford. That could be interesting!

We can learn from each other across continents and I hope the flow of people teaching across continents and the exchange of ideas and processes keep growing. Innovation is truly global.