Thinking Innovatively: An Interview with Nosco's Jesper Müller-Krogstrup

By Amanda Farah Cox

Part of preparing for the future is learning to not only accept change but to anticipate or even create it. Which is a lot easier than it sounds. To help our Vision 2020 participants adjust to this new method of thinking, Ida invited Jesper Müller-Krogstrup to give a presentation at our Tele-health meeting. Jesper is a partner-director of Nosco, a company he co-founded in 2006. Nosco helps organizations work with innovation: collecting, reflecting, and working with new ideas. He answered a few questions for Ida via email about what Nosco does, working with different kinds of clients, and how he encourages people to think innovatively.

How would you describe your work?

Internally, it’s my responsibility to develop Nosco’s business along with the rest of the management team – there are currently 17 of us, and we’ve just opened a new office in New York. Besides this, I implement Nosco’s social platform to make other companies more innovative, advising senior management teams on innovation and running a global innovation competition that helps companies to structure their entire organization around their top innovation challenges.

What types of organizations do you work with?

I work with larger organizations mainly, across all kinds of industry. The common denominator is that the companies I work for are all really serious about becoming more innovative. 

What are the challenges of getting a group to think innovatively?

It is often difficult for people to forget the past and try to picture future scenarios. However, everybody’s different, so for me it’s about ensuring that we get the most out of each person’s core strength – we definitely also need the people that put the ‘no’ in innovation. I find it interesting to help them navigate in open mode sessions. 

At the Tele-health meeting, you presented different examples of innovation, such as wearable technology. Do the examples change according to whom you're talking to, or just as the technology itself changes?

I never give the same presentation more than once, so the ideas and insights change according to the context and the situation of the company I’m working for.

How do you prepare to talk to different types of clients?

I always try to understand exactly what my clients want to achieve. Based on this, I strive to put together a bespoke program/seminar/project that will best help with that. In my planning, I like to work iteratively – so I like to test my ideas out on my clients at the sketch stage to see whether they match their needs. I get a lot of inspiration from all the conferences I attend, as well as from the ‘Innovation in Practice’ class I teach at Copenhagen Business School, so I’m constantly improving my own tools and methods.

What makes a session successful?

All sessions are different and the ideal result depends on the context. Sometimes a session is about having the best possible discussion. Other sessions are about deciding on something specific. A successful session is about reaching the destination we set out for while enjoying the journey. A good session will come if planning is strong, content is meaningful and we allow for a good portion of improvisation. I’ve learned that if it feels like a success, it most likely is a success.