BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

The key factors in this case study are leadership, vision, concept, strategy, long term planning, and execution.

Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands for eight years from 2002 until 2010, had a meteoric political career. An academic by profession, he only entered national politics in 1988 at the age of 42 when he was first elected to the House of Representatives for the Christian Democratic Alliance party (CDA). Only four years later he was elected leader of the party and led it to a surprise victory in the 2002 general election, in which the CDA gained 14 seats. He then headed four successive administrations as Prime Minister in coalition with a variety of other parties until defeat in the 2010 general election, after which he resigned from the CDA leadership and retired from politics at the age of only 54.

Dr Balkenende studied economic and social history and law at the Free University. He started working at the Netherlands Universities Council, the united body of Dutch universities, and went on to become a staff member for social, economic, and financial policy at the Wetenschappelijk Instituut for the CDA, the party's Research Institute. He was also a member of his City Council, Amstelveen. After some years he was invited to undertake a PhD: the subject he chose was Government Regulation and Civil Society organizations. He was granted his doctorate in 1992, and the following year he became part-time Professor of Christian Social Thought on Economy and Society at the Free University in Amsterdam.

Since leaving politics, he has returned to the academic world as well as pursuing a career in business. He became a partner in Corporate Responsibility at the global consulting and accountancy firm EY (formerly Ernst and Young) and he is currently an external senior advisor to the company. He is also a supervising board member of ING, the Dutch banking and financial services corporation. In addition, he is Professor of Governance, Institutions, and Internationalization at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and he is involved in the Goldschmeding Foundation and several other foundations.

During his eight years in office as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Dr Balkenende made the encouragement of innovation a government priority. In February 2018, he talked to the Owls team about how he went about it.

Source: Jan Peter Balkenende and Robert Low, https://archive.org/details/Breakthrough2180910/page/n173/mode/2up
This work is in the Public Domain.