Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach…

…through innovation. Thursday I attended Joris Craandijk’s seminar "Innovation, the new Passion in Business", where he looked back as project leader of the now highly successful Heineken BeerTender product. For his seminar Joris had lined up a number of interesting speakers. Some were able to refresh parts of our mind that other speakers cannot reach. Herman Wijffels, chairman of the SER (social economic advisory council) when he spoke about the economic innovation needed in the Netherlands: "Our current leaders are system managers of institutions that were effective in the past decades, but no longer are in today’s economy" and "The western world is in a state of confusion currently, it will take time for a new direction and new leadership to emerge". Or Eddie Obeng, Founder of the Virtual Business School while jumping around the room: "The pace of change is outperforming our speed of learning". Joris Craandijk closed the session presenting his BeerTender case, which convinced him that the beer industry "…cannot live for another fourty years on what’s been there for fourty years". About the Netherlands and innovation "We cannot compete on price with India and China in the Netherlands, it should be our country’s cutting edge to mobilize expertise available here and elsewhere". Thanks a lot for the invitation Joris, unfortunately I had to miss the final and most refreshing part of the agenda: Biertje?
(the headline of this post refers to Heineken’s successful marketing campaign in the UK)