MEET THE WINNERS
You are about to embark on a breathtaking journey. The point of departure is Denmark.
The final destination – the world!

Ever since Enrico Dalgas in 1865 declared that the Danes must “win at home what has been lost abroad” referring to Denmark’s loss of land to Germany in the 1864 war, the Danes have striven to make the most of what they had. Personally, Dalgas did it by planting Denmark’s barren moor areas with forest. But his motto did not become part of the Danish mindset until 1872 when H.P. Holst had the words etched on a commemorative medal at an industrial exhibition.

However, despite Enrico Dalgas’ well-intentioned advice, Danish companies have never limited their ambitions to the domestic arena. Instead, in a neat reversal of the Dalgas maxim, they have sought to “win abroad what has been lost at home”, not by means of war but by taking advantage of the many opportunities of globalisation and by finding and serving unique niches.

Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. In terms of volume, Denmark’s trade with the surrounding world expanded fi vefold between 1864 and 1914. This illustrates the companies’ realisation that as they came from a small country they were dependent on the surrounding world and would benefit from taking part in the international game.

Whilst 90 per cent of Denmark’s exports in 1900 went to its nearest neighbours in Sweden, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom, only around 40 per cent of the country’s current exports go to these countries – thus demonstrating the globally oriented nature of Danish companies today.

Up through the 1950s, when farmers traded in their horses for tractors and turned farms into highly productive industries, Denmark housed more than 25 radio and television factories – some of them even attracting curious engineers all the way from Japan to study the latest high-tech development.

When the final show of the Olympic games in Rome in 1960 was watched on a record high number of TV screens in living rooms across the world, probably often from comfortable Danish furniture and accompanied by a refreshing Danish beer, the winning game among Danish TV producers had only just begun. Whereas the main competitive ingredients in television manufacturing in the 1950s had been “the new unexplored product” in itself, as well as price, the 1960s added quality and design to the competitive palette – and soon the only survivors were those companies that recognised that radio and television sets were more than mere broadcast receivers but were design objects in their own right. Today, Denmark hosts only one television manufacturing company. However, its products are famous all over the world.

The recent opening of a number of emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia means increased scope for companies to reach customers around the world and utilise the international availability of labour. Since the late 1990s revolution in connectivity that was sparked by optical cables, the World Wide Web and consequently cheap communications and information access across the globe, the world has experienced what one could call the third wave of globalisation.

The companies that we are going to meet now have all proved their ability to ride the wave. All of the companies represented in this book follow a simple Darwinian rule of not just being good or better than the others, but aiming at being the best to fulfi l the needs of their customers.

You are about to meet 50 global winners – all of them having their roots in that remote corner of Europe called Denmark – but each of them being world-leaders by serving unique niches around the globe. You will be introduced to a selection of stories about how a number of large and small Danish companies have made their way to international success by accepting globalisation on its own terms – utilising the palette of increasing opportunities in a diminishing world.
I wish you a pleasant journey.

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